Energy Dashboard: Why You Have to See It Before You Can Control It

Apartment buildings that are heated and cooled by centralized systems are prime candidates for technology that can monitor and adjust all the controls needed to power the systems. In this episode, Habitat’s Emily Myers talks with  Robert Post, senior sales engineer at Parity, to learn how a Harlem co-op embraced this technology to lower their energy costs by monitoring and tweaking motor speeds, temperature settings and pressure set points. 

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Transcript

Emily Myers: Welcome to Problem Solved, a conversation about challenges facing New York co-op and condo board directors. I'm Emily Myers with Habitat Magazine and I'm joined by Robert Post, Senior Sales Engineer at Parity, a company that uses data and remote controls to optimize HVAC systems. 

Reducing energy and emissions is a priority for co-ops and condos in light of Local Law in 97. As a result, it's becoming increasingly important to understand how much power is being used to operate equipment like fans or motors in a building. Rob, Parity has worked with a co-op in Harlem to generate savings from this data.

What was the specific problem you needed to solve for the building? 

Robert Post: The problem that the property manager came to me originally with was — he described it like driving a car with no dashboard. They've got all this equipment, but they can't see how it's running, how long it's running, what the set points are. That was the first problem that we solved for them was giving them a dashboard where you're able to see all their pumps, their cooling towers, their fan motors, all on a centralized system on their phone and on the computer so that the resident manager has access to that 24 7. And then in addition, what we generate that the boards would be more interested in was guaranteed savings for the building. So by being able to now put everything in a centralized location, we actually take a step further and we'll remotely control all those HVAC components in real time to make sure that supply always meets demand and we eliminate waste from the system. We're not over supplying the system with either heating or cooling. 

Emily Myers: Can you just clarify why it's important to know what the motor speeds, temperature settings, and pressure set points are in a building?

Robert Post: Yeah, sure. An easy example to understand would be let's say a fan coil or a heat pump loop, which is where the building circulates hot water or chilled water through the system to the units in the building. What we're doing is we would wanna see what the temperature of that water leaving the system and going the units. And when it comes back, if there's not what we call delta T, a large change in temperature, you know that those units aren't calling for heating or cooling, whatever the season is. So it allows us to now slow down the motor speed because there's not a huge demand for it. And also maybe not chill or heat up that water as much as we were before, until we start to see the change in temperature increase, the delta T, and then now we know people are calling for it, we can ramp things up. This way you're not over supplying the loop when you know people aren't needing heating or cooling. 

Emily Myers: And is that the type of heating and cooling system that was in place at the building in Harlem?

A fan cooler with a heat pump loop? 

Robert Post: Yeah. The way it was set up is this one was specifically a heat pump, a hot water source heat pump building. They have a cooling tower and they're circulating water to the units. 

Emily Myers: And you mentioned a dashboard, so there's obviously a place where all this information is accessible for building staff, but is there also physical equipment that's installed?

Robert Post: That's a great question. There is equipment. So our model at Parity is we wanna meet the building where it's at. So we're not in the business of doing huge retrofits where we're ripping out chillers and cooling towers and replacing all your exhaust equipment. We wanna get the most outta your existing system, the most out of what you've already invested in.

So we would add controls and sensors if needed that are not proprietary to pump motors to cooling tower fans to tie into the boilers, a heat timer or boiler control system. And then that allows us to now see what the set points are, see what the motor speeds are, but also stream data to our cloud. And then what we do is we use algorithms, remotely control and make adjustments up to every five minutes to all the equipment. That's how we're gonna guarantee savings. And it does take some hardware. Now, if a building has a BMS already, we like to think of ourselves as a BMS light. We're still a good fit. We can tie into their existing system and be an overlay on top where instead of having the resident manager have to make all those adjustments throughout the day

and when they're sleeping or away, they're not making those adjustments. We can take over control, they can still make adjustments as needed, but now it's like putting it on autopilot. 

Emily Myers: You've used the term BMS. Can you just explain what BMS is? 

Robert Post: Sure. BMS is a building management system, or you might hear building automation system. Typical BMS is like a single pane of glass where you have a computer, you have all the data on that computer, somebody monitor it and make adjustments throughout the day. There's some simple logic, but in most cases, that's how it is. We take it a step further, like I said, where we'll take over the autopilot, if you will, and we will make those adjustments up to every five minutes based off of demand, weather, occupancy level, and a larger data set than typical BMS systems just in general. 

Emily Myers: And you've said that the equipment is not proprietary. Who owns the equipment then? 

Robert Post: The building owns the equipment, and it is typical off the shelf equipment like Honeywell or ABB type of VFDs, which are variable frequency drives that allow the motors to change speeds, off the shelf sensors in the hallways on pipes to get readings.

The building owns it and it's stuff that anyone can use but typically isn't utilized in the way that we are where we're actually remotely controlling it. It's usually a one or two set point. And that's it. 

Emily Myers: And were there any specific challenges in installing the equipment in Harlem? 

Robert Post: It really wasn't. It's pretty, pretty easy install. It only takes a couple weeks. But there is huge incentives that you can get.

So I would say the biggest challenge is just dealing with Con Edison to do the inspection and pre-inspection, not because they're hard to deal with, just because it takes a long time. And we can't get started till till we do get a letter because, we could typically get 30 to sometimes 50% of the project covered by ConEd.

And the challenge is proving it to them and having them come out and justify what we're doing. 

Emily Myers: So how much did it cost then to install the equipment at the co-op in Harlem? 

Robert Post: I can give you rough estimates: typically anywhere from, 50,000 to 250,000 depending on the building and where they're at.

But again, a lot of that cost can be covered by ConEd. Another unique thing that we do is we guarantee the incentives. So if we tell you we can get you $50,000 at the end of the install and Con Edison does not, we will actually be the ones left holding the bag. We're not gonna come back to the building asking for more money.

So we not only guarantee the savings, but we guarantee the incentives. But it's a large range and it's very custom to the building. What we're doing isn't a one size fits all. It's really good fits for buildings that have centralized systems. So depending on the size of the building and what they already have, if they already have, let's say, variable frequency drives, we'll reuse them.

We're not gonna reinstall stuff that's already there. We wanna get the most outta your existing systems. 

Emily Myers: And did the co-op in Harlem get ConEd incentives then to pay for the work? 

Robert Post: We did this, maybe, I think it was about three years ago. At the time we were getting anywhere from 50 to 70% of the installs cost covered by the incentives.

But now, as Con Edhas now reduced their incentives. And closer or further along they seem to chisel away at what they're giving away. They wanted, people to be more early adapters. 

Emily Myers: And so you have an ongoing relationship with this building. Your contract term is what, five years or so?

Robert Post: Yeah. Our contracts are typically five years. 

Emily Myers: And so you always have an ongoing relationship with the building, or do you sometimes just provide the equipment? 

Robert Post: It's really a partnership with building staff and our team. So not only are we controlling things remotely, but we're also boots on the ground support.

So if there's ever an issue in the building with any of the equipment that we're monitoring or controlling and we can't see to figure out what's going on remotely, we'll send a guy there, one of our engineers, work with the building staff. And there is a commissioning period in the beginning where we're programming it, where every building's unique.

So we're really lean on resident managers and their expertise on their buildings to get those right set points adjusted so that they aren't getting new annoyance calls and we're really increasing the comfort of the building. It is a true partnership. We're really dialed in.

We help them diagnose things that they don't even know. We send alerts and alarms to the building staff in case of if we see something abnormal. And if it's something we see serious, we'll pick up the phone, we'll call, we send a guy out. 

Emily Myers: Okay. So The benefit then obviously to the building is that you're lowering energy use, you're making savings.

And I suppose in a situation where there's a gas boiler, you are able to take some of the burden off that boiler by tweaking its operation and that might extend its life. 

Robert Post: That's right. Not for all the equipment boilers or, pumps is easier to understand. So pump motors, if there's no controls on it, and it's just running at 100%, you know it's only got a

obviously that's less wear and tear on the machine. So you do get a little bit more longevity. And then when it's time to replace that motor or that boiler or that chiller, sometimes buildings have changed a lot since they've been originally installed. So we can help the engineering firm that's taking on that project with real time data to make sure that equipment that they're installing is the right fit. It's not oversized or undersized because , Buildings change and there's conversions and things. It's good to, use real data as opposed to just what was installed maybe 30, 40, 50 years ago. 

Emily Myers: What can other boards learn from the equipment that was installed in Harlem? You said it was a centralized heating and cooling system and that is where your equipment works best. What can other boards learn?

Robert Post: Yeah, so the other buildings that we can help with would be like fan coil. So if they have a two pipe or four pipe fan coil units, they have hot water source or steam PTAC units in the building. Those are still good bits. We could tie into the heating systems. Usually there's some ventilation systems we can tie into. And then Heat pump, of course. Hot water source heat pump, like the example we were speaking to before. Those are really the three types of buildings that I'm going after. If it's a building that just has a window unit and steams radiators, they're not gonna be a good fit. There's other solutions out there that are more catered to them, but we're looking for, larger buildings that have central systems to monitor and control. Does that answer your question? 

Emily Myers: Yeah, absolutely. Okay, Rob, thanks very much. I think we've covered everything. That's Robert Post, senior sales engineer at Parity.