This is Why Equipment-level Benchmarking is the Future

Capital investments are risky, long-term decisions. In this video, Derek Cedarbaum explains why equipment-level benchmarking will remove this risk and facilitate data-driven decision making for equipment purchases.

Video Transcription

Hi, I’m Derek Cedarbaum with Enertiv and I’m here today to talk about equipment benchmarking.

I know many of you are familiar with building-level benchmarking and its many benefits around identifying which assets have needs for operational efficiency improvements or capital improvements via equipment retrofits.

I’m sure many of you are also familiar with the fact that your HVAC and motor systems tend to be oversized by about 25% during the design stage of a new development or during the retrofit process.

That’s a problem. But why?

Well, today, we are overly reliant on analytical models over empirical models because there’s insufficient data originating from your machines. There’s no way to tell how much it costs over its lifetime, either from an energy perspective or from a maintenance and repair perspective.

This means that, if you’re uncertain about the ROI, making equipment purchases is inherently risky, which then means that it is difficult to prioritize your capital investment decisions related to equipment.

Ultimately, that means that whatever investment you do decide to make, you will be uncertain of the total lifetime costs of operating that piece of equipment until you reach the end of the lifetime of that equipment.

This is why we at Enertiv believe that the future is equipment level benchmarking.

Imagine a world in which you can benchmark - dynamically inventory - every single motor, boiler, chiller, cooling tower, etc. and have an archived and up-to-date data stream of your cost per kWh, your maintenance and repair costs, a health rating related to tenant comfort, and an overall performance rating.

This can also be segmented by the climate and geography that your assets are in. A group of assets in Seattle and Boston will have different equipment performance requirements than a assets in Texas and Miami.

Performance requirements also change depending on your building vertical, the size of the asset, the load requirements, the manufacturer’s makes and models, years of implementation and installation, which pieces of equipment may have more of a maintenance need, which ones are less reliable, and which ones per ton cost more than another.

The result of getting this granular data stream, which for us is done via circuit-level power monitoring of all the house loads across a portfolio, is an inventory of systems and a data-driven ranking system to decide which piece of equipment may be most in need of a retrofit.

Just because a system might be older or might be based in Miami where there’s more salt in the atmosphere, doesn’t necessarily mean that you’ll have to go with that replacement every 5 years.

Here, we’ve created a ranking system, where we can tell you, based on the various metrics that I mentioned, which pieces of equipment you may need to pay attention to. This means less relying less on intuition and the audits that take place every year in many of your assets, and more on data to know exactly which investments to make, when to make them, to what extent, and what to expect from that investment.

No longer will you be relying on guesses and estimations for your investments to justify any ongoing investment of say, VFDs across your portfolio.

You’ll know exactly which make and model you can rely on and expect optimal results from.

This is the future. We’re going to be a part of it, we hope you’re a part of it. If you’d like to hear more about how, pick up the phone, give us a call, shoot us an email, hit us up on LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, whatever you prefer.

I’m Derek Cedarbaum with Enertiv, it was great talking with you.

Want to learn more? Schedule a demo today!