OSIsoft and Energy Metrics have teamed up to provide a management tool that allows portfolio owners to connect their business objectives, initiatives and revenues to the energy, water and infrastructure usage of their facilities.
OSIsoft’s PI System can help optimize traditional manufacturing supply chains, minimize resource usage and accelerate product output. But the company says the building supply chain is more complex, as business objectives are disconnected from how the costs of energy, water and infrastructure affect CAPEX and OPEX budgets.
The partners say this is crucial for companies, because unlike the prior decades where power and infrastructure costs were low and IT equipment costs were high, today the reverse is true. IT equipment costs have substantially decreased and energy and infrastructure costs have increased, and will continue to skyrocket in the decades to come, according to the companies.
Energy Metrics president Paul DeRonde says infrastructure and energy is the most critical business cost driver. The company’s portfolio-wide intelligence platform can monitor, connect and optimize infrastructure and energy use, which DeRonde says will help business owners achieve unrealized savings.
The Energy Metrics open platform integrates with OSIsoft’s PI System, enabling real-time data infrastructure for data centers, campuses and portfolios of intelligent connected buildings. The platform allows for the convergence and utilization of portfolio and asset data throughout the building life cycle, which also enables the information silos to communicate and work together, the companies say. This provides facilities and asset managers with the ability to monitor and mitigate energy and water inefficiencies.
In addition, it allows users to visualize and predict costs of real estate and energy usage relative to business initiatives, and manage them using continuous feedback. The deployment of the platform has been completed, and is being planned for facilities ranging from hospitals, universities and sports arenas, to airports, shopping malls, commercial and government offices and hotels, according to OSIsoft and Energy Metrics.
US commercial buildings can collectively save up to 28 billion gallons of water annually by using a suit of tools produced by AT&T and Environmental Defense Fund (EDF), the organizations say.
For example, buildings with cooling towers typically use 28 percent of their daily water for cooling. AT&T and EDF say the toolkit can help these building reduce that water demand by 14 percent to 40 percent.
