Why CRE Owners Should Pay Attention to their HVAC Systems

Paying close attention to your HVAC system can have a big payoff. Commercial real estate owners tracking HVAC consumption can better plan capital expenditures and maintenance budgets. Motili recently launched a carbon calculator that allows owners to look at their HVAC data at a glance, and the benefits of this data are significant.

“With the combination of the data available in MACI from the asset tag process and the calculator tool, Motili customers have clear visibility into the condition of their HVAC assets—something most of our customers have never had before.

One major advantage of having access to this information is it allows customers to accurately plan capital expenditure and maintenance budgets whereas—in the past—this was often somewhat of a guessing game,” Maria Agazio, sustainability and energy efficiency lead of the inside sales team at Motili, tells GlobeSt.com. “Accurately planning budgets means less potential for a budget surplus, or worse, an unexpected deficit when units fail during the hot summer or cold winter seasons.”

In multifamily, owners significantly benefit from tracking HVAC usage. Multifamily customers benefit from anticipating equipment breakdowns before they occur and replacing them ahead of the busy season,” says Agazio. “A robust preventative maintenance program produces less downtime for residents and boosts resident satisfaction by as much as 30%.”

In addition to more efficient operations, monitoring HVAC systems can also help owners achieve sustainability goals. “The energy reduction produces both real savings, especially when a customer optimizes thousands of HVAC units, and produces a noticeable impact on a company’s sustainability efforts, which many of our customers are embracing today,” says Agazio.

Agazio uses the example of a property in South Carolina with HVAC systems that had not been replaced since construction in 1996. “They are all 10 SEER units, and if they replace the distressed assets with 16 SEER units they will see a $516 energy savings per unit, per year, along with an overall 31% decrease in energy used,” says Agazio. “This reduction also translates into over 300,000 Kilograms of Carbon Emissions prevented from entering the atmosphere.”

Owners are recognizing the benefits. “As more and more property owners and operators embrace not only technology but sustainability across their properties, tools like MACI and the Motili Carbon Calculator become very real, relevant, and necessary tools in a company’s technology arsenal,” says Agazio. “With the tool being officially being released for only several weeks, we have received an overwhelming amount of praise and support from existing and future customers alike.”