The worldwide real estate service firm, CBRE, works with businesses in the life sciences, such as biopharma companies. It advises on all things related to facilities management. A critical aspect of its offerings is to help those enterprises manage and monitor their energy use. To this end, it needs to turn off equipment and electrical devices that are not being used, which runs up the bills.
It falls under the adage of ‘what gets measured gets managed.’ But many commercial and industrial enterprises have not thought about how much energy their printers and freezers are consuming. Now comes the technology to allow for such monitoring — an investment that can reduce overall capital expenses and maintenance costs.
“The most immediate benefit is in the application of the data on procurement and maintenance decisions in the first three months,” says Paul Janssenswillen, ILS Scientific Head of Projects at CBRE Global Workplace Solutions, in a written interview with Environmental Leader. “Most customers get a return on investment in less than a year. In addition to the space savings that accrue, they can realize service and maintenance savings of 25 percent or greater.”
Most facilities are trying to reduce carbon levels. One biopharma company has built chemistry laboratories while also reducing typical power consumption and water consumption by 63%, says Janssenswillen. The key: collecting real-time data when the lab is occupied, and the equipment is being used.
According to San Francisco-based WattIQ, most facilities are empty 60% of the time. That includes nights and weekends, and it was even more during the COVID restrictions. The operating equipment — things like freezers and copiers — can be running during this time. This can cost businesses, collectively, billions a year. Managing the assets can save money: Consider that a $60,000 piece of equipment does not just have energy costs attached to it. It also has maintenance, installation, and disposal costs that substantially increase the price of ownership. Being cost-conscious is essential.
“Every device has a unique signature,” says Priya Vijayakumar, chief executive of WattIQ, in an interview with Environment+Energy Leader. “By applying machine learning, we can tell you when it was used. We are collecting the electrical data from thousands of devices. We do not need an electrician to go on-site and measure it. The technology measures the energy being consumed at the equipment level. It is then wirelessly transmitted to a gateway, which sends the data to the cloud.”
The Cloud makes things Clearer
That data has existed in silos. But it is now accessible to a broader range of people. The facilities managers, who look for anomalies in energy consumption, will use the data to make decisions. Furthermore, lab operations may view this information and determine that departments can share an asset. And scientists may review the facts to evaluate the integrity of the science. A freezer, for example, may need to run at certain temperatures to ensure valid results.
Vijayakumar says WattIQ focuses on research laboratories, food industries, and healthcare. Community colleges are also looking to see where they can save energy on such things as projectors, printers, and water coolers. Meanwhile, the laboratories are monitoring their freezers. They want to know the temperatures at which they operate or if they might be on the brink of failing — critical if they are required to store COVID 19 vaccines.
In all cases, the goal is to be proactive, not reactive. The customers are buying an outcome. They are results-oriented. It’s called the platform-as-a-service model. It’s about knowing which equipment is sitting idle and tracking the total cost of ownership.
“Equipment can be plugged in but not used,” says Vijayakumar. “We are lowering capital expenses on manufacturing equipment by 20% to 30%. Service contracts are being cut by 20%. We are creating operational efficiency in the business. We provide insight from data collection — data that has not been easily accessible.”
The goal is to find out what equipment and electrical devices use the most energy and curtail that consumption during off-peak hours. That saves money. But it also helps companies reach their environmental goals. The technologies to realize this outcome have commercial viability — ones that collect essential data and store that information in a central repository. And that knowledge is power.