Centralized energy management of multiple sites, IoT, and NexRev’s Freedom BEMS
As electricity prices continue to rise, reducing energy usage is a board-level issue for many of our blue-chip customers.
The latest news from the US Energy Information Administration (EIA) came on June 7 when it issued its latest forecast predicting that “a variety of U.S. energy prices will remain historically high through 2023 including oil, natural gas, coal, and electricity”.
From EIA Administrator Joe DeCarolis:
“We continue to see historically high energy prices as a result of the economic recovery and the repercussions of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
Although we expect the current upward pressure on energy prices to lessen, high energy prices will likely remain prevalent in the United States this year and next.”
NexRev’s customers are large household names in retail, restaurants, finance, travel and leisure, federal and municipal government buildings, grocery, schools and universities.
They include Home Depot, Lowes, Floor & Décor, Best Buy, Bed Bath & Beyond, Ross, Burlington, At Home, Academy Sports, Pilot/Flying, Walmart, Aldi. Bank of America – and movie theaters across America including Cinemark, Regal, AMC and CMX.
These companies have hundreds of sites spread across a regional or national footprint. To optimize the consumption of electricity, their corporate energy managers need to have an overview of – and control over – electricity consumption across their entire property portfolio.
Just a few years ago, having a holistic view of energy consumption across multiple sites, and the ability to change the settings of electrical equipment from a remote location, simply wasn’t possible. However, the evolution of IoT has been, and will continue to be, a game-changer.
The role of IoT in centralizing the management of HVACs and other electrical equipment across multiple sites
IoT is just one of the technologies that can help organizations reduce their energy costs. In this earlier blog, IoT, DrivePak and Freedom – building on a long history of remote data collection and processing to optimize HVAC performance, we discussed the evolution of IoT, and how it is now being widely integrated into corporate operational practices and processes.
One of the many benefits that IoT services and capabilities bring is the ability to collect data from multiple sources at multiple sites and transmit it to a centralized system for analysis and interpretation.
A centralized system gives energy managers a view of the energy consumption across their entire property portfolio in a single window.
Optimizing energy is one thing – but this must be accomplished at each and every site, with everything tailored to the real-life environment of that building from freezing temperatures to humidity and everything in-between.
A centralized system enables an organization to adjust, customize and optimize its electrical consumption across multiple sites but on an individual site level. This can be achieved through the centralized system without the need for manual oversight.
IoT provides remote connectivity to communicate any action to devices at remote sites.
The ultimate win is that a centralized system with IoT allows an organization to build out energy optimization programs with greater scalability and enhanced efficiency, across all of its footprint.
IoT, NexRev, Freedom and managing energy consumption across multiple sites
At NexRev we constantly track the IoT market to take advantage of improvements and innovations that can help our customers optimize their energy use.
Our building and energy management system (BEMS), which is called Freedom, uses IoT to provide a centralized view of connected devices, sensors, meters, and – even – NexRev DrivePak deployments.
Freedom is the data processing engine that aggregates, stores, and filters the essential data collected from remote sites and transmitted over IoT networks, so that our customers can see – at a glance – KPIs and reports that provide actionable insights to optimize energy consumption.
With integrated analytics and automated workflows, Freedom provides efficient monitoring and control for energy management – covering HVACs, lights and more
The beauty of such an integrated, centralized system is that our customers obtain the micro, local view they need, while being able to easily extend to the macro view of all their deployed Freedom assets – so they can see everything in one place.
Moving forward on your IoT and BEMS journey
IoT will be key to driving efficiencies across multiple functions in the future, particularly in highly distributed organizations where rising energy costs are affecting the bottom line.
To start the conversation about how you can use IoT and Freedom to reduce energy consumption, and slow down energy waste, please send a message to:
If you’d like to read our white paper Facts Every Energy Manager Needs to Know or the case study about how DrivePak has helped one of our customers to achieve 26% Energy Reduction with 47% ROI, then please send an email to