The world has changed. Today’s difficult global geopolitical situation means that energy costs are surging as wholesale gas and electricity prices rise and disruption to supply chains continues.
Whilst at one time this troubling situation could have been dismissed as a temporary blip, it can no longer be written off in this way. The structural shifts brought about by the Covid-19 pandemic, Russia’s war with Ukraine, and now the Middle East conflict, all point to something new and more enduring: geopolitical volatility as the new normal.
Although employers are unable to control world events themselves, what they can control is their response to them. Unfortunately, today’s difficult economic climate means that many are being forced into a more reactive mode and having to absorb these increased energy costs merely to maintain business as usual for their teams.
But escalating energy bills are exposing deeper, underlying challenges that need to be dealt with more strategically too. A key consideration is that it no longer makes sense for employers to heat – or depending on the time of year, cool – 100% of their office space when as few as 20% of their workforce may be physically present.
When offices remain under-utilized, organizations are paying to heat and cool space that sits empty. That’s not just inefficient but becoming a rising operational cost burden.
Taking a strategic, data-driven approach.
Concern over rising costs should not lead to knee-jerk reactions, such as blunt, sweeping cuts that generate unintended consequences for employee comfort. Instead, it should act as a catalyst to identify underused areas, optimize existing energy systems, and leverage integrated building management systems (BMS) and occupancy data to drive systematic savings.
Let’s delve into these areas in more detail.
Phase 1: Occupancy insights and energy system optimization.
A quick win involves adjusting environmental set points based on actual occupancy levels. This is a simple, low-cost modification to an organization’s existing setup that shouldn’t incur significant additional investment.
By using badge or sensor data to identify employee arrival and departure patterns, businesses can precisely optimize when the office should be warmed up or cooled down. Instead of relying on assumptions, leaders can use real demand data to understand wider opportunities to improve their energy systems.
Other vital insights that leaders can use to support their decision-making around energy management might include:
- Occupancy and demand patterns based on time of day and office zone
- Areas that are persistently unused or used infrequently but act as a drain on energy
- Where behavioural clustering, or people relying on a few individual zones, is taking place
- Mapping HVAC zones to occupancy datato aid with shutdown in the evenings
- Predictable patterns of usage that occur regardless of external conditions.
Businesses would also do well to track energy wastage based on how dense occupancy actually is, rather than total consumption. Evaluating kWh per occupied desk versus kWh per total desk will quickly reveal exactly where money is being wasted on empty space.
Phase 2: Integrating occupancy data with the BMS to drive savings.
The next level of savings requires moving away from the static, time-based schedules used in traditional building management systems (BMS) to control heating, ventilation, air conditioning (HVAC), and lighting. Instead, organizations need to adopt intelligent, data-driven platforms that dynamically respond to presence in the workplace.
By integrating real-time occupancy data directly with your BMS, the building can dynamically adjust HVAC and lighting activity based on live demand. Occupancy levels detected by sensors at desks, meeting rooms, and collaborative zones feed directly into the BMS, enabling the system to automatically scale up or shut down energy systems exactly when and where required.
Optimizing what business can control.
Linking global cost pressures to local workplace behaviour, and energy demand to actual usage rather than theoretical load, helps organizations respond proactively and intelligently to external energy price volatility. Most of all, it allows them to optimize what they can control: how their office space is managed.
A checklist to get proactive about energy cost savings:
Optimize set points and energy systems.
- Evaluate set points against historic occupancy trends. Identify employee arrival patterns to optimize when the office should be warmed up in the morning. And indeed, understand when employees leave the office to reduce or shut down the heating when the working day is over.
- Conduct a vacant space audit. The highest return will be gained from floors or zones with persistently low occupancy (less than 20% over four or more weeks) that remain on full schedules. But remember that consolidating or shutting down zones is more than just a policy decision. It will require sign-off from the facilities management team and a reconfiguration of the BMS.
Enable occupancy-triggered BMS integration.
- Switch from time-based to occupancy-triggered scheduling. Integrate live sensor data with your BMS, so HVAC and lighting automatically respond to real-time presence.
- Dynamically adjust HVAC for those rooms where meetings are expected to take place and turn it off in the case of no-shows.
Rising energy costs are unavoidable. Waste is not.
If your office space is not earning its keep, cut your energy expenditure quickly with insights from Freespace’s Intelligent Workplace Management Platform. Contact us today for more information.
