Case Studies
Putting innovative ideas into action.
Thursday, August 27th, 2009
Government of British Columbia
The Government of British Columbia was faced with the challenge of accurately predicting the return on investment for energy conserving infrastructure upgrades across a large portfolio of existing buildings. Pulse™ software is helping the Government address this challenge by providing real-time monitoring and detailed energy analysis for a lighting pilot program which will inform decision making about lighting upgrades across government buildings throughout BC.
The ongoing pilot program at the Jack Davis building in Victoria is testing a number of potential retrofits that reduce lighting energy use, including: automated daylight dimming, motion sensors, and individual workstation switches. Facility and Energy managers at the Jack Davis building use Pulse™ to monitor real-time performance of these retrofits, accurately calculate the resulting energy savings, and determine the economic viability of each retrofit option. The Pulse™ Reporting application automatically calculates the energy performance of each retrofit option and then emails out a graphical report to facility managers and key decision makers on a weekly or monthly basis. A weekly comparison report for the Jack Davis building is shown below.
Lighting Retrofit Weekly Comparison
Pulse™ is also being used to promote energy conservation and track the effectiveness of occupant engagement programs. The Pulse™ Dashboard was a key part of a recent campaign to encourage staff to turn off lights at lunchtime. During the campaign, the Dashboard gave staff real-time feedback about their energy conservation efforts and allowed them to compare their results to colleagues on other floors of the building. The campaign week led to a 35% energy savings by staff using the daylight dimming system.
“Pulse™ has allowed us to understand the performance of our lighting systems, promote energy conservation amongst our staff members, and track the results of energy conservation initiatives within our building,” said Brooke McMurchy, Strategic Energy Manager at MEMPR “The reporting tools provided by Pulse™ give us a regular snapshot of our building’s performance, without the burden of having our staff spend hours analyzing the data using cumbersome spreadsheets.”