How can energy management make your building more resilient? What do we mean by building resiliency? Building resiliency is the idea that your building can survive the environment, and sustainability is the idea that the environment can survive your building. It is quite a harmonious idea, based around the concepts of balance and being smart about your consumption and construction practices. There are a lot of facets to this concept, but I am going to address a few of the ways metering, and understanding data can help you achieve this ideal.
Redundant Electrical Systems
A fully fleshed out redundant Electrical System will have many components to it, such as Generators, batteries, solar power, and other forms of energy conservations/production that do not need to rely on the outside world. When implementing these things, how will you know what size batteries you need? What kinds of generators, and how many? How many solar panels would be necessary? All of these questions cannot be answered without first knowing your electrical energy needs. This is done through metering and gathering the data from the meters over time. When you have enough data, you can see trends in your consumption, and you can make very accurate and informed decisions about what exactly you need to do to get a Redundant Electrical System that will meet your potential needs.
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Weather Proofing your Building
Many times, a very effective way for someone to reduce their heating and cooling costs, is to improve the ability of their facility to maintain the temperature you wish it to be. This means new windows, to get rid of the potential transfer of energy (i.e. heat), from escaping the building, or entering the building in the warmer months. Knowing where you need to perform this type of upgrade or maintenance on your building can be very tricky at times. You may have a limited budget, or you may want to be as efficient as possible, only attacking the most problematic areas first. A well-designed submetering system is one of the best ways to know this information. You can know the temperature in each room, you can have sensors that monitor air flow, you can most definitely see the trends and the relationship of your consumption to the temperature and weather.
Saving Money with Energy Management
Of course, probably the most important of all of the things metering can do to help you make your building more resilient, is to save money through proper energy management. The more money you save, the less you spend, the more money you will have to do the improvement projects your buildings needs to reach the ideal of resilience. Being efficient in all facets of life is a great goal to strive for, but is paramount in achieving resilience, and having as little impact as possible on the environment. And like we always say, you can’t manage what you can’t measure.
