While UBC has participated in BC Hydro’s Continuous Optimization Program (C.Op) over the past decade, the approach to identifying energy conservation measures hasn’t changed in that time. UBC’s participation in the Real-Time Energy Management (RTEM) pilot program looked to change that, starting in 2019. This iteration of C.Op was designed to make use of the massive amounts of data generated by UBC’s Building Management Systems, and leverage the analytical capabilities of the SkySpark platform. By feeding the data into “rules” set up in SkySpark, small but multiple energy conservation opportunities could be identified automatically – a task which would take hundreds of hours for a human to perform. This approach is known in the industry as Automated Fault Detection and Diagnostics (AFD&D).
The RTEM program was deployed at the Brimacombe and Forest Sciences buildings, and the measures found are generating around $20,000 in savings annually. More importantly, learnings from the program have fed directly back into UBC’s continued participation in the traditional C.Op program.