A Winning Approach to Smart Building Controls Incentives

Opportunities to save 30% or more on heating and cooling quickly made commercial building owners smart building controls enthusiasts. Building occupants soon joined the cheering section, raving about the sustainable, comfortable and safe environments these controls create.

Now, as lighting products that use multifunction sensors and controllers to offer even greater savings enter the market, a third fan base has entered the arena: Utilities.

Grid Demand Reduction Opportunities

In addition to providing signals that can adjust lighting by reducing or turning off areas that are unoccupied, many newer light fixtures come with integrated occupancy sensors that can also send signals to the HVAC controllers.

Utilities view them as an ideal way to address grid demand reduction at times that are most valuable to your system. This is reflected in strong incentive opportunities to support these retrofit projects.

At the same time, building owners upgrading temperature control systems from simple thermostats to “smart” technologies that integrate heating, cooling and lighting find them to be one of the best options to reduce utility bills. 

The Awkward Impasse

Despite the universal appeal of smart building controls, we find many building owners and utilities standing awkwardly on opposite sides of the dance hall, toes tapping to a tune you both like.

It’s the variable nature of the savings that makes things awkward.

Forecasting the energy savings from these systems requires complex math, resulting in documentation barriers that ultimately block access to valuable rebate and incentives programs.

For building owners, you want to know the savings you will receive from your investments. If you are a utility, you aren’t comfortable saying what you will pay until you see performance data.

Your song is at risk of ending before you even agree to dance with each other, threatening utilities with annual energy saving and participation goal shortfalls that jeopardize program budgets and futures, and stalling building owners’ sustainability and savings goals.

Expert Help

The design and implementation of these systems do require specialized expertise, and capturing the full level of incentive support takes an understanding of program rules and requirements. 

Thankfully, EMC integrates the development of solutions with incentive services to provide turnkey implementation of these types of projects, helping building owners and utilities meet halfway.

EMC works closely with utilities who offer incentives for integrated, smart control systems. Some of the offers require translation from utility-speak to layman terms – but the end results can be some of the most lucrative incentives you will find for energy efficiency improvements. EMC helps building owners understand how these can reduce their cost of implementation.

The savings are waiting! Let us know if smart building controls are something you’re considering for your operations.

Kris Leaf is EMC's Senior Manager of Customer Incentives. He has developed and managed energy efficiency incentive programs for numerous utilities including Xcel Energy, ComEd and MidAmerican Energy. Kris has a degree in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Minnesota and is pursuing a master’s degree in Sustainable Business from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.