Proving the Business Case for Building Analytics

As building energy and system-level monitoring becomes more common, facilities teams are faced with an overwhelming amount of data. These data do not typically lead to insights or corrective actions unless they are stored, organized, analyzed, and prioritized in automated ways. With analytic software applied to everyday building operations, owners are using data to their advantage and realizing cost savings through improved energy management.

The 2016–2020 Smart Energy Analytics Campaign was a public–private-sector partnership program focused on supporting commercially available Energy Management and Information Systems (EMIS) and monitoring-based commissioning (MBCx) practices for commercial buildings.

This session will outline how building operators in the Campaign were encouraged to share information on their energy usage and cost savings and how that data was analyzed into a report from Lawrence Berkeley National Lab. After four years in operation, the Campaign included 104 commercial organizations, totaling 567 million square feet of gross floor area and more than 6,500 buildings, making this the most comprehensive dataset available on analytics installation and use.

Learning Objectives

Understand the cost and energy savings related to Energy Management and Information Systems.
Recognize the differences and similarities of the tools and technologies in the EMIS family.
Understand the barriers and enablers to implementation of EMIS in real-world applications.
Learn about the current research landscape on the future direction of EMIS.