You’ve Just Recommissioned! Why Would You Need Ongoing Monitoring?
Drift happens. Ongoing monitoring ensures you maintain the benefits of RCx.
You just finished recommissioning your facility. Congratulations on the conclusion of this momentous effort! But RCx is but the beginning of your accuracy and efficiency journey.
The optimizations achieved by the recommissioning process are essential to maintaining and protecting your assets and tenant relationships, but you can't freeze your systems in time. After all, modifications and deviations can happen at any time.
And when change inevitably happens, you want to know about it ASAP. Otherwise, your investment in recommissioning lasted a sweet two minutes and is no longer relevant. Enter: RTEM (aka continuous or ongoing monitoring).
What Is RTEM/Continuous Monitoring?
Real-time energy monitoring refers to collecting meter data at set intervals (usually every 15 minutes) for ongoing analysis. The data is regularly reviewed and trended to pick up issues and irregularities in performance while they are small. But alerts are just one use of this treasure trove of information about the facility. Interval meter data takes the guesswork out of property management, providing conclusive data for justifying upgrades, informing budgets, and proactive planning for maintenance and asset replacement.
Other Benefits of Monitoring
Other benefits of monitoring include:
- Review and validation of daily performance
- Insight and alerts on anomalies in real time
- On-site staff learning opportunities and support
- Prioritization of improvements and energy conservation measures (ECMs) based on ROI
- Predictive operations/cost and energy forecasting
- Validation of both system performance and results of third-party energy services companies (e.g., HVAC retrofits, lighting upgrades)
- Identification and validation of energy savings
- Granular budget forecasting and comparison with actuals
- A data repository and continuity of knowledge of how the system has operated over time
- Documentation of drift and deficiencies
- Reduced utility production costs
Resources for Ongoing Monitoring
Here's what you need to maintain and sustain the efficiencies achieved during recommissioning:
- A non-proprietary remote submetering system capable of measuring individual systems as well as the entire plant
- Cloud-based data collection system
- Software designed to clean up common data problems, such as nulls, repeats, and zeroes
- Ability to export to a variety of financial and ESG reporting systems
- Engineering expertise to help with root cause analysis & troubleshooting, suggest pragmatic options, and provide clear cost comparisons for recommendations
- Software capable of modeling past performance and comparing it to current performance (against weather, time of use, etc.) on an hourly basis to capture drift and keep data from becoming subjective.*
*Our first version of this list omitted modeling software as a resource. Thanks to Ken Kolkebeck for bringing our attention to this missing piece!
Top 3 Recommendations for Implementing a Monitoring Solution
Like any operational project, there are good and less-good ways to implement ongoing monitoring. The following suggestions are honed from 45+ years of engineering and operational experience.
- Avoid proprietary technologies. These systems often lock owners into services they may not need and lock them out of their own data if they want to change vendors.
- Look for financial incentives or rebates from government or utility programs to support your monitoring systems and energy upgrades.
- Always control your operations at the plant, not from the cloud. Offsite control is subject to lags, which can make a mess of an otherwise beautiful setup. A partnership between onsite personnel and third-party expert analysis is the most efficient way to maximize resources.
Curious about commissioning's impact on building performance?
This article is (mostly) an excerpt of our contribution to Fitzemeyer & Tocci's recent guide on building optimization.
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About utiliVisor
Your tenant submetering and energy plant optimization services are an essential part of your operation. You deserve personalized energy insights from a team that knows buildings from the inside out, applies IoT technology and is energized by providing you with accurate data and energy optimization insights. When you need experience, expertise, and service, you need utiliVisor on your side, delivering consistent energy and cost-saving strategies to you. What more can our 40 years of experience and historical data do for you? Call utiliVisor at 212-260-4800 or visit utilivisor.com
