Buildings IOT / Macerich

Project Overview

Macerich, a leading real estate investment trust focused on the retail sector, faced challenges in reducing energy consumption without impacting guest comfort at properties across the country. While Macerich was already tech-enabled in most aspects of its operations, corporate management was interested in delivering advanced capabilities for remote management and automated energy savings without overloading its operations team with too many unprioritized work orders. The automated demand management (ADM) program provided by Buildings IOT through trusted and long-term Macerich partner OTI offered the exact amount of automation, oversight, and incentive that Macerich sustainability executives sought.

Project Scope

• Deploy automated demand management through an on-site gateway to collect, normalize, historize, and run analytics against real-time airside equipment data.

• Benchmark site consumption and provide a projection of energy savings to track progress against.

• Deliver a front-end for both management and operators to manage the program with the ability to enroll and unenroll equipment, adjust setpoints, and pull back on efforts when necessary to ensure guest comfort is never compromised.

• Utilize fault detection and diagnostics to identify issues that disqualify equipment from participating in the ADM program and give specific direction to operations teams to fix those issues so that executives can realize the predicted level of savings or more.

‍Why It's Important

Very few examples of advanced supervisory control are being executed at scale right now. Technologies similar to Building IOT’s offering have existed for a while, but there are always horror stories of automations that run rote algorithms without understanding how equipment is actually operating. What's innovative and important about the Buildings IOT approach is that it includes operator insights and actual equipment data at every step. Benchmarks are built on the actual operation of each piece of equipment within the enrolled building, setpoints are adjustable, the equipment can be enabled or disabled from the ADM program at any time, and it's all transparent to the executive team in a way that's easy to understand - dollars saved, kWh saved, equipment disabled, issues resolved. It provides new incentives for the operations team to fix issues that have existed for a long time but were previously undiscovered or deemed unimportant. Finally, it delivers results that are felt throughout the organization without impacting the customer's core business - in Macerich's case, the shopping experience.

The Future

Ten buildings are currently enrolled, with an average of $50,000 in annual energy savings achieved at each site. Macerich is achieving additional savings in maintenance costs avoided as operational practices, like fans running 24/7, are eliminated in response to the energy savings projections provided by the ADM program. Based on the success of these sites, Knudsen and his team at Macerich will continue expanding the deployments across other high-value properties.

‍
Learn more about Buildings IOT.