Johnson Controls has partnered with Microsoft Beijing Campus in order to retrofit building operations, achieving a 27.9% energy savings and ensuring key equipment uptime of 98% by using an artificial intelligence-powered platform. As a result, the campus has been granted an energy saving endorsement and financial subsidy by the Beijing Municipal Government and the Haidian District Government. The work that has been done includes upgraded existing chiller systems, the companies say.
AI works to improve energy efficiency because it “monitors, collects information, controls, evaluates and manages energy consumption in buildings and factories. It controls energy usage and reduces it during peak hours, identifies and signals problems, and detects equipment failures before they occur,” according to AI solutions provider Maximpact.
The Microsoft real estate and facilities team migrated the applications and data storage of different systems – power supply, building controls, energy management and smart management to Azure platform, creating a central, integrated "digital brain" for the campus. This was coupled with Johnson Controls' AI-enhanced OpenBlue Enterprise Manager (OBEM), resulting in a reduction in the energy consumption of daily operations.
Johnson Controls OpenBlue is an AI-enabled suite of connected solutions and services that integrates with customers’ operational technology. The system collects and primes data from buildings and applies machine learning at the edge and in the cloud — comparing the data against optimized AI performance models.
Microsoft Beijing Campus also uses Johnson Controls Metasys Building Automation System (BAS). By monitoring the cooling and heating equipment, Metasys system feeds large amounts of data into OBEM for analysis. During the retrofit, Metasys was upgraded and integrated with legacy BAS.
As well as providing the technology, Johnson Controls service team for controls systems are now able to use the additional insights being generated to achieve more than 98% uptime of key equipment and increase the level of operational automation.
Last year, Johnson Controls surveyed more than 1,000 firms in North America. Findings revealed that over 90% of companies have significant 2030-onward goals to reduce carbon emissions and energy consumption – driven by economic, environmental and social impact considerations. Data centers have the most ambitious goals followed by lodging and education. The survey results also indicated firms run into challenges with measuring emissions, the biggest being how to aggregate data from multiple sources. Digital solutions can help to solve this and other measurement challenges, the company says.