CHICAGO—Most companies have understood for years what simple tasks they can perform on their own to save energy and cut costs. And with so many users already turning down their air conditioners or installing insulation, among other actions, property managers need extra tools and technology to squeeze energy use down further.
“You don't walk into a building and see a lot of low-hanging fruit,” Leo O'Loughlin, a California-based senior vice president for Jones Lang LaSalle, told attendees during a Monday session at the BUILDINGChicago and Greening the Heartland Conference in Chicago. O'Loughlin helps clients expand energy, sustainability and smart building services and was unveiling JLL's cloud-based system, called IntelliCommand, which provides 24-hour, seven days per week real-time facility monitoring and control. As reported in GlobeSt.com yesterday, Proctor & Gamble wired 12 of their buildings, about 20% of their corporate portfolio, into the system and achieved savings of 10%, or 4,400,000 kilowatt hours, and believes they can push that to 20%.
The introduction of cloud computing technology was the key, O'Loughlin said, since it gives facilities managers in the JLL command center the ability to monitor energy use “all the way down to the individual device. That really couldn't be done effectively just a few years ago.”
“There are bigger opportunities there than even we realized,” he added. Although the P&G portfolio was about 3.2-million-square-feet, JLL was managing spaces within buildings with as little as 1,000-square-feet and learning lessons on cutting energy use that apply even to small retailers such as a fast food restaurant.
“You can get very granular; you can go anywhere,” O'Loughlin said. And “when you deploy something like this you can drive out inefficiencies.” For example, a fast food restaurant could do more than monitor HVAC systems. They could also monitor oven temperatures to ensure they capture all possible energy savings, and track the length of time devices like that get used, giving managers an additional tool to ensure employees use them properly. And in an office environment, chairs can be fitted with simple monitors that would allow JLL to track and analyze how much employees use certain offices. A client could then ask, “'do we need that much space?'”
“It's quite literally a new way of managing infrastructure,” O'Loughlin said. JLL managers in the command center, for example, can in some cases remotely run tests on hundreds of devices not currently in use and target ones for replacement. Not only can this save energy, it can also cut down on time lost to equipment breakdowns and a reliance on merely reactive work orders. Such ability to anticipate means “the days of rearview analytics are coming to an end.”
A conference attendee asked O'Loughlin if the system can work in smaller, older buildings. “It's very scalable,” he replied, and “it certainly doesn't have to be a solution for class A space.” Energy-using devices, however, will need to be intelligent pieces of equipment with the ability to communicate data. But as older systems get replaced, O'Loughlin believes most companies will choose to include the upgrades that will make long-term energy savings possible. “I think it's going to get more prevalent.” If a company decides to spend $100,000 on a new HVAC system, for example, will they spend $115,000? “I think the answer in many cases is going to be 'yes.'”
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Brian J. Rogal
Brian J. Rogal is a Chicago-based freelance writer with years of experience as an investigative reporter and editor, most notably at The Chicago Reporter, where he concentrated on housing issues. He also has written extensively on alternative energy and the payments card industry for national trade publications.
