With funding from Arctic Energy Alliance, guidance from Alaska Housing Finance Corporation (AHFC) and technical assistance from Charles Haché at Cygnus Technical Services Ltd, the Town of Inuvik developed and implemented a Building Energy Monitoring System to manage energy performance in Town-owned building facilities. Utilizing BMON, a web-based, open source software application, the Town hopes to store, track and analyze real-time sensor data coming from the Centennial Library, Town Office and Midnight Sun Recreational Complex. The software, along with the various equipment sensors, track building occupancy, temperature, electricity, and fuel use as well as access data from multiple sources, including established weather stations, building automation systems, databases, and other points.
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Why A Building Energy Monitoring System |
| The intent of this program is to help the town assess the progress of your energy management activities and find ways to reduce energy use and improve building maintenance through a system of setting and revising energy performance targets. Additional benefits include:
1) Provide alerts through the form of text or email to building maintenance personnel about imminent problems like excessive energy use or freezing water pipes. The provides savings in the form of avoided maintenance. 2) Provide savings from Excess Unoccupied Electricity Use and Unoccupied Setback. As identified in the targeted energy audit for the Midnight Sun Recreation Complex, Library and Town Office, one of the recommended energy management opportunities (EMOs) is addressing unoccupied use. 3) Single Interface – Access from any web-connected computer 4) Energy Costs – Monitor real-time energy flows, determine the energy costs of specific systems and identify cost-saving opportunities 5) Data Graphing – Explore multiple options to display data; including graphs, spreadsheets, scatter plots, and more 6) Monitoring Dashboard – Give access to multiple operators with different capabilities to monitor the visual dashboard 7) The BMON application presents a simple user interface for viewing data but includes informative charts such as Histograms and Hourly Profile charts for analyzing the data. 8) Informing proper equipment sizing – the oversizing of various building equipment happens regularly in commercial buildings. Through the monitoring system, we are able to properly match equipment with building usage. 9) Besides monitoring energy performance, the software can track the effects of climate change at facilities. 10) Compare building performance against other similar facilities, which will give you an indication of opportunities for improvement. |