Energy efficiency is a major concern for many cities and buildings are a great place to start. About 40% of all the energy consumed is used to power buildings.
And cutting your energy use is easier than you might think.
Jessica Granderson, mechanical staff scientist/engineer with the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, says about 15% of the energy buildings use is simply wasted. But here’s the good news:
“That can be eliminated not through expensive retrofits, but rather through no and low cost solutions so that the buildings can work as intended,” she said.
The Department of Energy launched the Smart Energy Analytics Campaign Awards to highlight enterprising projects that cut energy use. Here are the first winners and their stories. – Jesse Berst
MGM Resorts International was honored for Largest Portfolio Using Analytics. Among other things, it implemented fault detection across its entire building portfolio.
University of California Davis was honored for Innovation in the Use of Analytics. It cut energy costs to the tune of $175,000 by optimizing the tuning of two of its buildings. It needed no major capital investments to realize those savings.
Both attended Smart Cities Week Silicon Valley to receive their awards.
The other honorees recognized were:
- Best Practices in the Use of Analytics: Sprint in partnership with CBRE
- Energy Performance in a Single Site: Salt Lake City
- Energy Performance in a Portfolio: Emory University
In this first year of the campaign, the participants have received a wide range of technical assistance from Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory: peer group cohorts on EMIS technical subjects, resources to help identify the top energy saving opportunities as well as one-on-one consultation with LBNL staff on energy data analysis questions.
