Sponsored by Schneider Electric. In this VOICES interview, Consulting Specifying Engineer spoke with Alexis Hart to discuss advanced decarbonization and high-performance buildings, and how engineering innovation, digital tools and strategic partnerships create smarter, more resilient buildings and help drive partner success.
Consulting Specifying Engineer: Could you start off by introducing yourself and your role at Schneider Electric?
Alexis Hart: I’ve been at Schneider Electric for 21 years, and I am currently responsible for our indirect business for Digital Energy in the United States. We call that our transactional team or channel team, which covers all of our building automation and smart metering go-to-markets that are not through our direct channels. This includes standard systems integration, consultants, wholesale and distribution, and some OEM relationships as well.
What mechanical and HVAC innovations are helping customers and partners accelerate decarbonization?
I think decarbonization can be put into a couple of different buckets: how we create, consume and transmit energy. Managing all of those reduces your carbon footprint. When we think about mechanical innovations, the technology has evolved to the point where we’re putting less pressure on the grid. We see it in our homes with LED light bulbs instead of Incandescent Bulbs. There are all these innovations in the mechanical space and the manufacturing protocols that exist today.
What’s interesting is how the mechanical space and decarbonization interlock. Technology has advanced, so we need less infrastructure to create the same output. Think about how your TV takes up less room today than it used to. There’s less footprint dedicated to machine rooms and the equipment it takes to run the building. The equipment is running more efficiently, so there are inherent efficiencies in the way we operate buildings.
And then we layer in technology and our ability to only use what we need through digital infrastructure and control systems. It’s that interlock between using only what’s necessary and the systems that generate the outputs we’re looking for being inherently more efficient that gives us this exponential impact on our decarbonization.
How are digital tools, analytics and AI driving measurable building performance improvements?
There’s the old adage: you can’t manage what you can’t measure. Our ability to measure in real time and turn those data points into information so we can make decisions on our own, but also have technology make some decisions for us, continues to get better every day. When I look back at 20 years ago when I started in this industry, and where we are now, it’s a world of difference.
We can get real-time polling without causing the system to lag because the IT infrastructure is so much more robust today. We get that information faster and more reliably, so we can make real-time decisions, but the machine and the analytics piece can also inform those decisions in different ways.
Imagine we’re looking at outside air conditions relative to inside space conditions, and how we can effectively leverage free cooling from outside. On a day like today here in Philadelphia, where it’s 65 degrees, if I am feeling warm indoors, I don’t need to put my air on, I could just open a window and cool off the space or using technology use more “outside air” instead of “conditioned air”, taking advantage of free cooling. You can make those real-time informed decisions to maximize the natural environment you’re operating in and minimize your dependency on electrical consumption. You can run your systems more effectively because you have real-time access to information.
In addition to human beings interpreting the data, we have analytical layers built in that are looking at those systems for us. One, to make sure they’re taking advantage of current conditions, and two, to highlight mechanical failures in real time, which helps us run our buildings more efficiently.
For example, we use building analytics to make sure we’re not simultaneously heating and cooling a space. We have trigger alarms set in our building control systems that say, “something is wrong here.” You’re using energy to heat and then using energy to cool the same environment. Waste from that duality and conflict in a facility is gone, because we can trigger it more readily now with real-time data and feedback loops.
How do engineers balance efficiency, reliability, cost and occupant needs in high-performance buildings?
When you think about design intent, you use real-life experiences and feedback, but then you do the design in your office. You’re drawing it out on paper in an ideal environment. To make sure the building is performing the way the design intended, you have to incorporate some real-time continuous commissioning into the built environment.
Yes, you designed it based on the best conditions you could predict. You have weather patterns and history of building performance, and you know how buildings of a similar size, type and location function. But you never know what a specific building infrastructure plan will be or how occupancy levels will change, especially in this flexible workforce environment. In a commercial office building, some days every desk is full and some days every desk is empty. The building doesn’t operate the same way that it used to.
Layering real-time data about how the building is actually being used into the way the system was designed by the engineer from the onset requires this continuous commissioning or automatic analytics. The analytics package can always be checking that the system is operating as intended based on actual real-time conditions versus the designed-for conditions.
It’s about layering this continuous commissioning element into all designs and looking more towards how the building is going to operate, versus keeping your eyes on your own paper and only designing for the moment when you’re handing those pages off for construction.
The key is designing with the end in mind.
What technologies are enabling measurable sustainability improvements?
One is the analytics we talked about in continuous commissioning: being able to continuously monitor and measure what is happening and adapt in real time. And then you think about power quality. You can’t effectively navigate the changing energy landscape without knowing exactly where your consumption is and what’s available to you. If you have dirty power coming into your facility, there’s no amount of variable frequency drives or harmonics that are going to correct for it. You have to make sure the power entering your building is clean before you can begin to feather it up or down, depending on what your demand calls for.
Advances in power quality analysis and harmonics filtering through metering and smart metering systems, and interoperability between your building automation, building management HVAC and energy management systems—that’s where technology is headed. It’s making sure you’re using the best energy to accomplish the tasks.
When I think about those two fields converging, you get so much more from your facility’s efficiency and efforts to minimize your carbon footprint. You’re not only managing energy through your building automation system to optimize the design intent. You’re also making sure that power quality and harmonics are not causing conflicts in your power distribution system. When those two come together, you get this powerful unlocking of being a responsible citizen and minimizing your carbon footprint.
How are technology innovation, design partnerships and changing industry demands shaping the future of buildings and energy infrastructure?
When I think about who we had to know or collaborate with on projects 20 years ago, it was normally your director of facilities in the room, maybe your chief operating officer representing the end user. Now the CTO is involved, the chief information officer, the chief sustainability officer. More people from the end user are engaging in these conversations because of the impact infrastructure can have on all facets of a facility’s operation and all areas of an organization’s profitability.
Everyone’s looking to their carbon and sustainability initiatives, whether through legislation or their own corporate promises. When you think about who cares about the footprint of the building and the energy consumed and deployed therein, that audience has completely shifted in the last 20 years.
The conversations are different. We’re no longer talking about making sure your air conditioner doesn’t go down. You put that machine in and it’ll run forever. We’re talking about making sure it’s running in auto, leveraging the analytics, technology and real-time feedback loops we have.
That takes collaboration between your IT infrastructure, your energy planning and your value drivers. Are you wanting to optimize the comfort of your occupants, or how many kilowatts you’re consuming? Where are you on that spectrum in your priority stack? With the different perspectives as a part of the conversation today, the prioritization of energy vis a vis comfort is shifting.
Ready to put these ideas into action? Explore how Schneider Electric is helping create smarter, more connected and resilient buildings. Explore EcoStruxure Building solutions
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