The current challenges facing the real estate industry are improving the energy efficiency of facility operations, eliminating fossil fuels, reaching high levels of decarbonisation, and significantly reducing actual energy costs.
How This Challenge is Addressed Today
The common target is attempted to be met through the optimisation of the operating modes of HVAC systems, switching from static temperature and air exchange processes to dynamic, on-demand ones. Other strategies include:
- Energy Recovery: Utilising energy recovery in climate and ventilation systems.
- Green Generation: Mass adoption of green generation methods such as photovoltaics, wind turbines, and heat pumps.
- Alternative Energy Storage and Transformation: Implementing alternative methods of energy storage and transformation.
Future Expectations for PropTech Solutions
Creation, analysis, and continuous optimisation of the assets’ Business Energy Model* (BEM) are crucial in a world of constantly changing technologies, prices, climatic conditions, and other external factors. Creating and working with the assets’ BEM requires a new technology suite that integrates individual technological components from the real estate industry and PropTech into a single product. This product combines EMS, BMS, BIM, Industrial IoT, Information Management, Risk Management, Big Data, Machine Learning, AI, BI, and VR.
So far, only a few companies in the PropTech world are working in this complex segment, offering a full package of technological capabilities to address this challenge. An existing example is a solution for turning industrial heat waste into an energy asset for a large enterprise in Germany. The goal of minimising energy consumption was defined by the company initiating the implementation of a corporate effort to achieve the environmental targets set by the European Green Deal.
Current Energy Management in the Industrial Sector
In the modern design process of industrial and commercial facilities with large technological loads (such as machinery, plant equipment, refrigerators, chillers, and others), it is complicated or nearly impossible to utilise the by-product of heat energy generated in any sensible way. Excess heat becomes a problem that needs to be addressed, and it is common to dispose excess heat into the atmosphere or the groundwaters. Ecologists have recorded that the overheating of groundwaters often leads to the active development of bacteria and algae and can cause drinking water supply contamination. And this is how the surplus industrial heat was disposed of by the aforementioned company in Germany.
Rethinking a Solution with PropTech
1. Data Collection: During the first six weeks of the project, the following data was collected on the HiPerWare platform developed by HiPer it!:
- Company data on electricity and fuel consumption (costs & volumes)
- Architecture of industrial facilities
- Functional schemes and topology of building technical systems
- Data from EMS and BMS of the enterprise on retrospective daily consumption of heat and electric energy for previous years
- Up-to-date real-time measurements taken from hundreds of sensors, including actual electricity consumption by individual circuits, patterns of air temperature at dozens of location points, and patterns of temperature and pressure of liquids in climate systems.
Based on the collected data, the “As Is” Business Energy Model was developed and provided to the company. BEM typically contains primary energy sources by type, all energy consumption sources, transformation losses, and calculated heat energy waste.
2. Analysis and Optimisation: In the next six weeks, the original BEM was analysed using the HiPerWare platform, which revealed anomalies and inefficiencies in the operation, such as:
- Simultaneous operation of heating systems and heat utilisation
- Incorrect operation of equipment
- Incorrect algorithms of operation of climate systems
At the same time, the BEM was optimised to create a “To Be” version. Feasibility studies were carried out on different retrofit options, the optimal solution was selected, and the required investment amount and payback period were calculated.
3. Implementation: The proposed modernisation solution of the energy system, based on the identified anomalies, made it possible to turn heat waste into useful energy for reuse, converting it into an energy asset instead of fossil fuels. The company achieved a three-fold reduction of energy costs in a short period without significant investments and with less than a three-year payback period, eliminating fossil fuels and CO2 emissions.
HiPerWare will remain on-site throughout the facility’s lifetime to continuously sustain HiPerformance operations and ensure efficient and optimised resource and energy consumption.
*Business Energy Model (BEM) – a detailed technical and economic model of energy generation, consumption, distribution, utilisation, and waste over a selected period, considering different energy types, sources, prices, tariffs, and locations.
Written with HiPer it!
