How Commercial Building Automation Can Save Money

 
With so much focus placed on smart homes, few business owners realize that automation can also benefit commercial properties. If you have been looking for ways to improve your business operations and cut some overhead expenses, talk to your electrician about the advantages of commercial property automation.

Here are some of the things that you should think about as you work with your electrician to automate your commercial building.

Power Usage Reports

One key way to turn your smart building investment into a money-saving opportunity is opting for power usage reporting as part of your platform. Power usage reporting allows you to see your building's power draw throughout each day, usually down to a per-machine level.

For commercial customers, this usage reporting is key to saving on your energy costs. Every commercial energy customer pays a demand charge as part of their utility bill. The demand charge is a fee based upon the peak usage in any given 15-minute period. That means you're paying this additional fee based on the maximum energy consumption your business uses.

When you have access to power usage reports, you can monitor which of your equipment is powering on at any given time. If, for example, all of your building's compressors are powering on at the same exact time on a regular basis, that's a significant energy demand that could be leading to increased demand charges.

Use the data from the usage report to evaluate your company's equipment powering cycles to stagger equipment activation and minimize your demand charges.

Automated CO Abatement

Carbon monoxide is an often underestimated, but very serious, concern within commercial buildings. With so much equipment, CO emissions from those machines and the heating system are serious safety threats. Commercial air purification systems are essential to combat this.

Poor maintenance and insufficient monitoring can lead to failures within these systems, and it is difficult to target any specific areas based on higher concentrations in one part of the building compared to another. Work with an electrician to connect your air filtration system to a building automation platform.

The automation platform will monitor CO levels throughout the building, adjusting the air filtration system flow as needed to address spikes in CO levels throughout the building. That way, you don't have to run the system excessively in the entire building to deal with one specific area that is experiencing high CO levels.

Minimizing Maintenance With Prediction

A building automation system can also benefit you by providing maintenance alerts. When you address maintenance before components fail, it saves you significantly in potential downtime, emergency repair calls, and additional damages due to part failure.

Most building automation systems allow you to incorporate sensors throughout the equipment and infrastructure of the building. Those sensors will alert you any time there's a problem, fault, or upcoming failure that you need to address.

This is especially important with your building's electrical system. An electrical fire or short in a commercial building could damage all of the industrial electronics and other equipment in the building, costing you significantly by the time it is all complete. When you can easily spot surges and shorts in the electrical circuits, you can call for repairs and maintenance right away before problems get worse.

The more you understand about how building automation can save your business money, the more you can see why the investment is a good idea. Talk with your electrician today about how to pursue a building automation installation to protect your financial investments. He or she can design an infrastructure that provides the features you need, such as these above.

For more information, contact us at Circle Electric, Inc., today.

 
With so much focus placed on smart homes, few business owners realize that automation can also benefit commercial properties. If you have been looking for ways to improve your business operations and cut some overhead expenses, talk to your electrician about the advantages of commercial property automation.

Here are some of the things that you should think about as you work with your electrician to automate your commercial building.

Power Usage Reports

One key way to turn your smart building investment into a money-saving opportunity is opting for power usage reporting as part of your platform. Power usage reporting allows you to see your building's power draw throughout each day, usually down to a per-machine level.

For commercial customers, this usage reporting is key to saving on your energy costs. Every commercial energy customer pays a demand charge as part of their utility bill. The demand charge is a fee based upon the peak usage in any given 15-minute period. That means you're paying this additional fee based on the maximum energy consumption your business uses.

When you have access to power usage reports, you can monitor which of your equipment is powering on at any given time. If, for example, all of your building's compressors are powering on at the same exact time on a regular basis, that's a significant energy demand that could be leading to increased demand charges.

Use the data from the usage report to evaluate your company's equipment powering cycles to stagger equipment activation and minimize your demand charges.

Automated CO Abatement

Carbon monoxide is an often underestimated, but very serious, concern within commercial buildings. With so much equipment, CO emissions from those machines and the heating system are serious safety threats. Commercial air purification systems are essential to combat this.

Poor maintenance and insufficient monitoring can lead to failures within these systems, and it is difficult to target any specific areas based on higher concentrations in one part of the building compared to another. Work with an electrician to connect your air filtration system to a building automation platform.

The automation platform will monitor CO levels throughout the building, adjusting the air filtration system flow as needed to address spikes in CO levels throughout the building. That way, you don't have to run the system excessively in the entire building to deal with one specific area that is experiencing high CO levels.

Minimizing Maintenance With Prediction

A building automation system can also benefit you by providing maintenance alerts. When you address maintenance before components fail, it saves you significantly in potential downtime, emergency repair calls, and additional damages due to part failure.

Most building automation systems allow you to incorporate sensors throughout the equipment and infrastructure of the building. Those sensors will alert you any time there's a problem, fault, or upcoming failure that you need to address.

This is especially important with your building's electrical system. An electrical fire or short in a commercial building could damage all of the industrial electronics and other equipment in the building, costing you significantly by the time it is all complete. When you can easily spot surges and shorts in the electrical circuits, you can call for repairs and maintenance right away before problems get worse.

The more you understand about how building automation can save your business money, the more you can see why the investment is a good idea. Talk with your electrician today about how to pursue a building automation installation to protect your financial investments. He or she can design an infrastructure that provides the features you need, such as these above.

For more information, contact us at Circle Electric, Inc., today.