Agilewaves Energy Monitoring System Deployed at Baltimore Apartment Complex
Evergreen Partners Targets Innovative Energy Efficiency Measures Via Green Retrofit Project
Owned and operated by Evergreen Partners, LLC, the Johnston Square Apartment property is a mix of 217 studio, one-bedroom and two-bedroom units, serving elderly and handicapped tenants in the Johnston Square Neighborhood. Originally built in 1913 as a manufacturing facility in downtown Baltimore, the site was converted in 1980 to its current use as affordable housing, financed by the State of Maryland’s Community Development Administration.
Energy Monitoring Project Part of Evergreen Partners Green Vision
Brian Poulin, a Principal of Evergreen Partners, oversees rehabilitation of the firm’s properties as well as ongoing operations. “Good stewardship of our natural resources, energy efficiency and healthy living spaces are all possible with well designed properties”, said Brian Poulin. In its new buildings, Evergreen deploys Green building techniques, modeled on the US Green Building Council’s LEED standards.
At Johnston Square, the focus was on property rehabilitation, including significant green improvements such as water, electricity and HVAC savings, improved indoor air quality, additional recycling efforts, native landscaping, and improved resident education. As he neared completion of the Johnston Square property refurbishment, Brian knew that measuring the success of these improvements, and tuning building operations for energy efficiency was essential.
Evergreen’s goals were to lower energy costs, improve comfort for residents and increase staff productivity. “There’s a whole new generation of energy management tools now available, continued Poulin. “ I selected Agilewaves because their solution blends the latest in Internet technologies with the ability to quickly customize the system to our operation.”
“This is an innovative, extensive MDU project with over 1,000 measurement points in the network, said Peter Sharer, Agilewaves founder. “We’re able to measure costs as well as carbon estimates. Simply put, you can manage what you can measure. The Evergreen team now has the real-time measurements that they need to isolate operational problems, and, at the same time, they are building the performance metrics needed to identify trends in resource utilization.”
Alerts via the Internet Allow Staff To Manage Operations, Anytime, Anywhere
Automatic alerts are a key feature where managers can set thresholds and generate alerts when exceeded. Alerts can be sent via email, pager or directly to control systems. “The ability to get alerts via email is a huge win for our staff” said Poulin. “We quickly discovered that the flexibility of the Agilewaves system allows us to designate alerts to fit our real-world operations.
Comparison Charts Help Isolate Issues and Areas for Potential Savings
Facility managers can view details about resource usage in chart format for any item included in the property model. Details can be compared by floor, room, circuit or utility. Trends can be identified by using a series of charts customized to the property. Users can dive down to the branch circuit level to see what’s potentially at the root of the problem. Exports of data into Excel allow for additional analysis.
Getting Residents Involved for Additional Energy Savings
Brian Poulin envisions using competitions between floors or awards to top energy savers to get residents involved. “We have kiosks in the lobby where we plan to display information. I’m convinced we can get residents engaged in our conservation efforts. The Agilewaves system lets us customize charts of usage peaks, so that residents can connect the dots between their actions and energy bills.”
Agilewaves Turnkey Deployment Will Monitor Electricity, Gas and Water
As a turnkey IT system, Agilewaves can be rapidly deployed without the need for permits or construction delays. Throughout the entire Johnson Square property, it measures electricity, water, and gas utilization via sensors that clip-on to the existing wiring. The project involves measurements for electric in individual apartment units, main gas and water, and main electricity for common areas. Temperature and humidity readings are taken via a wireless system, allowing for a way to discern comfort levels for tenants.
Details Put Building Mangers in the Driver’s Seat
Current methods of monthly billing simply provide building owners, manager and residents with too little information, too late.
The Agilewaves dashboard provides actionable information via real-time metrics including summary data for the last day, cost and carbon footprint totals.
“We’ve never had access to operational data like this”, said Evergreen’s Poulin. “We can finally see accurate consumption data in real-time. With a central point of command-and-control for building performance, we no longer have to let opportunities to cut costs slip through our fingers.”
Agilewaves’ Peter Sharer concurs, “It’s a bit like leaving the grocery store without an itemized bill, and seeing a charge on your credit card a month later. Today, building managers can barely take advantage of time-of-day rates. Contrast that with the real-time data that we provide, and you can see a very different future where they will even be able to leverage smart meters as they come online.”
Turnkey System Easily Customized
Agilewaves worked with Evergreen’s team to identify their operational needs, then customized the sensor network design to ensure that system-generated metrics would support operational goals. The implementation involved the installation of a sensor network comprised of 1185 points that monitor:
- Main electric
- Main water
- Main gas
- Electricity use for each Apartment; and
- Temperature and humidity in each unit (via wireless sensors).
Measurements are taken once a minute and stored in a online repository to provide the data for operational trend analysis.
Brian Poulin concludes, “Now that we have our building performance foundation in place, there’s tremendous potential to identify both short-term energy efficiency projects and future commissioning projects. We look forward to developing best practices that will yield a greener future for Evergreen and the Johnston Square residents.”
About Agilewaves, Inc (www.agilewaves.com)
Agilewaves, Inc is an energy management system firm based in Menlo Park, CA. The firm’s Building Optimization System (BOS) is a turnkey monitoring and resource management system that provides facility managers and building owners with real-time, actionable information to effectively optimize building performance. The BOS software and services solution provides the rigorous metrics needed to increase energy efficiency, reduce energy costs and meet the persistent monitoring requirements for retro-commissioning, LEED and Net-Zero Energy Building (NZEB) projects.
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