Energy Management
How Facility Managers Can Use Energy Management Systems To Increase ROI For Smart Building Investments
Higher energy costs pile pressure on FM teams. Kamal Mehta, product and offer manager EMEA at Eaton says this is when smart building technology can unlock savings and even new revenue.
Facility managers are being asked to play a pivotal role in advancing net-zero goals. This is because more than a third of global greenhouse gas emissions are linked to the built environment1
.
Building services such as HVAC and power, which FM teams oversee, make a big contribution to those emissions. More widespread electrification of heating and cooling, alongside significant energy efficiency measures can make a real difference.
However, as facility managers prioritise sustainability, they are confronted with growing competition for electrical capacity. This comes from the rise of electric transportation and the rapid expansion of data centres. Increased demand for electricity is outpacing many utilities’ ability to supply stable and reliable power.
In response, how facility managers explore energy self- sufficiency strategies
could be crucial, helped by generation of energy management systems.
These systems have evolved from being basic monitoring tools. By integrating data, collected across smart systems, including IoT sensors, meters and building automation controls, facility managers can now get a fully detailed 360-degree perspective on energy consumption. This spans multiple services including lighting, HVAC and power, across one or several sites. By consolidating so much detailed data, an energy management system can identify patterns in energy usage and make recommendations to facility managers on where efficiencies can be delivered.
Such better insights into current and future energy usage can help address the persistent concerns about whether smart building projects deliver a strong return on investments. A 2024 study, conducted by 451 Research, confirmed that establishing return on investment ranked as the top concern for pursuing smart building projects. Specifically, energy management systems can support initiatives to boost a building’s power self-sufficiency while reducing costs through improved energy efficiency.
One opportunity is how buildings equipped with on-site energy generation and battery storage systems can monetise these energy investments. New revenue streams can be created,
08 fmuk a new
improving the return on investment for a building project. For facility managers of campus sites with multiple buildings, advanced software and communication technologies can make distributed energy assets, such as solar panels and batteries, operate as a single virtual power plant that autonomously manages energy supply and demand.
An example of what is possible is the 150-room Florian Hotel developed from a derelict office building near Schiphol Airport. Because of limited grid connections, the hotel uses an energy management and optimisation system in combination with onsite solar panels and a bank of battery energy storage.
By conserving power from the grid or surplus renewable energy during off-peak periods and releasing it during times of higher demand, the Florian Hotel no longer exceeds its energy contract. Energy is conserved during the night when demand is low and used during the daytime. As solar panels generate energy during daylight hours, this is largely consumed rather than stored. This has proved so effective that the hotel supports and gains revenue from nine electric vehicle chargers throughout the day. Overall, the energy management and optimisation system helped the hotel reduce its carbon emissions by 15 tonnes per year.
Repeating the achievements of the
Florian Hotel will depend on market conditions and whether they enable building operators to participate in energy supply markets. Market deregulation in the power sector will empower
buildings to play storage systems are key too. They a more
market participants. Policies that incentivise demand response and energy
active role as distributed energy will
drive
wider adoption of energy management systems that optimise consumption and sell electricity at peak demand periods.
Buildings that integrate energy management systems with distributed energy generation and storage resources have the potential to help facility managers transform their commercial or public sector properties with a “building as a grid” model.
1: Source: ScienceDirect -
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2949790624002404
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52
