FROM THE EDITOR

I don’t know about you, but when I buy a new gadget, I spend a ton of time exploring, customizing, experimenting, and basically driving everyone around me nuts with exclamations like, “Wow, so this Blu-Ray player keeps track of every movie you ever watch, and you can access that information on this nifty iPhone app! Cool, right?!” This generally elicits responses along the lines of: “Hey, that’s great — and when and how will you EVER USE THAT INFORMATION?”


That’s the challenge with facility data these days, isn’t it? Information is easy to collect. But it’s often much more difficult to find tangible uses for that data, beyond just “Hmm, that’s interesting.” Any facility manager with a sophisticated, high-performance BAS probably has at one time or another spent a bleary-eyed afternoon combing through a database. And while comparing the energy use of Fan 1 vs Fan 2 in July 2007 is probably interesting to most engineering types, it’s not especially useful for reducing overall energy consumption in July 2014.

So how do you sift through data to find actionable information? Of course, it all depends on your situation – use Portfolio Manager to benchmark energy use, set up alerts for when energy performance fall outside certain parameters, run experiments on set points and on/off times. As the kids say these days, “You do you.” The possibilities are limitless.

What’s important though is that you do have a plan in place for analyzing data. As facility managers often say, un-analyzed data is as useless as data never collected in the first place. But what’s more, data collected and not used is often a distraction. So before you check all the boxes on that new  sophisticated energy management program, make sure you have the time and capability to use what you’re collecting.

As always, I’m interested to hear from you. What strategies have you found successful for collecting only the data you need and needing only the data you collect? Have you been in a situation where you were swimming in data, but managed to throw yourself a lifeline? How’d you do it? 

Cheers,

Greg Zimmerman, editor  

HIGH-PERFORMANCE STRATEGIES

Energy Star: No Excuses

Misconceptions about Energy Star and Portfolio Manager can prevent facility managers from seeing its benefits. This article from the July issue of Building Operating Management debunks some Energy Star myths and excuses.

IN THE NEWS

2012 CBECS Preliminary Results Released

While the Energy Information Admistration is still compiling data from the 2012 Commercial Buildings Energy Consumption Survey, initial data show that there are now 5.6 million commercial buildings in the US in 2012, a 14 percent increase since 2003.

HIGH-PERFORMANCE MULTIMEDIA

Sustainability Improvements Require Organizational Buy-In

In this short video, Carlos Santamaria, vice president, engineering services for Glenborough, LLC, explains why nothing gets done unilaterally in an organization, especially when it comes to sustainability.