We have a long business relationship with a price-sensitive Client down in downtown Manhattan. Demand Response, energy incentives and lighting retrofits are some of the solutions we regularly apply to this Client.

As a result, their building staff loves to implement as much of the energy conservation measures themselves and has many success stories.  The in-house staff has designed and deployed a Schneider Controls building management system (BMS).  Most noteworthy, building engineers installed both hardware and software portions of the BMS.

GreenConnect is your building’s stethoscope..

Hence we have tried many times to get this customer to expand their BMS system.  The expansion would include automated demand response.  Luckily as part of our Demand Response offering, we install a lite version of GreenConnect, our versatile energy analytics platform.  Within a few minutes of logging into GreenConnect, patterns started to come to life.  Noticeably, the building’s summer kW demand starting in May hovers around 1350 kW, all day, and all night….

Case cracked!

Soon after observing this phenomena, the building manager sent the building engineer together with LCA to investigate.  What we found was interesting, and of course sadly common in many BMS applications.

• The BMS system successfully sent out commands to the equipment. However, there were no feedback sensors installed therefore no feedback received.  Commands to set back the thermostats to 80 degF at night, were being overridden by the Tenants.  Consequently the BMS was none the wiser and just reported the units as being off.
• As a matter of fact this building has about 80 water cooled unitary AC and Heat Pump units of varying sizes for a variety of Tenants.  Consequently building engineers keep the condenser water system running 24×7 during the summer.  Probably in case a Tenant needs air conditioning during off hours.  Certainly it seemed like the BMS did not control the pumps and cooling tower. 

With the help of GreenConnect and not to mention the building engineers, we were able to convince this Client to install VFD’s and additional BMS sensors.  The projected savings is around 230,000 kWh/year which saves the Owner about $35,000, every year.  Furthermore a cash incentive from ConEdison for this type of project can run in the neighborhood of $40,000 which would result in a one year payback to the Owner.

Simple adjustments to a building’s operation can lead to a long term positive impact on the environment, and one’s wallet.  Take a look at the lifetime impact of the measure below.

LC Associates has extensive experience in generated cash incentives, energy savings, and broad insight into strategic building operations.  Give us a call to schedule a meeting or take a tour of your facility and see how we can help your business reduce energy costs and make a positive impact on the environment.