Bill Schwebel, vice president and general manager, building automation systems and controls, global products at Johnson Controls says that by providing greater certainty, digital sensors and controls can help building owners make smarter decisions about energy use and operational outcomes.
On average, commercial buildings without smart technologies are at least 15% less efficient than those that have fully integrated digital sensors and controls.[1] This inefficiency typically manifests in wasted energy, carbon emissions and operational losses, which can impact operational outcomes and prevent facility teams from reaching increasingly aggressive decarbonization goals.
Fully integrating building sensors and controls is widely recognized as a proven approach to improve operational efficiency and to help advance decarbonization goals. As such, many building owners have implemented digital building automation technologies into new construction projects and retrofits, transforming properties into smarter, more efficient buildings. And facility teams have gained deeper insights – and greater certainty – as they’ve begun addressing inefficiencies.
Optimizing maintenance and building performance
When an issue arises in a building that lacks smart technologies, an expensive and time-consuming troubleshooting workflow across multiple responsible parties and external service providers typically follows. The troubleshooting cycle can extend equipment downtime, increase energy use, impact costs and affect occupant experience. In comparison, a smart building equipped with a wide array of digital sensors and control technologies can help facility teams and service providers get to the root cause of problems more quickly, streamlining the troubleshooting process.
By recording the conditions in their specific location, sensors send data to the building automation control system, which predicts what is happening in a space or within equipment. While sensors are critical guides, the control system’s computing analysis fills in the gaps.
The control system computing analysis makes it possible to measure and determine optimal bands of operation for specific building system metrics. Once bands of ideal performance are established, facility teams can set alarms that notify personnel when parameters deviate from that baseline. When they receive an alarm notification, personnel can quickly determine the problem, identify its location and address the potential of it becoming a greater issue that significantly affects business outcomes.
Some systems have native fault detection capabilities that make predictive maintenance possible. Consider, for example, a stuck valve in an HVAC system. This type of issue can be hard to identify without integrated sensor and control technology. But if the system is equipped with sensors that have failure mode capabilities, maintenance staff and service providers can quickly discern and analyze system issues, pinpoint the solution and either fix it remotely or secure parts before sending a technician to the building. This allows technicians to know in advance what component is required to address the issue, making it more likely the problem can be addressed and corrected on the first visit.
Digitally integrated sensor and control systems also make it possible to continuously optimize building performance and energy use moment to moment, day to day. By constantly monitoring a building’s dynamic characteristics and needs, some control systems can identify deviations and automatically adjust processes. For instance, when occupant rates change in specific areas, the control system with integrated sensor-based occupant information and appropriate control sequences can continuously read data from that room and make HVAC system adjustments to keep temperature, airflow and other factors within the optimal range. The system response level ensures occupants remain comfortable and optimizes energy usage from HVAC, lighting and windows via automated blinds.
Reducing energy use through floor-by-floor metering
A high level of building optimization and certainty can save more than just time and money – it can also save energy. Driven by corporate and governmental decarbonization and net zero targets and increasingly stringent energy regulations, many facilities are adding energy meters and additional computation capabilities for building control systems to help monitor and control energy use. The combination of sensing and control can increase the granularity of measurement and adjustment, so building owners can more accurately see and address both where and how energy is being used.
Similar to the utility boxes outside a residence measuring kilowatt usage and/or BTU usage, energy meters can be used floor by floor to measure discrete energy consumption. Leveraging energy meter visibility and awareness enables optimization – system by system and tenant by tenant.
When energy meters are connected to building controls, it’s possible to capture discrete energy use, even when it’s drawn from a centralized resource such as a central plant or district heating and cooling. The capability can then be used for environmental reporting and invoicing. The accuracy in the current digital systems is now high enough that it meets the standard required for financial billing, allowing building owners to invoice tenants or specific users for energy use – a function previously unavailable.
The detailed energy management level can also hold tenants and users accountable for their use, helping building owners and facility managers prioritize and budget decarbonization projects by more accurately estimating their return on investment (ROI).
Although there are some technologies that have approximate ROI forecasts, greater precision can help business owners budget infrastructure upgrades over short and long term, prioritizing projects with the biggest impact and the highest return. For example, if a building has inefficient lighting, building owners can monitor actual energy usage through energy meters and occupancy detection sensors, and they can more accurately calculate the payback of installing LED lighting.
Performing sensor fusion for enhanced visibility
Sensors are a foundational technology for monitoring building systems and producing data streams. When multiple data streams relate to and inform one another, control systems can aggregate data, creating a more accurate representation of a space or piece of equipment in a process known as sensor fusion. The visibility level available through sensor fusion increases decision-making certainty and, in turn, further improves operational efficiency.
However, the cost, installation and commissioning requirements of conventional sensors often limit how many sensors a building owner can afford to integrate and where in the building they can be installed. By removing the limitations of sensor integration, facility teams can monitor more building areas and pair these sensors with smart controls to obtain the benefits made possible with sensor fusion.
New advances in sensor technology remove barriers while increasing opportunities to perform sensor fusion, achieving greater visibility across a building and delivering even greater efficiency. For example, innovations in sensor technology are resulting in much smaller, simpler designs that are both more functional and more economical. Small, inexpensive sensors use Bluetooth and LoRaWAN technology for power, requiring no wires or internal battery. These wireless sensors are cost-effective. Since they don’t require wiring or battery maintenance, they can be placed almost anywhere by installers, service providers or facility personnel. Building owners can deploy low-cost sensors and monitor a building, campus or central plant for a fraction of conventional device and installation costs, allowing them to gather information that would have previously been cost-prohibitive.
By receiving more data streams from more areas, control systems can collect and converge a greater range of information.
Continuously improving efficiency for the life of the building
Whether it’s operational efficiency, decarbonization targets or another goal, the best way to achieve successful long-term outcomes is to design for the building’s full life cycle. However, many building systems are designed for just one stage of a building’s life cycle or a specific area of operations, limiting progress and overlooking valuable optimization opportunities.
Installed equipment, including sensors and controls, is typically selected solely to satisfy the requirements for the construction of the building during the installation stage. These products can pass a certificate of occupancy test, but they may not be capable of fulfilling what is needed for long-term optimization as the building ages. By instead considering the entire life cycle of a building, owners and facility managers can capitalize on the most lucrative opportunities to improve efficiency and achieve better outcomes at every stage.
When sourcing building automation equipment, it’s important to work with a provider that focuses on the overall life of the building and who offers integrated, scalable solutions that are intentionally designed to deliver results across the life cycle of assets and life of the building. These providers have the experience and expertise necessary to service a building and add the capabilities required to help keep building operational costs low throughout its life.
While integrated digital sensors and controls are the foundation for this end-to-end approach, software and analytics, as well as advanced building automation technologies, also play important roles. A comprehensive, life cycle approach makes greater certainty and control possible.
Sensors and controls provide the information and context needed for facility teams to make decisions that can significantly improve operational efficiency and help meet decarbonization goals. By integrating energy meters and leveraging advanced control strategies like sensor fusion, facility teams can access a fuller picture of what is happening in a space and with their equipment, owners can achieve better business outcomes and buildings can be transformed from static entities into intelligent, strategic assets.
[1] Cracking the Code: Unleash Your Smart Buildings Strategy With the Power of Facility Data. Forrester Consulting in collaboration with Johnson Controls, 2023.