Energy consumption interval data is a record of a building's energy consumption levels, with readings made at regular intervals throughout the day, every day, over an extended period of time. Interval data can be obtained from utility company meters, building control systems or increasingly from energy service provider- or building owner-installed smart meters.
Building asset data is information related to general building characteristics and energy systems in the building. This could include basic information such as the year built or facility use type (e.g., office, warehouse, etc.), to more specifics, such as heating ventilation and air-conditioning systems, lighting and lighting controls, envelope and windows.
A well-known Fortune 100 finance company wanted to gain LEED status for all of its buildings. Three of their buildings presented a challenge as they were unable to get ENERGY STAR rated, a requirement for LEED certification. The company hired external engineering experts who identified 15 improvements for each building that would help them meet their goals. Retroficiency was engaged to demonstrate their technology to develop recommendations and help validate the external company's findings with a calibrated energy model.
Using proprietary technology with minimal information from on-site facility managers (and no site visits), Retroficiency was able to construct and calibrate energy models. By running these models against our database of thousands of energy conservation measures, we were able to offer recommendations that increased ENERGY STAR ratings by an average of 31% and had less than 2 year paybacks. In terms of annual savings, we found more than $85k in operational changes and $45k in physical retrofits. Once we had calibrated energy models we showed that 12 out of the 15 retrofits recommended by the external engineers (and almost $2M in spend) had paybacks greater than 67 years and were not necessary to meet the desired goals.
Retroficiency was asked to evaluate 3 buildings totaling 1.2M square feet. The goal was to test the ability of our platform to do high-level quick evaluations of multiple buildings. In addition, they wanted to calibrate the energy models on all three buildings to test the depth of the analysis and performance of the models.
To start, the facility management company was given online access to the Retroficiency platform and spent about 30 minutes entering high-level information about the buildings. Within 3 hours of submitting this information, the energy managers were sent an email notifying them that their initial reports were available. These reports showed combined annual savings opportunities of $883k at the 3 buildings – all with less than 6 year paybacks.
Next, the energy managers were able to access, evaluate, and change the inferred data on all of their buildings. After submitting these changes, the energy models were updated. Retroficiency then used 12 months of utility data to calibrate the models to ensure accuracy. The ECM database was again run against these models and new savings and cost numbers were produced.
The process from start to detailed output took 5 days and did not require site visits. The software found more than $2.5M in annual savings with all paybacks less than 6 years.
