Entire Portfolio of 12 Grade A Commercial Buildings

The Challenge

One of the leading property development groups in Hong Kong has teamed up with Carnot Innovations to advance chiller plant optimization in their prime offices and luxury retail properties.

As a leader in the property development industry, sustainability is one of the virtues our client upholds in its business profile.

Our client has a high reputation in adopting green innovative ideas into their buildings, thus upgrading the building automation systems in multiple properties was one of its top priorities that can further strengthen its sustainability objectives.

There were an entire portfolio of 12 prime commercial and luxury retail properties in this project. The building owner was looking to refresh their existing Building Management System (BMS) despite their high quality equipment.

Carnot can offer an innovative advanced AI diagnostic software and user-friendly platform for the facilities management to monitor and control the BMS, which was not normally possible to identify with manual resources. Yet monitoring 12 facilities at the same time was a challenge our client was facing.

For instance, those buildings experienced different issues/failures due to specific circumstances such as various types of occupancy in the buildings requiring special adjustment, certain sensors had malfunctions that could not generate the data needed, or the lack of equipment maintenance prediction and fault rectification tracking etc.

These issues had imposed a great difficulty for the traditional building management system to configure. Therefore, Carnot stepped up to help our client to achieve their sustainability goals through our innovative technology specialized for smart buildings.

Our Solutions

Carnot proposed the installation of our advanced AI analytics platform to maximize energy/cost savings while improving equipment life and efficiency for our client. Carnot successfully set up a centralized data collection network and automated monitoring more than 110,000 sensors in real-time.

Additionally, automated energy management reports and benchmarks were provided for the entire portfolio in order to meet our client’s compliance and regulatory policies.

Through analyzing both historical and real-time data, Carnot successfully identified several opportunities to improve the energy efficiencies in every building in the portfolio. Optimization strategies were tested and implemented in three major aspects:

1. Predictive Fault Detection and Diagnostics
2. AI-driven controls optimization for water side HVAC chiller plant
3. AI-driven controls optimization for air side HVAC equipment

Subsequently, Carnot deployed our automation software to all 12 buildings for our client with prior testing so as to ensure a consistent and safe system integration. Consolidation with BIM and BMS enables advanced indoor heat maps as well as equipment fault diagnostics.

Hence, full building optimization was profitably implemented when both air side and water side controls were made possible according to the HVAC demands. Meanwhile, Carnot’s web-based visualization dashboard provides a centralized overview interface for our client to oversee all facilities up-to-date performance in one place.

To allow a smooth transition, Carnot worked very closely with the technical team, facility managers, and BMS engineers during the facilitation.

Results

Within 3 months of automated AI chiller plant optimization deployment, over 10% of energy savings were generated through our optimization strategies.

Take one of the commercial buildings in Central as an example, more than 12% of energy was saved annually. In other words, over HKD300,000 (USD39,000) electricity cost was saved for a year. The building’s chiller plant efficiency (COP) has been significantly improved by 9%. In working with Carnot, our client is able to make more efficient use of energy in a way that is aligned with their sustainability goals.

Carnot maintains ongoing strategic conversations and engagement with the client’s BMS representatives and facility managers to help them continue leveraging technology and optimizing the facility’s energy usage. Besides economical benefits, indoor occupant comfortability and air quality were also improved significantly so that the commercial building has an advantage over competitors in occupant satisfaction and retention.

Carnot continues to support and maintain the platform for our client, whilst in discussions for new collaboration opportunities in the future.

Summary

Carnot Innovations has deployed our advanced AI analytics platform to maximize energy/cost savings while improving equipment life and efficiency in a portfolio of 12 Grade A commercial buildings in Central, Hong Kong.

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Background

Category: Grade A office and luxury retail space

Client's Corporate Highlights:
Attained the highest possible green buildings ratings for all commercial buildings in Hong Kong and Singapore. Winner of the "Sustainability Achievement of the Year" award at RICS 2020 Hong Kong.