Deliver More Value to Your Customers with Building Integration

By Neil Maldeis, Energy Solutions Engineering Leader, Trane®

Connected buildings, the Internet of Things (IoT) and smart devices are buzzwords in the industrial market. But do your customers have a true understanding of what a connected building is and the benefits that it can provide?

Connected devices, like lighting, security systems, and heating, ventilation and air conditioning (HVAC) equipment, produce data that can be captured and applied to significantly increase energy savings and operational efficiencies. Technology advances and the ability to turn building system data into useable information also enables a more sophisticated approach to service and maintenance. And because data can be gathered from one piece of equipment or from dozens, it’s possible to start small.  

The bottom line: It’s all about the outcomes that matter to your customers. Whether the goal is energy efficiency, cost savings or improved occupant comfort — a connected building can help building owners and managers achieve their desired outcomes. Delivering products and services that provide greater value over time enhances your relationship with your customers, making you more competitive.

Assessing the goals

Start by determining what a building owner or manager wants to achieve. Do they want a greater understanding of building performance? The ability to track utility trends? An easier way to control building setpoints remotely to improve occupant comfort?

A connected building is the answer to all of those questions, providing better control of building systems, remote access to system controls, a detailed view into real-time performance, and more advanced options for analytics.

It’s easier than ever to access building data, and technology advancements are driving the expectations of building owners and occupants.  With greater capabilities to control buildings comes greater possibilities for energy savings and comfort.

Choosing the right solution that takes advantage of the building data at your customer’s fingertips starts with understanding what customers want and need.

Decisions with data

A connected building starts with a building automation system (BAS), which aggregates data from equipment that is able to connect to the cloud or the Internet. As more connected devices are integrated into networks, more value can be delivered.

The real value is in the data that tells your customers how systems are operating and performing. The BAS can collect trends about average setpoints over a certain period, how often equipment is running, and hours of building usage. This information can be delivered in easy-to-read dashboards.

Equipment metering can also be integrated into a BAS, providing detailed utility data such as average kilowatt hour usage for specific pieces of HVAC equipment.

This information helps building owners and facility managers make informed decisions about how to operate the equipment to achieve better energy efficiency, track maintenance requirements, and dispatch service/maintenance personnel automatically.

Integrating building systems

A connected building can go beyond HVAC equipment — integrating other systems such as lighting, security, water and elevators. Building automation systems can dim lights, raise building setpoints, or slightly slow down elevators and escalators. Typically, these actions are unnoticeable to building occupants, but there are potentially large financial benefits.

This level of integration involves looking at the whole building and the way it is performing as a group of integrated/interdependent systems rather than as many independent pieces.

Varying types of systems — and even equipment from different manufacturers — can be integrated when they speak the same language. Or in other cases, a communication bridge can be used to connect equipment that does not speak the same language.

Look for equipment and systems that use open and standard protocols, such as BACnet®, LON® or ZigBee®. This helps ensure integration of different types of systems and equipment to drive value for your customers.

Which pieces should be integrated first —  HVAC equipment or lighting? It depends on what goals your customers are trying to accomplish.

Working with an equipment provider that has expertise in building controls and integration is helpful. An experienced partner can provide insight about which equipment and systems can be connected and integrated.

While most equipment is easier to install during new construction, there are many products designed for installation in existing buildings. Wireless communication products can be added to equipment to create connectivity, which means equipment does not need to have built-in capability to connect to the Internet.

Building connectivity doesn’t have to be an all or nothing approach. Starting with one piece of equipment and implementing other devices in stages is possible, and can make it easier to take the first step.

Connectivity in the Real World

In one real-world example, a movie theater chain uses a building management system to integrate HVAC and lighting controls at each of its locations. These building-level systems connect to a web-enabled, enterprise-level BAS network. This cloud-based connectivity allows a facility manager to monitor, control and apply changes to its buildings across the country from a central location.

This system integration and enterprise-wide control delivers numerous benefits, including the ability to synchronize lighting and HVAC system setpoints with ticket sales and show time schedules. On Friday nights, as the cinema lobby fills, the theaters automatically adjust as tickets are sold, ensuring that the crowded new release showing is cool, while the less popular screenings are temperate. The theater chain saves money by leveraging automatic heating, cooling and lighting adjustments based on occupancy needs.

Advanced services available through the theater’s building management system also provide remote resolution of system alarms 24/7 and intelligent dispatching of system information and troubleshooting to the technicians’ handheld devices.

In another example, a regional microbrewery uses the connectivity of a building management system to gather enterprise-wide system data from locations in 13 states. The web-enabled building control provides corporation-level access to all of the sites, providing cloud access to enterprise data and the ability to view and adjust site conditions and equipment operation from mobile devices.

Deliver benefits with integrated control

Connected buildings provide capabilities to improve building performance, reduce energy use and operating costs, shrink a building’s environmental footprint, and enhance reliability and uptime. Your customers can reap these benefits long term, but it all starts by choosing the right systems and controls at installation.

Solutions that deliver value and efficiency over the life of the system, like the connected system at the movie theater, optimize customer’s building operations. Keeping customer expectations top of mind can guide you as you determine the best equipment, systems and controls to meet their needs. 

 

Smart devices give facility managers access to building data, which can be used to make improvements to increase energy efficiency and cost savings.

 

Building management systems can be applied to most commercial environments. They enable building owners and facility managers to integrate HVAC, lighting, electrical, security and alarm systems into one easy-to-manage controls platform.

Author biography

Trane energy solutions engineering leader Neil Maldeis has more than 35 years of experience in the contracting and energy fields, and is a licensed professional engineer. Maldeis is certified by the Association of Energy Engineers as a Certified Energy Manager and Certified Green Building Engineer.

 

Seeing the Big Picture in Building Design

By Al Fullerton, Systems Leader, Trane

To maximize efficiency of the entire building It’s important to first consider how to make the entire system more efficient before going granular and looking at individual pieces of equipment.

In commercial building design, individual pieces of heating, ventilation and air conditioning (HVAC) equipment are often selected based on their efficiency. It’s natural to want to choose the most effective solution, and many times we consider this through the performance of an individual component.

But is this really the best way to achieve the most efficient building performance?

It may seem counterintuitive, but the most efficient piece of equipment may not always result in the most efficient building or system performance. There are many variables that contribute to optimized building performance. It depends on how the building is being used and occupied, how the various pieces of equipment in the building interact and work together, and what the goals are for the facility.

This makes it important to look beyond the efficiency of a single piece of equipment and instead consider building performance and efficiency — seeing the whole as greater than the sum of its parts.

Taking this approach can result in improved energy efficiency and operational cost savings, and play a role in meeting goals your customers may have for sustainability, energy consumption and efficiency.

Why is whole building design a better approach?

“The whole is greater than the sum of its parts” is a common concept. Applying it to building design can provide significant value and results. For building owners and managers, it can result in improved energy efficiency, lower first cost and overall cost savings. For engineers and contractors, understanding and meeting customer needs with a systems-design approach can provide a competitive edge.

Rather than asking which individual pieces of equipment are the most efficient, the question becomes how to make the entire system more efficient? Resisting the urge to go granular immediately — and instead taking this systems approach upfront — helps maximize efficiency of the entire building.

It starts with understanding what the building owner or facility or property manager is trying to achieve in their facility. What building outcomes are being sought? Is the driver LEED certification, a net-zero building, a corporate sustainability goal or other benchmarks or regulations?

Next, consider how the building will be run and when it will be occupied. The needs of a commercial property differ greatly from the needs of a hospital, for example. Knowing how the building will be used provides a better understanding of full-load and part-load performance, which helps determine what equipment and systems are best suited for the building.

From there, move backward into what building systems best match these goals and needs. In addition, it’s important to look at how the various building systems — from plumbing, lighting, security and HVAC — interact and best work together to optimize building efficiency.

Consider this example: Many chilled water systems are designed to pump 2.4 gallons of water every minute for every ton of chilled water to be produced, and 3 gallons per minute of water for every ton of coolant to be made. If a chiller is selected based on these conditions, the end result is a lot of water being pumped around a building. By contrast, using a whole system approach can save significantly in the amount of water and energy used. While in this option the chiller may initially look less efficient, it actually uses much less pumping energy — especially at part-load conditions — and results in a much more efficient system-level performance.

As more organizations and states enact increasingly stringent energy-efficiency goals and regulations, the industry recognizes that systems-level efficiency provides a great opportunity for improvement in this area. The Alliance to Save Energy made a case for using a systems-level approach to improve energy efficiency in a recent white paper, “Greater than the Sum of its Parts.” The white paper notes that in addition to reducing energy use and associated costs to consumers, a systems approach has the potential to achieve significant non-energy benefits, including reduced greenhouse gas emissions, improved grid reliability and resilience, water savings, extended equipment life, and increased occupant comfort and productivity. Studies have estimated that the quantifiable non-energy benefits can add 25 to 50 percent to the total monetary benefits of energy efficiency.

Key strategies for a systems-level approach

Consider these key strategies that can help in successfully implementing a systems-level approach in building design:

  • Understand the utility cost structure. Don’t choose building systems and equipment without having a clear understanding of the utility rates and structure for a specific building and location. Understanding the utility rate structure — which often includes consumption charges and demand charges — allows for a more accurate analysis of building performance based on how the building will be occupied and used. In some areas, demand charges can comprise up to 75 percent of the monthly utility bill. Knowing this can help in choosing the most efficient system from a utility bill perspective, such as taking advantage of the load-shifting capabilities of a thermal storage system. It’s often helpful to consult a partner who offers expertise in building systems and equipment, as well as in utility rate structures and billing.
  • Consider the total budget. Selecting the building systems and equipment that will best provide optimized efficiency and performance for a specific building also hinges on the budget — both upfront and long-term for staffing and maintenance. Selecting a system that requires less long-term maintenance can help an organization save staffing costs in the long run.
  • Understand the needs. Asking the right questions about how the building will be used and occupied is a critical consideration in choosing the systems and equipment that will provide the most efficient performance. For example, it typically takes several years after construction for most data center facilities to operate at full load. However, those early years of part-load operation are often not considered in building design when choosing the systems that will offer the most efficiency. It’s important to consider how systems and equipment will perform under partial loads.
  • Use a modeling program. Using a building modeling or energy simulation program in building design contributes to sound decision making — and it can pay off in improved energy efficiency and performance. Modeling allows you to optimize the systems from an energy and utility bill perspective before construction even begins. It’s important to model against the potential optimized performance of the whole building and its systems, rather than modeling against performance of individual components.  

How can it pay off?

While improved energy efficiency and utility savings are significant benefits of system-level design, using this method can pay off in other ways.

Better fresh air ventilation or better acoustic levels in the building are examples of secondary benefits that can result from proper system design. These features can result in fewer complaints, as well as in more productive occupants.

Some systems also offer benefits for ease of maintenance and reduced risk down the road.

It is possible to use a single provider with expertise in equipment and system design and building optimization. This can help reduce risk and ensure a more efficient design and planning process. A knowledgeable partner can also help assess the best opportunities for efficiency.

Seeing the sum instead of the parts

What is it that your customers want to achieve in their building, and what is the best way to get those results? Considering these questions at the start of the design process can help in choosing the systems that are best suited for the job — and help your design stand out.

A building design process that focuses on the efficiency of the whole building — rather than on the efficiency of individual components — can improve energy efficiency and help you better meet the changing priorities of building owners.

Author Bio
Al Fullerton is Intelligent Systems Leader for Trane, a leading global provider of indoor comfort solutions and services and a brand of Ingersoll Rand. In this role, Al leads a team of engineers focused on expertly applying Trane Systems. Al has worked in the HVAC industry since graduating from the University of Cincinnati with a bachelor’s degree in Mechanical Engineering in June of 1981.