In-Use Building Data Analysis Tool

Platform to organise, visualise and interrogate a wide variety of building energy data

Climate Change Mitigation

Problem Addressed

Buildings never perform as efficiently in operation as their design intends. However, making sense of the vast amounts of operational data now available in most buildings to improve in-use energy and carbon performance is extremely challenging.

Engineers often have to navigate multiple disparate systems and data sources, encompassing different building and energy management systems, utility portals, IoT sensors and historic files. Typically, this has been a labour-intensive process, requiring multiple spreadsheets and significant manual effort to gather, organise, manage, and interrogate operational building data in a meaningful way. This fragmented approach has further limited opportunities for cross data set interrogation, meaning key operational improvements and savings opportunities may go undetected.

With increasing emphasis being placed on in-use performance optimisation, through reporting frameworks and certifications such as NABERS, teams need as complete and accurate a picture of their building data as possible. They also need tools to help ensure that systems have been set up and commissioned properly, to limit performance gap issues.

Finally, the utilisation of calibrated energy models to enable more reliable assessment of potential operational improvements or retrofit upgrades in existing buildings requires tools capable of generating accurate building energy demand profiles, based on real operational data. These are all areas in which iSCAN can support.

Solution Overview

iSCAN is a data analytics platform that enables building engineers to analyse in-use building data and reduce the performance gap. It centralises any time-series data from different building and energy management systems, utility portals, IoT sensors and historic files, alongside simulated data from other tools within the IES technology suite. Users can organise, visualise and interrogate this data within iSCAN to gain engineering grade insights on a building’s operation and identify areas to improve in-use building performance.

iSCAN prevents the need for traditional building data interrogation techniques, using multiple spreadsheets, to reduce how long it takes to gather, organise, manage, and analyse operational building data. Users can store multiple data sets in one location and make direct connections to BMS and IoT sensors to more easily discover insights through cross data set interrogation, and handle all of their historic, live and simulated data in one place.

Simulated data from other IES tools, including the VE, iCD and iVN, can be imported into iSCAN for analysis and comparison against actual building use data, or real building energy demand profiles can be exported to create calibrated energy models, in line with industry methodologies, such as CIBSE TM63. This can help to support more accurate and reliable performance predictions for retrofit or existing building projects, as well as enable the pursuit of in-use performance certifications and standards, such as NABERS, to close the performance gap.

Users of the platform can also create a bank of data from existing projects, which can in turn be used in future energy modelling projects within the VE for similar building types, to ensure calculations are based on more representative operational building energy profiles.

iSCAN can also be used to deliver enhanced operational building services including in-use performance evaluations, measurement and verification (M&V) and advanced commissioning services, including seasonal, LEED and monitoring-based (MBCx). It can also be used to deliver regular reports to clients, including out of hours use, alarms and alerts.

Company name

IES

UK availability

Yes

Solution launch date

2019

Solutions submitted by

Integrated Environmental Solutions Ltd

Case Study

iSCAN was used to facilitate data monitoring and analysis at Glasgow’s iconic Riverside Museum, after it was identified that the building was not performing optimally against other properties and energy management KPIs across the Glasgow Life portfolio.

IES set up a utility data (AMR) and building management system (BMS) data acquisition framework, and through the iSCAN platform were able to gather and analyse this data to provide visibility on major areas of energy use and track consumption trends across the museum, including any seasonal variations.

Initial investigation of the data brought to light a number of major consumers; one being the HVAC system which accounted for the majority of electrical energy consumption on site. The Air Handling Units (AHUs) serving the main exhibition space were a major factor in this, accounting for 36.5% of total electricity use, and the Chillers accounted for a further 10.8%. The Tall Ship, Glenlee, was also identified as an unexpected major consumer, drawing 10.8% of total electricity.

iSCAN enabled the museum to identify a series of energy saving interventions across the site, most of which were operational changes costing little or nothing to implement. Measures included rectifying inconsistencies in chiller operation, realigning set points, and fixing problems with the AHUs including unnecessary overnight operation.

Through this project, iSCAN delivered:

26% gas savings
18% electricity savings
£53.2k cost savings (over the project year)

Through ongoing monitoring, it is expected that these savings will be retained year-on-year.

26 %

6-12 month

Effective

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