As part of the recent Smart Cities Week, the White House announced the Energy Department-led Smart Energy Analytics Campaign to encourage the use of energy-management-information-system (EMIS) technologies in commercial buildings nationwide.
EMIS technologies are a broad group of smart energy-management tools that aid monitoring, analysis, and control of building energy use and system performance. EMIS can achieve 10- to 20-percent energy savings in a commercial building. If EMIS technologies were used in all commercial buildings in the nation, more than $4 billion in cost savings could be achieved.
The campaign also is meant to help building operators use analytics for overall long-term energy management and better building performance. The initial goal is use of smart energy analytics in 80 million sq ft of floor space. The 18 current partners represent 50 million sq ft of floor space (1,800 buildings).
“Organizations partnering in the Smart Energy Analytics Campaign are taking the lead in demonstrating cutting-edge technology systems and using them to pinpoint and achieve deeper, smarter efficiencies in commercial buildings,” Deputy Assistant Secretary for Energy Efficiency Kathleen Hogan said. “This commitment to continuous improvement for measuring and monitoring the energy performance of an entire building or suite of buildings is proof that data matters and informs better decision making.”
Partner commitments include:
- Macy’s. With a large complex portfolio of more than 700 locations, Macy’s was an early adopter of fault detection and diagnostics (FDD). The company’s leading-edge approaches with FDD has resulted in significant year-over-year savings.
- University of California San Francisco. UC San Francisco will expand its innovative program of “connected commissioning” to include fault-detection analytics.
- Rhode Island Office of Energy. The Rhode Island Office of Energy is starting an 18-building, multiyear EMIS project. The lessons learned through the campaign will help to streamline the rollout of EMIS to a large portion of the office’s public-sector portfolio.
Smart Energy Analytics is the fourth technology campaign under the Better Buildings Alliance, a peer exchange program under the Better Buildings Initiative. It expands on the Interior Lighting Campaign, the Lighting Energy Efficiency in Parking Campaign, and the Advanced Rooftop Unit Campaign. Altogether, these campaigns have saved public and private organizations approximately $136 million.
The Smart Energy Analytics Campaign is part of the broader Better Buildings Initiative, which aims to make commercial, public, industrial, and residential buildings 20-percent more energy-efficient over the next decade.
To learn more about the Smart Energy Analytics Campaign, go to https://smart-energy-analytics.org/.