Liam Johnson, a senior energy and carbon analyst at Salix.
Smart buildings are a small but pivotal solution that help plot the course to the UK achieving net zero by 2050. Whether newly built or retrofitted, smart buildings help create more energy efficient, cost effective and liveable spaces.
In a post-pandemic world, the growth of working and studying from home and a decrease in building occupancy rates, year on year with particular emphasis on office space has seen the rise in demand for buildings to be economically viable to run, in terms of heat and light has become essential. A large shift has also occurred to focus on the wellbeing of occupants.
At Salix a large percentage of projects that have received funding from either our Public Sector Decarbonisation Scheme grant schemes or through our older legacy loans schemes have chosen to install or upgrade of their internal Building Energy & Management System. Whilst BEMS have been commonplace in some buildings since the 1970s, with advancement of technology and the introduction of artificial intelligence, these have become more advanced, with the ability to collect and analyse historical data and generate patterns, in some cases predicting future energy usage trends.
Some 40% of the UK’s annual energy use is taken up by buildings accounting for one third of the UK’s carbon emissions according to the UK Committee on Climate Change. Also, across local authorities in the UK building efficiency varies, with some of the poorest performing buildings located in London. In London just 77% of buildings are given a band D, DEC rating.
It’s clear to me that the government’s current target for all public sector buildings to have reduced their by carbon output by 75%, by 2037 can only be achieved by the universal upgrading of such buildings.
The UK government currently has plans to adapt Minimum Energy Efficiency Standard to Non-Domestic buildings as well as current domestic buildings. A major way to do this is by introducing building automation and control systems. This can range from lighting, with the use of motion sensors to detect room occupancy, to installing discrete lighting controls.
The heating system of a building can also use integrated sensors to heat particular rooms based on the heating requirements, these are normally pre-set using a thermostat and deliver heat based on the internal and external temperature set points. As smart buildings and the systems that control them become more advance, more intricate levels of control are needed. As Building Management Systems become more operationally technical to run a requirement is needed for the building manager or estates team to upskill those who carry out maintenance checks. The greater the complexities within a system, the higher the cost to fix or replace.
Through my work and research at Salix, I can see how smart buildings have the potential to become large data stores, collecting historical data and patterns across the year, plotting and forecasting annual consumption. It ensures the building management team can collect data on energy use temperature, lighting, humidity and even Co2 by monitoring indoor carbon monoxide levels. This not only is at the forefront of improving wellbeing for building occupants but allows maintenance team to respond quickly and appropriately to changing conditions.
Currently a big advantage of improving a buildings efficiency through a BEMS is the ability optimise and monitor renewable energy sources such as solar PV and wind power, this can feedback information into the energy generated by renewable sources of power.
The integration of renewable energy sources creates the ability for several buildings / campuses to decentralise their energy usage, enabling a more widespread and holistic benefit. According to a report commissioned by innovate UK, national grid decentralisation will make up 30% of total electricity generation by 2030. It emphasises the importance of decentralising energy, lead through the smart building revolution.
Overall whilst building optimisation is largely driven through the collection of data, this data can be stored and can better inform building management teams on patterns and trends. This data can be used in models, looking at ways to minimise inefficiencies, reduce costs and predict system failures before they become critical. Today most of the current Building Management Systems involve supervised machine learning, meaning the system isn’t fully automated and relies on human input to and supervision to function.
Fortunately for you and me, we can take the very best of AI and that’s within our gift. It is already playing a vital part in how we adapt to climate change. However, whilst AI is superb for crunching data and analysing patterns, the human brain is still best for reasoning, creativity, empathy, compassion and abstract thinking. For now, anyway.
This article appeared in the Nov/Dec 2024 issue of Energy Manager magazine. Subscribe here.