You have to wade through some pretty breathless hype in this press release about Optimum Energy to get to the real facts, but this Seattle firm is off to a good start bringing the IoT to building HVAC management.
They call their service “True Optimization,” and say their patented Real-Time Dynamic Commissioning™ (RTDC) system “continuously learns and adapts in real time, and manages a facility’s heating and cooling requirements to produce the lowest possible energy draw.” It offers predictive diagnostics optimizing an HVAC system’s energy efficiency.
The company stresses use of Big Data in its methodology: they’ve accumulate more than 200 years of cumulative operating data, growing at a rate of 8 incremental years of data per month: “the data enables accurate benchmarking of equipment on system and component performance. Optimum Energy uses this information to provide decision support services, such as data-driven equipment selection and predictive diagnostics.”
The results are pretty impressive for the 66 million sq. ft. of commercial space it serves:
- Reduced energy consumption by 125 million kW-hours
- Reduced CO2 emissions by over 190 million lbs.
Matthew Frey, the company’s president and CEO concludes that“Optimum Energy is actively leading the creation of the industrial Internet by bringing cloud connectivity, data analytics and domain expertise to our enterprise customers who want to optimize their HVAC systems.”
I’m convinced that the IoT is our best way forward in dealing with energy and environmental issues without reducing economic growth.
