Using Building Intelligence for HVAC: Benefits and Examples
Friday, 10th June 2022
Heating, ventilation, and air conditioning systems—or HVAC—typically use about 40% of a building’s total energy consumption. Yet studies show that up to a third of that amount can go to waste. Without an intelligent system to regulate your HVAC—to automate your indoor climate and make it more efficient—you could be wasting cash and falling short of your net zero goals.
But what would building intelligence for HVAC look like? Infogrid’s building intelligence system is leading the way.
At Infogrid, we use the smallest IoT sensors to help organisations optimise their use of resources and improve their business proccesses. That means securing energy efficiencies, improving the working environment for staff, and cutting costs associated with waste, maintenance, and more.
In this article, we show you how we can make your building smarter. But first, let’s talk about why your HVAC system needs building intelligence.
Why your HVAC needs to get smart
To meet their ESG goals, to drive efficiencies, and to boost the health of their staff, businesses are increasingly turning to smart building systems. To ensure the best results, HVAC needs to be at the heart of these changes.
Here’s why it’s so important that organisations, landlords, and facilities managers (FMs) make their HVAC systems more intelligent:
In most buildings—commercial buildings and residential—HVAC is responsible for the largest proportion of energy consumption. That means that if there’s one place where energy savings can make an impact, it’s HVAC.
HVAC technologies are crucial for employee comfort. Getting it right matters. When humidity, air quality, or temperature is wrong, productivity plummets. According to one study, 21.6 °C is the optimal temperature for worker performance. But research for Infogrid’s 2022: Hybrid Workplace: Return to Work report found that employee mental health can really suffer if you get it wrong.
Typically, HVAC systems are really inefficient. With as much as a third of energy being wasted due to leaks and coverage problems, HVAC is known to produce massive amounts of waste, which has a serious cost for you, your tenants, and the planet.
Conventional HVAC struggles to respond to continually changing conditions. HVAC systems need to produce an optimal climate while things like temperature, occupancy levels and light conditions are in flux. Usually, traditional systems cannot respond quickly enough and so aren’t up to the task.
Smart building technology can reduce your energy use by up to 30 percent. Studies have found that using building intelligence to optimise HVAC, lighting, and window shading can generate energy savings of 30% to 50%.
With the substantial gain in efficiency that building intelligence can provide, transforming your HVAC into a smart system is a no-brainer. Let’s find out how.
How does building intelligence for HVAC work?
Building intelligence uses smart, integrated technology systems to drive efficiencies in building processes. Thanks to a combination of the Internet of Things (IoT) and artificial intelligence, landlords, FMs, and organisations can effortlessly track data on the health of their buildings.
At Infogrid, our building intelligence system works in three steps, linking smart IoT sensors to a central dashboard:
IoT sensors. Our smart system starts with the world’s smallest IoT sensors. These can be connected to your HVAC system, piping, doors, or cold storage units where they can track data on system performance.
Artificial intelligence. Infogrid’s proprietary AI system can transform raw data from our sensors into actionable insights that can save you money, optimise efficiency, and reduce your business’s impact on the environment.
Data visualisation. Data from your HVAC system across your portfolio is presented on a central data hub, so you can keep track of your building health in real time all in one place. This way, it’s easy to achieve the efficiencies you and the planet need.
How can smart systems be used for HVAC?
Our smart solutions can help businesses meet their ESG targets, save on costs and achieve net zero. But the benefits of an intelligent HVAC system go much further.
Here’s just some of the things Infogrid’s smart system can do for your building:
Ensure optimal temperature. In research for our Hybrid Workplace: Return to work report, employees cited poorly optimised office temperatures as a main reason for their reluctance to return to the office after the pandemic. Smart HVAC systems ensure that temperatures stay consistently stable and comfortable, despite changing weather, occupancy, and light conditions.
Enable preventative maintenance. Typically, FMs wait for HVAC systems to break down before repairing them. But this can lead to unplanned downtime, disruption, and higher costs in the long run. Instead, smart technologies enable preventative maintenance, which enables you to intervene before it’s too late.
Monitor air quality. With smart HVAC, you can track air quality across your buildings to ensure that every area meets ventilation requirements. From the Netherlands to the UK, mandatory ventilation regulations are on the rise. Our IoT sensors can help: they actively identify areas that don’t meet the right standards, so you can tackle the problem head on.
Overlay HVAC information with occupancy data to drive greater efficiencies. As any FM knows, HVAC systems can waste even more energy by conditioning unoccupied rooms and spaces. However, with integrated building systems that connect HVAC data with live occupancy tracking, you can ensure that you are only powering the areas that are really needed.
At Infogrid, we have numerous smart systems we can help you with, not just HVAC. Check out the full range of use cases that we offer.
The impact of Infogrid’s IoT systems
We’ve said a lot about what Infogrid can help you achieve. But don’t just take our word for it. Here are some of the results that we’ve helped our clients secure:
With our smart building system, one client saved $1.6 million a year on their HVAC system alone. That adds up to savings of about 800 tonnes of carbon annually.
With improved humidity control, thanks to our smart system, one analytics company reduced viral risk in their workplace by 80%.
With our energy monitoring technology, we enabled one European bank to reduce their spending on energy consumption by $40,000.
We help the Royal Opera House, London, save 1 million kilos of CO₂ per year with our leak detection and humidity monitoring system.
While that’s just on HVAC, we’ve also helped our clients achieve the following:
An 81% reduction in labour hours on compliance.
$1 million savings every year on water bills through effective pipe monitoring.
A 69% saving on maintenance and legal fees through legionella detection.
At Infogrid, we can help you too. Book a demo to find out how.
