News Feature | January 12, 2015

What Happens When Energy Management Solutions Meet The IoT?

Christine Kern

By Christine Kern, contributing writer

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According to a Frost and Sullivan report, the convergence of the Internet of Things (IoT), cloud computing, Big Data, and data analytics offers a wide range of new business opportunities in building technology. According to this study, Big Data as an Enabler for Smart Buildings, there are three significant trends that will foster the development of the smart buildings industry: urbanization, the connectivity and convergence of smart technologies, and communication between smart devices.

As a Daintree blog post explains, “The massive volume of data generated by IoT applications in smart buildings demands advanced analytics capabilities (Big Data analytics) and requires tremendous computing power — a network of servers hosted on the Internet to store, manage and process data (cloud computing).” Recently, commercial buildings have begun adopting energy management systems (EMS) to optimize energy consumption. These new systems rely on the IoT. Advanced systems not only monitor systems, but also provide a Web-based command center to manage the facility —or multiple facilities — with the capability to provide notifications and alarms and data analytics for intelligent decision making.

Daintree asserts that with buildings accounting for nearly 40 percent of U.S. energy consumption, your IT customers with commercial and industrial facilities will quickly see ROI in cost savings from EMS solutions.

The blog post also points out, however, the major challenge is integration of building systems — the legacy building management systems (HVAC, fire, and security), the EMS systems, and building analytics software. By using open standards, EMS solutions can facilitate integration.

“The ongoing convergence of operating technology and IT indicates that key technology advancements will gather pace in the fields of data analytics, cloud services and IoT,” says Frost & Sullivan energy and environmental research analyst Anirudh Bhaskaran in a press release. “Big Data, especially, will emerge as a more valuable delivery model owing to affordable upfront costs and lower resource usage.”

LNS Research found Industrial Energy Management leveraging the IoT can be beneficial, highlighting several examples in a blog post.