What’s Driving the Growth of Smart Buildings?
What IoT Brings
Throughout the ’90s and until very recently, there’s been a general assumption that digital would save the planet by reducing things like paper usage. Yet, between server farms and silicon chip fabs, the digital economy has led to greater energy consumption, higher levels of emissions and the end-of-life challenge of recycling chemical, mineral and plastic waste.
“It is all a great chimera; just like the idea that plastic bottles can be recycled,” said Mike Moran, chief risk and sustainability officer of Philadelphia-based smart building data solutions firm Microshare. “In fact, only by monitoring, controlling and reducing energy and water consumption can we mitigate what the digital economy has wrought. Energy monitoring and submetering sensors have moved far beyond the simple utility bill scraping that formed the first wave of the industry.”
Moran went on to describe how IoT sensors could be used to offer real-time data on energy use, with potential applications for how business could use the sensors to: “identify equipment that is malfunctioning (by measuring cycles) and also highlight times when large equipment is running at peak hours for no good reason.”
The combination of IoT sensors with occupancy sensors can help businesses to identify where to dim lighting, moderate heating or cooling, and better plan cleaning crew shifts to avoid unoccupied spaces, Moran concluded. “Leak detection can save thousands of gallons of water a month (not to mention mitigating the risk of a major flood).”