GreenConnect has been selected by four large commercial landlords in New York City as their Real Time Energy Management (RTEM) Platform. We are so proud of our Team who worked hours upon end to make this a reality. GreenConnect now provides Tenant Sub-metering for Local Law 88 requirements, Real Time Energy Management for Local Law 87 monitoring, and Energy and Sustainability Reporting for Local Law 88 and 97 support.
Around 1994 when I worked for Vanderweil Engineers up in Boston, we created a subsidiary called Circadian Information Systems and developed EnterpriseOne, one of the first RTEM systems on the market that was equipment agnostic.
Back in those days, all of the BMS systems on the market were proprietary. Consequently if a Customer wanted real time energy management, they needed to pay a hefty price for it. Hence this obstacle left the smaller to midsize business with an economic barrier.
We sold CD’s of EnterpriseOne and our first client was MIT followed by the Children’s Hospital of Boston. EnterpriseOne was a client/server solution built on Delphi (yes, it was written in Pascal). The MIT chief engineer simply loaded the CD into the desktop housing the Johnson Metasys software, and our Machine Learning protocols took over. EntepriseOne “learned” the Metasys site map and would generate analytical reports and charts that would identify deep energy savings and low/no cost operating enhancements.
Within a few months we sold nine (9) CD’s at $10,000 a pop to several Metasys owners across the US. Customers would pay us $20,000 to configure the system or they would do it themselves. After our sixth sale we received a call from Jonhson Control’s headquarters in Wisconsin…Johnson started getting orders, and support calls, for Circadian’s EnterpriseOne. JCI was befuddled because they had no idea what EnterpriseOne or Circadian was!
What they did know, is that a lot of Customers wanted it because it made their system easier for the laymen to use.
Johnson Controls offered to buy EnterpriseOne but the Trane company was the highest bidder and purchased it. Sadly we never heard from them or Circadian again. Being only a lowly and unaware employee, I was cut out of the benefit. I left for New York City in disgust to find another opportunity and a new home.
In New York I became employed by one of the tenant sub-metering companies where I designed their own version of EnterpriseOne. This version only provided sub-metering. While there I landed a big project where we designed a standalone district chilled water billing system for the Orlando Utilities Commission . Neither OUC or my employer was interested in the other benefits such as the analytics and the deep energy savings discovery modules that I was interested in developing.
In 2002 I started LC Associates and provided energy consulting services to some of New York’s most iconic institutions. I wound up designing an RTEM system for yet another sub-metering service provider and this time included machine level analytics.
We developed our own RTEM system that provided real time energy management services to over 100 customers. Our network consisted of wireless kW sensors installed all over New York City that would feed data into our RTEM system. We provided demand response management, deep energy savings discovery and tenant sub-metering. The network had one fault however. Unfortunately the technology we purchased from Onset used an integrated GSM GS2 modem. After a few years GS2 went by the wayside and no longer supported. The cost of upgrading all of these meters was incredibly expensive and they were abandoned in place, making way for IoT devices.
Fast forward to 2016 with the introduction of IoT and Microsoft’s AZURE, Office365 and Dynamics platforms. We now have the capability to rapidly deploy our GreenConnect RTEM system and collect data at the equipment level from building systems. Our GreenConnect systems can quickly consume data from building management systems, standalone controls and our proprietary hardware.
In 2016 we landed a huge nationwide contract for a banking enterprise and re-branded our RTEM platform as GreenConnect(tm). For this project we consumed energy data, utility rebate info and project status reports to monitor energy conservation measures and incentives. We processed over 3000 retail banking sites and kept track of a massive mega LED lighting project.
Today we provide the GreenConnect energy management and tacking service to some of New York’s largest real estate holders.
The popularity of GreenConnect stems from the fact that it is not a dashboard. GreenConnect is a full service energy management, tracking and analytical tool to help lower your carbon footprint and reduce costs. GreenConnect also comes with experience and know how of LC Associates and their network of Engineering and CEM professionals.
GreenConnnect’s Tenant Sub-Metering module provides all of the basic landlord cost recovery tools and reporting. GreenConnect also goes one step further with a business analytics package.
GreenConnect is able to provide tenant facing reports in compliance with Local Law 88 right out of the box.
Why is this important?
Despite the clarity of Local Law 88, most of the feedback received from Landlords indicate that they believe this law has to do with billing of electricity for tenants that occupy at least 5,000 SF of space. On the contrary, Local Law 88 requires landlords to provide energy and environmental impact reports directly to ALL Tenants. For Tenant occupying less than 5,000 SF of space, Local Law 88 still requires some sort of reporting for aggregated spaces. This information will be reported to the DOB and it is my opinion that tenants will start getting letter grades at some point in the future.
Our GreenConnect system is a self-learning wireless solution. We have installed over 500 wireless kW sensors in a building in Times Square. GreenConnect rapidly learned which meters are on the network, assigns them a unique code and starts consuming data for reporting and analysis.
GreenConnect’s deployment ability is awesome! Our GreenConnect Engine pushes live analytics right into our Customers’ business processes.
Our GreenConnect portal is easily accessible via a single sign-on login that is shared with Microsoft Outlook. This delivery allows for easy cross-functional collaboration. Our Client’s accounting, engineering, leasing and security business groups easily collaborate and start engaging on energy efficiency and sustainability – out of the box. The result is deep energy savings, lower carbon footprint and tenant comfort.
The proprietary systems of the past will be long gone soon. GreenConnect leads the RTEM industry by offering open data connections to just about any RESTful API service. This means that if your business uses third party cloud services such as Trello, MailChimp, Office365, Instagram, Facebook, Youtube, Wunderlust to name a few…..then your business services can be integrated into GreenConnect. Now proprietary energy management systems will be a thing of the past.
Energy efficiency has been brought up out of the basement and into the conference room.
