Score another one for the planet… and for the cloud.
Proving that smart, solid ideas can more than hold their own against flashy ones, BuildingIQ takes home the third spot overall in the 2012 SMART 100 for an innovation with immense relevance: a management system for optimising energy consumption in commercial spaces.
The BuildingIQ EMS, which grew into fruition through years of research at CSIRO, takes care of two important elements of energy management at once. First, it supplements the standard building management system by monitoring energy usage based on weather and room temperature. Second, it adjusts these settings as necessary to strike a balance between efficient consumption and human comfort.
“Today’s energy management systems are riddled with reports that passively point to data that has been logged over the course of time,” explained BuildingIQ’s Mike Zimmerman in his application. You can see how you’re using energy, in other words, but you can only find a way to correct that usage well after the data has been recorded. BuildingIQ, on the other hand, “is proactive and makes changes in real time. It intelligently manages, not just monitors and reports, energy consumption.”
By learning how to predict usage levels through analysis, the EMS can cut utility expenses by as much as 30%, said Zimmerman. Available by subscription on a monthly basis, the cloud-based software also requires minimal upfront capital to implement.
This appeal will translate into greater industry revenue as well. According to Pike Research, a clean technology market firm, annual EMS revenues in the U.S. will near $7 billion by 2020. BuildingIQ has already announced plans to enter the lucrative American market, working to increase the size of its influence while continuing to reduce the size of carbon footprints everywhere.
