The Prize Recognizes Innovative Use of Real-Time Energy Management
Karl Anderson and Kristen Baker of Goldman Copeland’s Energy Team field questions from the judges of the Hackathon.
A team of Goldman Copeland energy engineers has won a $5,000 prize in the RTEM Hackathon 2022, organized by the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority (NYSERDA). In its prize-winning entry, Goldman Copeland proposed an innovative way of using data from real-time energy management (RTEM) systems deployed with assistance from NYSERDA at more than 300 million square feet of building space – primarily commercial office buildings – in New York. Goldman Copeland’s proposal would utilize data from the RTEM systems to accelerate adoption of district heating and cooling and its electrification in communities statewide.
District heating and cooling enables buildings located near each other, but with different functions, to offset their respective heating or cooling loads and benefit both from synergies in the buildings’ different energy requirements and from economies of scale. An office building that has peak heating and cooling requirements during the work day, for instance, could offset its usage with a multifamily residential building, whose peak times would be in the evening.
Goldman Copeland’s proposal used real-time energy data from NYSERDA to analyze energy usage and identify buildings that could benefit by partnering with each other. Goldman Copeland engineers analyzed the condenser water usage of a large commercial office building and calculated the potential energy savings from utilizing the domestic hot water (DHW) system of a typical multifamily building to reject heat from the condenser water system throughout the year.
The potential benefits involve both energy and financial savings. While infrastructure upgrades would be needed to implement such a partnership, the cost of upgrades could be offset by energy savings, reduced maintenance, and financial incentives provided by governments and/or utilities.
District heating and cooling is a technique that should be considered by property managers, as they seek to reduce their carbon footprint and their energy costs. If you would like to speak with one of Goldman Copeland’s prize-winning energy engineers about this approach, please contact Sarah Ingber at [email protected].
