Office Building Case Study

Office Buildings and Energy Intelligence

OVERVIEW

What is Energy Intelligence? How does it work?

Energy Intelligence is the name of the process which allows sending measured electrical data to the cloud with inavitas energy management software. Then, all stored data are processed with energy intelligence. This presents information to the clients through a user-friendly software platform, so inavitas advanced energy intelligence platform enables energy saving to its users by monitoring the energy flow.

Hence, businesses have many benefits of monitoring and managing their energy flow by using inavitas platform like

• Manage their consumption, production and control their loads remotely to reduce their operational costs.
• Manage their demand/ reactive rates to avoid the cost of excess demand.
• Improve efficiency in the system by detecting multifunctional equipment in advance.

APPROACH

A four-storey office building in Ankara has been digitalized with the inavitas energy intelligence platform to monitor and manage its energy effectively. Within the scope of the project, the main entrance of the company, loads, and all sub-units of the office floors, in which the electricity consumption is remarkably high, were monitored from a single platform.

In addition, inductive and capacitive rates were monitored with the measurements taken from the main entrance of the office building, and instant mobile notifications and e-mails with the defined alarms are enabled to be able to take action in time. Thus, the savings potential was found.

CONCLUSION

The total monthly consumption of the office building is 10,000.00 kWh. 50% of their consumption belongs to air conditioner outdoor units. Following them, the second-highest consumption is in the basement floor where the dining hall, kitchen, and the office floors are located.

1) The consumption of sockets is reduced by 25%

The percentage on-and-off consumption, consumption trend is as expected in floors, while the socket consumption is quite high outside of the working hours as it is seen in Graph 1.

The sockets were open outside of working hours which were notified with the defined alarms, and so the increase in awareness was achieved, the consumption of sockets is reduced by 25% outside working hours.

2) The efficiency of air conditioning units is increased by 50%.

In the Ankara Etimesgut region, the air temperature was measured as 13 °C on two different days, but two different air conditioning consumptions 168.00 kWh and 260.00 kWh were observed. The difference in daily consumptions which is 90.00 kWh, caused an additional cost of approximately $ 8.96.

The automatic control of such a high cost consumed loads with inavitas sensors has increased the efficiency of air conditioning units by 50%.

3) 10% savings is achieved by detecting abnormal load

Besides this, another abnormal load detected in the office building is that the company employees start working at 09:00 am, while the kitchen starts working at 05:00 am. The whole air conditioning system start working around 9:00 am, with an hourly average of 10 kWh, monthly 800 kWh, and approximately $ 76,87 causes additional cost due to a sudden increase in demand. 10% savings is achieved by gradually turning on the air conditioners in the mornings.

4) $ 1.381,32 is saved annually

As a result, $ 1381,32 is saved annually by preventing the consumption out of working hours and ensuring the air conditioning systems are managed and controlled.