Deploying the right EMS can pay off quickly. Here’s why.
The choice of Energy Management System (EMS) for the facility or facilities that you manage is an important decision. Your ability and flexibility to effectively manage building costs and energy efficiency often depends on your choice of EMS.
The more facilities, brands, and locations you’re responsible for, the more complicated the EMS decision becomes because not every EMS system on the market is suited to managing multiple sites with diverse energy needs over a wide geographical area. Optimizing the operational performance of a single unit can be challenging enough, but managing the performance of thousands of units across a portfolio to deliver the same optimal performance can seem like an impossible task.
The good news? It can be done. In this blog, we’ll give you proof by walking through how one NexRev customer did it. This company accomplished its goals using the Freedom solution, which is a complete multi-site, cloud-based Energy Management System for managing remote sensors, monitoring equipment, and providing a single view of energy consumption and other key metrics.
All over the place!
A bit about the company. With multiple brands and 1,500 retail outlets spread across all 50 states in the US, maintaining HVAC equipment and managing energy costs at each facility presented a significant challenge.
Like many businesses today, energy management sat in the hands of a legacy system that was having problems keeping up with the fast pace of change in facilities management today. The Internet of Things, AI, the shift towards smart buildings, and other innovations are rapidly placing different demands and presenting new opportunities for managers that many legacy solutions simply can’t keep up with.
In this case, the legacy system was not only struggling to meet performance needs but also had no long-term roadmap that could meet the company’s future plans.
In such situations, a review of the alternatives becomes inevitable – something you may be able to relate with. Every business will have its own functional priorities, and, in this case, the particular focus was on finding an EMS that had enhanced reporting and results functionality.
One feature of the “smart” era we’re now moving into is the availability of much more performance-related data that an EMS can harness to increase understanding of what’s going on in facilities and automate operations for greater cost control and energy efficiency. Most legacy EMS simply aren’t up to the task. It is simply not what they were designed for.
The Freedom to take control
NexRev Freedom was quickly found to have not only the broad functionality required for the modern era as described above but would also be able to duplicate the company’s corporate goals and policy standards across the portfolio.
Freedom gave the company the ability to save costs. The company found that NexRev could meet their requirements which included:
- The ability to easily make bulk changes across the multi-site portfolio.
- Drivers to allow direct programming into all HVAC units.
- The ability to integrate into any future hardware and software solutions.
- Remote access to control lighting, connect to signage, and adjust HVAC settings.
The key point here is that the “modern” EMS needs to be instantly responsive and remotely controllable. When this is the case, not only is system performance made more efficient, but costs are reduced because the need to send out technicians to make basic changes to the system is diminished if not altogether eliminated.
And the Freedom to get results
Fast forward and it’s easy to see how the decision to deploy a modern EMS has paid off. The company started achieving significant savings from being able to better manage its facilities in very short order. The numbers speak for themselves:
- Since Freedom’s deployment, the company has saved between 25% and 35% of relevant costs simply by integrating its thermostats with the solution, then leveraging the greater settings control doing so provides.
- The overall like-for-like savings when Freedom’s performance is compared to that of the legacy EMS are in the region of 10%-15%.
- Truck rolls (service calls) have been reduced by 5%-10% since Freedom’s implementation as a result of actions which can now be taken remotely. For every 100 calls, this means 5-10 return trips are eliminated, which the company believes is an average of 5 rolls per site per year.
To date, the company says it has significantly upgraded its facility management ability and processes. Functions that were once handled manually are now automated; different equipment can be managed centrally, and efficiency has increased in tandem with greater knowledge of equipment performance. Even better, a degree of futureproofing that didn’t exist before is now present. The ability to customize and adapt to the new generation of data driven models and IoT equipment that is proliferating in the retail industry is now a reality.
Of course, there’s a lot more to the story. How, for instance, was the Freedom solution deployed? What sort of working relationship was required for successful implementation? How long did the project take?
Getting the answers is easy. You can discover these – and more – in our new case study. Download “How does a national retail chain upgrade the energy management of outlets in multiple locations?” to learn more.
In conclusion…
NexRev’s solution has allowed the company to secure immediate and lasting savings by managing its many facilities far more efficiently. With reductions in energy costs, service calls, and better performance from its assets the company is much better placed to meet their commercial goals both now and the future.
At NexRev, we’ve been unlocking the power of facility and energy management data with over a million connected devices across North America. Our team of experts is focused on helping you deliver more with your budgets, infrastructure, and assets to create sustainable savings in operations and energy, reducing your risk and increasing operational confidence.
To begin a discussion on how we can help you to reduce energy waste please email us at