Energy Management App Saves Businesses Money

Office climate control can be crucial to creating a comfortable and productive environment for workers. It can also assist building managers in adjusting heating and cooling systems for optimum efficiency, while helping keep energy costs to a minimum.

Building Robotics takes the idea one step further by allowing employees to request temperature adjustments using their phone or computer. Offices are usually divided into zones for heating and cooling so each zone can be independently controlled, whether it is a self-contained room or a zone of cubicles within an open office space.

The individual requests from employees go to a computer which adjusts the heating and air conditioning. However, to avoid co-worker disputes the Building Robotics app lets everyone see their colleague's request and will hopefully agree. The system response is for an intense blast of slightly warmer or cooler air to be delivered to that zone for about ten minutes. What's really clever psychologically is that workers can actually hear the air blast, assuring them that their request is being dealt with.

Building Robotics CEO Andrew Krioukov and co-founder Stephen Dawson-Haggerty developed the technology app while studying at Berkeley University of California, one of the most prestigious universities in the world. To date its faculty and researchers have been awarded 72 Nobel Prizes, 20 Academy Awards and 11 Pulitzer Prizes. Perhaps the Building Robotics app will add to the college's prestige.

Recent pilot projects run by the Building Robotics startup company in the San Francisco area were clearly successful. The company found that although the app was designed primarily to create personalised comfort zones in commercial buildings, it actually saved energy, making it an eco-friendly way for businesses to save money. An additional benefit was that as the computer collected data about each worker's preference for temperature, it also helped reduce wasteful energy where it was not required.

The app technology is now being evaluated by the General Services Administration which manages around 300 million square feet of office buildings for government employees. A report on the scheme will be given later in the year, when the federal agency will decide whether to use the technology in all its buildings.

Most similar energy management software systems collect and analyse energy use in a building or office and then use the historic figures to adjust the heating and cooling systems using weather data and other information. The more sophisticated energy software programs can even cut back on energy use when utility companies charge a premium for energy use, such as on a hot summer's day when air-conditioning racks up high demand.

This record collecting also helps businesses compare the energy use of their company and building with other similar buildings. By studying how much electricity certain equipment uses, businesses can also predict, adjust and control their use accordingly.

Bringing the comfort levels of the office down to individual employee level is a new idea which Building Robotics is pioneering. As the purpose of a heating and cooling system is to provide a comfortable working environment, it makes sense that individuals can tweak the systems to allow for a particularly hot day or the running of a heat-generating piece of equipment.

Since its initial pilot schemes Building Robotics has raised $1.14 million in seed capital, allowing it to hire specialists in building management and user experience to roll out this new energy managing app.

Photos: © BO BARC PICS, © THOMAS BRIGHT BILL