Are you monitoring the right things to really make an impact?
With ESG on the minds of most corporate boards, sustainability and therefore workplace energy use is likely under the microscope in your organization. If not for sustainability but with the rising cost of energy in most parts of the globe, because it has a direct impact on expenses and therefore the bottom line.
Today I want to talk a little about energy monitoring when it comes to smarter spaces. Specifically, I want to talk about why what you measure matters and why just ‘doing energy monitoring’ really is only an exercise in vanity.
Let me share some scenarios I’ve seen and how I believe you should be thinking about deploying energy monitoring in your environment that will enable you to have a real impact.
As I’ve mentioned before in my posts and podcasts, monitoring anything in a workplace is a waste of time and money unless you’re prepared to do something with the data. And in turn, knowing what you’re prepared to do, is imperative to ensuring you’re gathering the right data to help you have the confidence you’re making an informed decision on your action.
Unfortunately, this isn’t what I’m seeing in the area of energy monitoring in workplaces. It’s actually just the opposite.
What I’ve seen in the wild is, yes, a lot of companies are looking to or already are measuring energy usage. Which is great, but when you scratch a little below the surface, and get into what and how they are monitoring or planning to monitor…. The tool, technique or approach they are taking isn’t enabling them to action anything specific.
Some are simply compiling information from utility bills and simply putting it in a spreadsheet and calling it ‘energy monitoring’. Others if they are super advanced, get very rudimentary data from a power monitor at their tenancy or floor level.
Now like most things in smart spaces, there are degrees of advancement or capabilities you can offer, each one more advanced and better than the other. A similar one here is occupancy which I discussed in episode 4 of Creating Smarter Spaces.
But when it comes to energy, while knowing what you’re using is interesting, and knowing it on a per sq/ft or m2 is nice, it doesn’t really give you anything you can action. It allows you to say ‘yes, we are monitoring our energy usage’… and maybe… we’re keeping track of it on an executive dashboard that we distributed etc… but is pretty useless beyond that.
It doesn’t give you any insights you can action.
If the name of the game is to get more efficient, to use less power, be more sustainable, you really need to know what is using the power.
Maybe you have a refrigerator in the kitchen that has an issue and suddenly started using 3x the power than it usually does? Maybe you have 100’s of TV displays on permanently 24x7….
My point here is, having the data on what is using power and when is far more important than how much power is being used if sustainably and cost saving is your goal.
The what gives you context and a baseline to measure, monitor and make decisions on is also going to be needed for you to really get the value out of artificial intelligent (AI) and Large-Language Model (LLM) solutions. Remember, those systems are only as smart as the data you give them to learn from.
Marrying energy usage up with real-time Occupancy could help you make your decisions even more informed and dynamic.
Why are we using the same amount of power for lights when the building is occupied at its max as we are when virtually no-one is there? The same might be asked for HVAC, AV equipment, makers labs, specialty equipment…. The list goes on.
Knowing what is running, how much energy it’s using and when is imperative to enabling you to move the needle on both sustainably and cost.
If you’re planning a sustainability initiative, or have one in flight now, ask yourself this:
“Is this program helping me understand what is using energy and not just how much? Is the information my team gathering going to enable me to make informed decisions on where, what and how to improve?”
Or will it just give you a baseline of what you use and enable you to set some arbitrary goal of ‘reducing energy use by 12% by 2028…’
You should be executing projects that gather the data your teams need to take action.
As a leader in this industry, I encourage you to take the steps and make the decisions that will enable you to gather data on what and how you are using energy. This will in turn enable you to identify and measure how you’re going to make a difference. To do that, you need to know what is using power, not just how much and where.
If you’re starting a program to gather and report on this data, ensure you’re getting the data that enables you to make decisions.
Unfortunately, the industry isn’t going to come to you with this proactively. Your designers, your mechanical-electrical-plumbing (MEP) contractors, they aren’t going to bring this to you. Why? Because no-one is pushing them to change the rinse and repeat approaches they’ve been using for years.
And if you’re lucky enough to work with the forward-thinking ones that want to bring these innovations to you, your master contractor is probably telling them to pull out the extra cost because it will increase the price of this project a small amount and they don’t see the big picture you’re chasing.
You need to lead here. You need to set the bar of what you need inside the walls, not just on them.
Need help? I’m happy to do it and I know plenty of others that would too.
I go into this topic in much more detail in Episode 6 of Creating Smarter Spaces.
While I talk about a lot of cool technology and the importance of end user experience. There is nothing more important in our world right now than making sure we take real actionable, measurable steps to reversing the impacts we have on the planet as humans.
Your shareholders will thank you, your boss will thank you, the children in your life will thank you and if it means anything to you, I will also thank you.
Get the right data, so you can make the right decisions.
On that note, I’ll get off my soapbox.
