GPG Outbrief 08 - Socially Driven HVAC Optimization
Everyone, and welcome today's webinar, on socially, driven HVAC optimization. And, we'll get started shortly but. Before we do so I'm andreas Silvestri, and I'll be walking through, a. Few, webinar. Logistics. Today's. Webinar is based on a report by Oak Ridge National Laboratory, and you can find the full report, as well as two. Summary documents, that synthesize, the results, at four page findings, and a one-page infographic. At. GSA gov. It's. Also a webinar, that's one in a series it's our eighth webinar, and the. Next webinar in January, we'll be hosting a webinar on, to next-generation, chillers, the. Variable speed magnetic, bearing chiller and the variable, speed direct, drive screw chiller and a. Recent report assess, both chillers, at the Yates Federal Building in Washington, DC and it's, now, available, at, gsa.gov as, well in. February, will hold a webinar on advanced, power strips and plug load control, and this, will talk, about our report, that was released in 2012. As well as recent, more. Recent, research in the field in. March our webinar. Will feature the honeycombs solar thermal collector, and this, collector, is particularly, effective, for solar hot water systems, that don't have a storage tank. April's. Webinar, will discuss electrochromic. Windows, GPG. Has just released two, reports, by Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, and, those are also available at GE on, gsa.gov. Flash, GPG, another. Thing to note is that all, the, past webinar, recordings, as well as the recording for this webinar will, be available and, they're posted on this on the website. GPG. Webinars, offer one continuing, education, learning, unit through the American, Institute of Architects, to, receive credit you can, complete the post webinar survey, if, you don't receive the survey you can reach out directly to, Michael Hobson. During. The, webinar all. We. Have all, participants. Your lines are muted but. You can answer and, ask, questions here at the right side of your window in the chat window and you.
Don't Need to wait to the end of the presentation, to do so in fact we encourage you, to submit questions well, in advance of the Q&A and now. Let's get started Mike Lowell will, be facilitating. Today's presentation. Thank. You Andrea welcome. Everyone. And. Andre and next slide. As. The slide said I'm Mike Lowell I'm a project manager with the green lipped RGS a proving ground program, you. Can see now on the screen the agenda. The. Agenda here. Hoping. If he makes it well, Kevin Powell the director of the program overview, as UPG if, he does not make it in time I will. Give that presentation, after. That we'll have Dan Howard which, a National Laboratory who was a principal investigator, for. This study present. His findings for. The testing of this technology. After. That we'll have Gabriel, Sanchez and, Mark Levi both, people. In the field that, are. Utilized. Technology, and we're also, in the region where the test was located get, us on the ground feedback, and lastly we'll have a Q&A session, it. Will last about 15 minutes well you can provide your questions. In. The, chat and we will go, through those questions respond with questions at the end of the presentation. Next. Slide. And. I didn't look who's Kevin made it or is it up to me I think. Kevin you're with us can, you. Can. We hear it but we don't hear you. Let's. See. So Kevin. Give. Me it send me a chat we're not hearing anything right now. Oh hello. Yes. We can hear you now okay. There, we go alright well hello everybody, and. I, want to you know again just say thanks, for joining this letter now our next slide okay. Yeah. So just a few quick words I am, of course the director of the, emergent technology program, at. GSA. This. Program, has a couple, of different, tracks, one the. Proving ground program which takes, in next-generation, technologies. Evaluates, them in the real world context. Of our buildings, that's. What we're largely presenting, today and then we also have a pilot, to portfolio, program this. Enables, us to, really leverage. What, we learn from those technology. Evaluations. And deploy. The. Most effective, technologies, across our portfolio next, slide. Just. You know what key sort, of premise, of the program and. Again I think you'll see that in the case of this, particular technology, that. We're going to talk about there's. A really, rich pipeline, of innovation. On, the R&D, side and, there's some really cool things that came out of UC, Berkeley that, really are the underpinnings for this technology. That we're going to talk about but. Getting that technology, into. Full, commercial maturity. Where it you know it's got market acceptance, and it's got full. Fledged market, pricing, that. Is the challenge and of course the other challenge, is that when we have facilities, there's, a you, know there's a fair amount of. But. There risk adverse is, basically, the bottom line, so. GPG. Helps, bridge that gap establishing. Confidence, that these technologies, work, in the real world of our operating. Buildings, and as you can see here, today. We we've, deployed nine of those technologies. That have proved out and it's, really some rather significant. Can saving. Well. That's not good okay next slide. On. Your majorly, cutting, out. Well. Let me talk super. Quickly since my audio is terrible. And. I. Don't know how to fix that but. Basically, you can see on the will, just actually say, that it's a it's a child it's a it's a rigorous process, to be accepted, into the g PG program next slide. And. With that, will. Bring our. Our. Colleague, Dan Malik. On. To. Onto, the presentation. Good. Morning good afternoon everybody depending. On which time zone you're in. Hello. We. Hear you okay, good yeah my. Name is Dan Howard I was the principal, investigator on, this project. And. This was a very interesting project, next, slide please Andrea.
This. Project, or this technology. This, socially, driven HVAC. Optimization. Was, selected, in 2013. For the GSA proving, ground program. Throughout. This talk I'll toss out the term comfy, when referring to this technology. It. Was one of the trade, names or nicknames given to the technology, it's, just a whole lot easier to save and socially driven HVAC, optimization. The. Vendor for this company is called building robotics, they are based in Oakland California. At, the time when, they entered the proving ground program there were three individuals, the founders, they've, now grown to 60. Plus employees in two different cities, this. Evaluation, was conducted, in 2014. At the federal bankruptcy court house in Phoenix Arizona and. As. A note. I've. Been working with the green for, the GSA proving ground program since the beginning and, I have to say that this is the technology that has taken me from the greatest data skepticism. To, proving that it actually worked on what's, called the techno a, quote videogame, thermostat. At the. Kickoff meeting but. Then I felt really bad because Andrew, Steven and Lindsay were sitting right there but. At the end of the day I have to go where data leads and their, brainchild really. Did work as promised. Next. Slide please. To. Understand how comfy works I think it's important, to talk about how current, space. Temperature control, happens. Basically. Buildings, are set or, spaces, are set to operate within a dead band if, they get too hot they get cooled down if they. Get too cold they, get heated up but, the temperature bounces, around or. Fluctuates, between. A high point and a, low point and there's. Occupied, on occupied schedules, maybe there's an occupancy sensor, but, still there's two numeric, temperatures, involved. Next. Slide please. Temperature. Current temperature management from an occupants, perspective. Kind. Of follows these four steps, if. There are still thermostats. On the wall if the, occupants too hot or too cold they. Can get up they can adjust the thermostat. Until. That gets readjusted, by another co-worker or a building, staff. Most. Thermostats, on the walls are not accessible, by an occupant, in that case the occupant, if they're too hot or too cold they, have to enter a work order they wait for the building staff they. Wait they wait they wait until, a, lot of times step. Number three comes involved, if. They can the occupant, goes opens, up a window or, they buy an electric heater or they put on a sweater, the. Staff wonders about energy usage, the, occupants get grumpy and. Heaven. Forbid that there be a cute farm where. The debate has to happen, option. One or two is used to try. To get to the space, temperature selected. In the. Loser of the debate they. Open a window where they buy the heater, next. Slide please. Here. Is how comfy, is different, and I, don't want to leave this slide until, folks really understand. It. Kunti, works from the premise, that if, occupants, has, a direct, and immediate control. Of. Their space conditions. That. They will be more comfortable under. A wider range of conditions you know though their bodies will. Be comfortable, if it's a little bit hotter or a little bit colder. The. Way this premise gets implemented, is that, the occupants, they. Use either. A desktop app, or an, app on their mobile device and. If. They are too hot or they are too cold. They. Can send. A message, of too. Hot or too cold. Into. The app and. They. Will receive within their space an immediate. 10-minute, stream of warm or cool air to address their condition, now. When we were commissioning, this, system, out in the Phoenix courthouse we. Walked around to the different spaces, with with, the technology, vendor they. Would enter. The. Too hot or too cold message. With. Their mobile app and. Truly. Immediately. Within, 10 seconds, we. Could hear and feel, we had to listen closely but. We could hear the, Vav boxes, opening, to full open and. Applying. Aundrea, it just says my screen is saying the connection is lost can you still hear me.
And. I don't see the screen. Okay. I've. Got a hard copy here we'll just wing it not, sure what happened probably on my end. Anyways. As we were commissioning, the system. The. Vendors would. Put in the - too hot or too cold signal. Within. 10 to 20 seconds, we would. Detect. The pulse of the. Cool air coming out of the Vav boxes, that went full open and that, would last for 10 minutes. In. The background, and. This. Is the key part of comfy is while. The occupants, are, giving. Feedback of too hot or too cold and. Getting their immediate needs met with these bursts of air the. Technology. Is constantly, adjusting. The temperature to. Save energy. Adjusting. It to different set points. That. Is the core of what comfy, does. Next. Slide please. Should. Say how it works on the top. Okay. Thank you. This. Is just a graphic that comes from. The. Comfy advertising, literature it, really communicates, the point that the, user the occupants, have this mobile app they are sending a signal directly to the VMS, that directly, impacts, the, Vav boxes serving the area there, are no work orders involved, there's not even a getting up and walking to the wall to adjust the thermostat. Next. Slide please. As. I. Said this test was conducted at, the US Bankruptcy Court House in Phoenix Arizona, it. Is important to note that during the test we not only tracked, conventional, metrics such, as temperatures, the, number of too hot or too cold work orders or. The maintenance required, on the building staff we. Also engaged. The. Lab. Anthropologist. To, measure how the occupants, reacted, to the technology, her, area of expertise, is human, machine interaction. The. Final report was 82, pages long which, is about triple, what a normal proving, ground report is but. About two-thirds of that report, were findings, that came from, the human side of the. Project. Next. Slide please. The. Test plan and a snapshot of the result. This. Graph looks somewhat crowded but. It shows the space temperature, from, a representative space. During. The time span when the comfy system, went active, we, have been documented baseline, temperatures. Comfy. Way active, in, two. To three weeks later we, noticed that the temperature in that space, had, shifted, about two degrees on average. To. A more energy-saving point. This. Is the data that started me thinking, yes. This video game thermostat, really did work. Now. Of course the skeptic in me is thinking okay find, the, space is now at a warmer average temperature, I know we are saving them saving. Energy, but. Are the occupants, still, comfortable, and happy, next. Slide please. This. Is some of the survey data and we took quite extensive. Surveys. And interviews of. People, and, of occupants. The. Bottom line is that. The, people within this facility the occupants. Not. Only were they more comfortable. When. The company system was active, they. Also found it a very easy system, to use. There. Were very very few complaints with, you. Know gee, this is awkward this is hard etc etc etc. Gabriel. Sanchez he, will talk more about this, because. He had he. Was the front line person actually interacting, with people. And. I see it on the questions, one, question about how does this work in a yacht in. A cubical space of. What it does is it actually surveys, occupants, and, it. Makes selections, based on that. It's. A voting device and again gave more, information, on that ID. Please. As. I. Said earlier one of the things we tracked was maintenance, requirements. Of. Course we were tracking number of cold calls and number of hot calls and this. Is these are not the calls where somebody typed in the app I'm too hot or too cold these. Are the times when somebody actually. Requested. A work order that, a maintenance, person had to come out and respond. The, situation actually, check on a hardware condition or something like that. The. Number of work orders requested, dropped by over half. Once. The technology, was installed. Next. Slide please. We. Wanted to assess, what, would be the overall impact. Of this technology. Would. It be economically, viable based, upon energy savings, so. What we did is we did some energy modeling we used the standard models, that were developed by pnnl for. Small medium and large office, buildings, we. Looked, at them and I. Think it was a total of 15 different cities in the different climate zones, we. Started from the premise of okay since, we witnessed the 2 degree change.
In Temperature set point, if. The deadband would, expand. By 2 degrees in both the heating site in the cooling side how much energy potentially. Could be saved, what. We found was on average about 20%. Coid energy savings, across. The board. Next. Slide please. As. I said we looked at a lot of different cities a. Lot, of different utility rates climate, zones things, like that. One. Important, note these, energy savings that we modeled and we have up here on this slide they. Do not include onm, savings, they, do not include energy, savings, that may come from, the reduction, of personal, fans and heaters and open windows, it. Also does not, attempt. To document, any increased, productivity, that, may result from increased, thermal comfort. That. Is one item that, the vendor purported. As a benefit of their technology, it's. Extremely, hard to measure and document that. Particular item so, we took it out of out. Of the project as far as something that we wanted to measure, now. We need to note here that. At. The time the. Company of, building robotics, they were still new they. Were quite, honestly still working to figure out their pricing structure. Based. Purely, on energy. Savings, and energy cost savings at, the time this. Technology, was. Not economically. Viable it. Was saving energy but. Not in a way that was cost-effective. However. There, were a lot of other benefits that, the building experienced. And. Gave girl we'll talk more about it during his portion. Next. Slide please. Hi. Everyone my name is Gabriel. Sanchez I'm, currently be smart, village program, manager, for region, 6 however. At the time this technology was being tested I was out in part, of region 9 and was. Definitely heavily, involved with this technology, so I wanted to share some of my experiences. With. The use of this technology, next. Slide. So. One of the biggest hurdles that we found, basically. With the use of this technology was. Getting the tenant signed in to the correct location. Many, of the tenants they know that they would come to the office building, they know they got off in the seventh floor they know that they went to a particular, room in the area but many of them didn't know you. Know exactly what, Vav. Controlled, their space so, it's kind of a little bit of a logistics that we had to work out to. Get people signed on into, the correct area. But. Once they were signed up users. Could access the, application, either from, the. The web interface on a website or, typically, using an app on their, phone it. Was an app that was downloaded then they would sign in, indicate. What area they belong to and, then they were pretty much into the system as. A question that was brought up but, yes so there was a particular. App that. Was available for both the. The. Apple interface and the, Google, interface as well, next. Slide. So. The technology. Itself offered, two different control modes and we got to test both of them the. One I'm going to talk about first is the standard mode essentially. This is a pre-programmed. Offset. That gets put into the system. And the setpoint will never adjust, itself from there boring. The feedback that.
With. The exception of the feedback that's coming in from the. User interface so. If the, two degree swing jumped, up we'll just take a starting, point of seventy-six degrees there, it. Will not actually adjust itself from there periodically, throughout the day until, the, user would implement, some, sort of command indicating, whether or not they were too old too, hot or too cold in, Phoenix for the most part. It. It, is a warmer, climate so. From, those parts a lot of it was cooling in quests however. It's. Still a desert it does get cold so there was heating commands that could be come in during the winter as well so. The standard mode never actually deviated, from that top, set point it. Would just adjust. Itself for when users, would provide that feedback now. The other learning the other mode which is learning mode there's actually kind of a neat function, we. Tested, this you, know for a long period of time and it actually offered, you, know quite, a great response. You. Know overall. Throughout. The day people. Would indicate whether or not they are too cold and too hot and the system in learning mode will actually record, this. Information, and will adjust itself, as it, notices, trends, so for the next few days if it notices around say 11 o'clock everybody's. Saying that they are too hot then. It's, going to automatically, adjust itself, down, to. Automatically. Accommodate, for that 11 o'clock time, the. Downside. To that was, if people. Would go on vacations. There, would be no requests coming in the system would automatically, start adjusting, itself back up there, wasn't a way to kind of put it in vacation, mode to, accommodate, for that or maybe a long holidays, for the entire facility, center motor learning mode had its advantages and a couple of disadvantages. The. Technology, itself for just a set point in the background, you, can imagine you, can manually adjust the upper and lower ends so in other words. Next. Slide. So in. Other words we would get data from, users. Which. Would tell us how many requests, were coming in per particulars. Own and with, that if we notice that there were some areas that had, a lot of requests, then, it. Would enable kind of give us a profile to adjust the temperature a little bit differently in that area areas, that were not getting a lot of requests it also provided us the data you know say, for example if no request came in it would let us know that this area we could probably warm, it up another half a degree so we would actually make some adjustments, to squeeze out some additional, energy savings, doing that. We. Also had a couple users, that, were. Maybe. Thought the system was a video game and would sit there and press it all day every day every minute every second. And so. We got we. Got that end of it and the system still only. Took into account one. Click for every 10 minutes so. If the user particularly, said that they were cold regardless. Of the amount of times they hit that they were too cold for the first 10 minutes, it.
Would Still on the record the first one and it, would have to wait till the next cycle before it would pick up an additional click, there, was no way to kind of trick, the system in the remaining, into a cooler, state it had to consistently, being you. Know told. That it was you, know too hot or too cold in particular, and in the learning mode it would start to adjust for that and we would see areas. Kind of taper off in learning mode so, while one area this week had an excessive. Amount of it clicks once a system learn. That particular, you. Know pattern the following week we'd notice a decrease in the amount of clicks as well so in learning mode had definitely offered an advantage. The. Data provided us with a lot. Of different, information as, well, so, in. One particular instance, with. The amount of clicks that were coming in indicating that the space was too cold space was too cold space was too cold during. The heating season we. Ended up going in physically. Verifying, to find out that we had a thermostat, that was reading. Far, beyond, the normal. Range that we can adjust it so, in that particular case it let us know that. There was a thermostat, broken, so it's kind of a. A third, party auditor per se letting us know how the space is actually doing, which, would prompt an actual. Service call that we can utilize to, dig. Into it a little bit further an investigate, next, slide. Bottom. Line is, we. Kind of Lymon aided a lot of false hot and cold calls, there. Was a lot of occupants, that would be reporting, I thought they were too hot or too cold and, in. The instance where it's covering a large area for example that, there are say. It's it's a group setting and we. Have an open office space location. Maybe six people are sitting in there or however many it might, be for that particular zone if. One person indicated that they were too hot or too cold, the. System was smart enough to know to, poll the other users, the other five users in this instance, to ask, them whether or not they are too or too hot or too cold as well, so. In that particular instance one, person initiated, the to cold call we'll say for this example and, the other ones the, other users, would indicate I'm, comfortable, so you had the option of too, hot too cold or uncomfortable, if.
They Indicated they were comfortable. And the other users, the other five users indicated, the same way the system would not actually accept, that too cold request. And the system would remain in the same state, so. You. You. Always have that location, that has certain users that are, always too cold always too hot and this kind of helped mitigate that without, anybody else stepping in normally. You know we get a call us because one user in that particular, area and I know as a former technician. I would, kind of ask the other users hey it's. A too hot in here we got a call and I. There be times where I get, feedback of saying no it feels great in here so, this system kind of handled that by itself. And. There. Was no other people that needed to get involved with that so that was definitely a benefit, with. The use of this technology during, that period. Next. Slide. So. In. Addition, to some, of the energy savings that were. That, did appear from, from. The use of the technology, there started to appear some ancillary, benefits. That came, out of this use of this technology and. One, in particular was, the increase, in our tenant satisfaction scores. Over. The average thermal comfort in their particular area, so we. Just wanted to throw some data out there just to kind of give everybody an. Idea of kind of how it worked but prior. To the installation of, the, technology, we had a tenant satisfaction score. Of 3.2, related, to tenant satisfaction, and, after. The technology, was put in place we climbed all the way up to 4.3. I can. Tell you from personal experience. Talking. With the tenant they. Were happy, they were great they had control over their space it, may have been a temporary, relief, of cool air or, temporary. Warm up but, that gave them me the benefit, of feeling, comfortable, and giving, them the ability to adjust the temperature in their particular, space and, once. The technology was, removed. We, can see that the tenant, satisfaction, scores actually. Dropped to the point to, where they were worse off than, we were in the beginning. Probably. Because we gave him a taste of something great and they. Didn't like it once it was removed however the reasoning being it, was definitely, an improvement, so. In our particular case, there's. Definitely, an, added benefit to the additional costs, associated on top of the energy savings in the, fact that you, know we're doing you, know providing, great. Benefit to our tenants I. Can, say from, my personal experience is a you know an actual technician, from the field you know our our primary purpose for an HVAC system is really tenant, comfort, it's. Also there for cooling. Down you. Know additional, spaces like data centers and stuff like that but really the primary purpose is for tenant comfort this. Offers the ability to not only save, some energy but, provide that LED that tenant, comfort that we need to focus on when it relates. To, the. HVAC system so, this provided, ancillary, benefits, on a couple different levels next. Slide. So. As far as cost effective is I know I touch bases on that you, know in within the federal government we occupy, our buildings for, ten hours a day by, days a week, whereas, facilities, that operate per, se on a 24/7. Operation they're, going to get more of a benefit from this financially. Because the additional energy savings, involved, with the added hours of operation. Being. For, the federal government we didn't get to see all those, additional, cost savings benefits, but there was definitely cost savings benefit, on the energy savings, just with, the use of this technology on.
Top Of that we. Definitely had a reduction, in hot and cold calls. Essentially. We cut those in, little over half and. However. You know because the O&M contracts, and the pricing being fixed we didn't actually see financial benefit, from that however, there was definitely, you, know a reduction, in costs as it, relates to, you. Know hot and cold calls in our. Contractors. Coming in to take a look at that and then, some of the things that we did find out with our tenants as well as some of the tenant agreements that we did had in place kind. Of limited our ability to change some of those set, points so, we couldn't take advantage of a full, two degree additional, deadband that we would be able to in other areas, so that was something to take into consideration as. Well. Next. Slide. An. Additional, benefit that we found which was definitely a tenant preference here is the, technology was really geared towards your tenants and. When. You talk to them and you hear the feedback from them it was great I know I mentioned that before but. Honestly that was a huge benefit, that we got you, know when we would talk to our tenants everybody. Enjoyed the technology, they liked having that additional ability, and we. Showed that in our tenant satisfaction scores. We, can't put a you know an energy savings, you, know dollar attached to that however it's definitely, a benefit, and definitely. A value, in terms of some, additional cost we've spent towards achieving that marker as well and, one. Additional benefit, is because, of all the data that we were receiving from this particular system, we. Were. Able to kind of develop, an. Entire. Building profile. That. Was. Geared towards, a tenant. So. Normal, we try and build our you. Know HVAC, profiles, around, typical, cooling simpler set points and whatnot, but, we were building profiles, based on the actual tenants, and their personal preferences, and then added a lot of valuable. Feedback as well. Next. Slide. Levi. You're gonna talk a little bit about your experience, with trying, to get. The technology into, the Pacific, Rim. In, gredin him first. Slide. So. My. Part of this is pretty bleep this was thinking a couple minutes um I was basically given the assignment of after all the positive, things was said to throw the wet towel at the end. Following. The the test, project in Phoenix, we. Sort of tried to do two things one was to extend, use of the system at Phoenix and the other was to. Do a second, company. Installation. Which. Would be part of an ESB C it was actually a phase DSP, C so we were obtaining. The second phase, then, we went into two problems, one. Was, that for the ESP C in particular. The. The cost of the system was rather high the, instead. Of buying, use. Of the software in the application, and.
Then Basically having it an amortized not the cost over the years. Company. At least at that time I'm not sure that that, time was working. On a per square foot per. Year, licensing. Model so. You'd have to pay by the number of square feet over which you were using the system had, a certain a certain cost, and pay, that who'ii year and, that. Simply, was very expensive, especially, with the large building, attended to add up to B to be quite a bit there wasn't any real economy, of scale built into the pricing model at the time. Now. That was coupled with a second, problem which was being. A combination of a new technology combined. With being. Driven really by occupant. Occupant, conduct, as opposed. To something that's easier to calculate it. Wasn't really financeable, as a guaranteed, savings, so. We could ask we could do estimated, savings we could say it looks like it's gonna save but we, couldn't guarantee the, savings within the SPC and the, TSP see is you need you, certainly guaranteed, savings because, that's what lets you fund. It with the loan now, on a smaller you know and on a modest scale we, could sort of bury it with a lot of other stuff and not have to guarantee so that didn't have to literally stop us it probably, would have prohibited us from doing, a really large-scale but we could have been as nice tough measure, for you know some floors of a building. What, actually killed us completely, was, IT security. GSA. Takes IT security you, know very seriously which. Is a good thing basically. But. It can be rather ownerless for especially for smaller smaller. Company of a start-up. To. Get the system cleared, they, would have had first, of all had the, hardwood device. Scanned. And, remediated, basically they, central. Office runs it through a scanning. Process finds. Vulnerabilities. As well as reviewing, all the pranic, literature and then. They have to work off work. Off the vulnerabilities. And have to have the device we scanned and so forth the process that typically takes around, six months to do and, a certain amount of times on the part of the part. Of the contractor. Secondly, the, software application would also have to go to a similar, process and. That. Takes more time also because often. Those finding some inquiringly programming, and. Then the third issue in this particular case, is, that. This. The. Gsa. Is sort of secures, its building automation stuff within. A sector beal and it's basically walled off from the rest of the GSA Network. So. You can't actually get hat, most, of the bas systems from the outside, except, to certain certain. Very narrowly defined methods. In. Which you have to have a GSA IT. Account. So. But. Here because all, these personnel, from other agencies, have, to be able to access, system, it's treated as publicly facing it's sort of like treated, as. An. Automation system that supposed to be in this secure Network but actually. Has to face the public and. That creates a whole bunch more security issues, certainly. Not impossible to do it it's done but that. Has to be tested and. We've, gotten to compliance, and that could be fairly freely owners so, essentially there was a fairly onerous process but, they had to go through and comfy, just, declined. To do it they, basically said they couldn't cope with it and then pulled out so, that's the, first problem we could have gotten around to some extent but the second problem we, simply couldn't and. As. Far as I know that's, that's where things still remain today yummy company is not building. Robotics, as matically, to the. GSA IT security process. And. In their defense that, should point out that while the IT security is, you. Know a good and necessary saying, the. Federal government is a little bit inefficient how, it does it's in that every agency is doing this on their own it has totally different ways of doing it so, if a company goes through all this with GSA it doesn't help them a bit with Veterans, Administration.
Defense. Department or anything else it's just. It. Only gets it into GSA and then, process, of you know every three years you have to do some degree of doing. It all over again so, it's a fairly onerous process, and. Difficult. For small you know smaller companies to really handle. So. As far as I know because, of this unless building, robot exchanges in mind move. That process the. System simply cannot be used in GSA, you know as of today. Okay. I think that's all. Okay. Thanks, Andrea, this. Question is from Richard, is. There any work being directed to the optimization, of refrigeration, and freezer units. As. Contrasted, from air conditioning by, GSA. Kevin I don't know I'm trying to think off the top of my head I. Can't. Forgive anything, do you wear anything I am, not aware of anything at all no is, the answer. Okay. I just stand. Out at Oakridge we have a group that's looking at refrigerator, and freezer stuff, if you'd like to contact me offline. Thanks. Dan. Next, we go Kobus, who asked what happens after 10 minutes of temperature, adjustment, and, the, answer is temperature setpoint would, resume where it was prior. To the temporary adjustment. Truex. Asks. How. Would this fit with cybersecurity I mean app that axis the BI yes GSA. Network and, is as. Mark shared it's. Kind of an owner as well it's, if we see it as a vulnerability, and. At. This time it is a vulnerability, that hasn't, been addressed so I. Think, mark did a pretty good job of showing that you where. That puts the issue now. One thing I mentioned, but I should mention is that for. The test project in Caen Phoenix, essentially. IT granted. A. Then. They sort of waived the normal requirements, so this was put in without any, of the normal security stuff, being done but we couldn't be them keep the system going or do it anyplace else without. Running it through the normal security procedures. Great. Thanks. I'm. Jose asked, good, for private but what about open area and as, Dan indicated, you know this is and, was, used in open areas and it kind of takes a holistic. Approach kind of taking votes from those people, in the in. The cooling or heating zone. You. Know asked. Is a telephone, app and also desktop, and yes it can be used for telephone laptop. And desktop. Jason. Asked. Would. You need building, Wi-Fi, and the answer is no that's used with, cellular, service or the, in. The case of laptop or desktop, of course whatever, network. Is in place in the building. Tina. Asked, will this be, available for customers and personal, devices or GSA, approved devices. And. It's. A question of hard answering there currently and within. GSA because of the IP issues, we don't plan to deploy it in the near term in GSA, in. The case of other, federal. Agencies, likely. The. Applicant, in this case building. Robotics would have to go to an IT security process, so frankly, that's a question probably. For. The answer later. April. Asked would this be something better suited for new construction, or the, implementing, existing, systems and we. Found that actually it'd be great for either scenario. Of. Course it, would also be private dependent, and it would probably be as a project project but we see it as a plain possibility. Aside. From the IT issues, for either type of project. Jonathan. Asks. Not. Following this question let's move on and maybe someone. Carolyn. You can. Put. Something there but not live, in Tina's question. Here on thinking. This happy breed stretched GSA, idea have any concerns about security and, as we've said before. IT. Security is a major concern for this technology. John, Carson, asked probably missed this being discussed during that slide but. What, was the basis for determining which, cities, would best be suited to this technology, dan. I might, just ask you to maybe talk a little bit about your modeling. I. Don't. Know that, was. The question about. Modeling. Or was the question in how focused. On how did we select Phoenix. The. Reason we landed at the Phoenix. We. Went through the usual selection. Process, you, know when we try to find a demonstration, site we worked with the vendor. What. Sort of, it. To. Find what would make a good site. The. Facility, had to have a Vav, system, which the Phoenix facility had. It. Had to have a. Site. Staff that was eager and receptive, I don't. Remember. All the criteria but, that's how we chose Phoenix as to. How we chose the cities, those. Were just representative, large cities, within. Each of the climate zones we, went for a variety of climates a variety of utility, rates. We. Took the buildings the building models and. We. Just wanted a representative, picture. Thanks. Pam Sean. Asks. I'm. Sorry Gary, asks, is, there some people, effect, with this and. Our answer was there was a difference in request as we toggled through standard, and learning mode and, learning, mode as the temperature was adjusted, in mind of request decreased this.
Helped, To address the placebo effect I'm, Dan I don't know if you want to say anything more about that I. Yeah. I appreciate that Mike I saw that question when it came up. Dr.. Wolf our anthropologist. Was. Actually, you. Know quite concerned, about the placebo effect. You're. Basically, if. We give people this device. Would. They be comfortable, even if the temperature never changed, or anything like that which. Is a. Documented. Effect of you. Know that can happen sometimes. What. We concluded, those we are going forward with this is, you. Know this device when. You give it to somebody and, you. Use it. Number. One you. Know like Gabriel, said there, was a lot more occupant. Satisfaction. And that's really where the placebo effect you. Know would, appear most but. Because we were also tracking temperatures, we, documented, that the temperatures changed, too by. Documenting, that the temperatures, were changing, we know that energy was being saved. So. You. Know yes, we thought about it, but. At the end of the day the, issues that we documented, where. Occupants, happy, was, energy being saved, we. Had to go where the data let us it was yes on both accounts. Thanks. Dan dawn. Asks how, large of the zones and AAA issues. In. This particular building, there were several side zones that were tested anywhere. From my single office through large open space, open. Office, spaces don't. Have an exact number of occupants but if, they're greatly, within the test area. Shino. Asks, you. Stated if one click to ten minutes because that's a member to be adjusted, lower or higher. And, cooling, it adjust the temperature per 10 minutes to supply a burst of coal air and heating. It would do the same to supply warm air and areas. That only offered cooling, only. Getting. Requests would turn off all air flow prepare, to ten minutes to allow space to naturally, warm up. Next. Question, like crawl answer users, log in or just enter this space they are sitting, if. You log in and program the area they work in once they log in their space is already programmed if. They move locations permanently. They will need to contact the company to have a location tested. Gabriel. I saw a slide in your presentation too spoke to business or anything like that. Sounds, about right to me actually yeah, I don't know if there were further questions but I can get in torn details people would like. I. Was. Going to let her maybe address that now that's. What she's on and. Has. Anything changed since, the study Lindsay, or your thinking your. Policy, your pricing. When. It goes for the whole shebang. Yeah. Maybe I'll just say certainly, the pricing, has evolved, a little bit especially. For, larger buildings we've managed.
To Get, our costs down so that allows, us to get, the price down as, well of, deploying, to larger buildings which I think makes it more scalable the. Cyber security question is absolutely so our challenges, and. And, I have to say I think it's a sort of a partnership, question. Between us and clients. That we have to evaluate every time we go into a new. Client. Arrangement, which. Is really, just that different. Clients have different types of requirements, for cybersecurity, so, we work with a lot of large tech companies, Google. Salesforce. Microsoft. Those kinds of companies and. We have managed to get through their cybersecurity, reviews, we have done a number of cyber, security certifications. In the past couple of years and. Have. That. I think has helped us really be set up you, can actually see on our website we have a trust center now that details, some of those some. Of those improvements, but. It, is still a very onerous process the federal government approval process is probably, a lot more. Significant. Than those. Which. Is you know interesting, and I think to. Me I'll just I. Will say it's, not always a question, of how rigorous serve you is. Counsel. Yurok receives are quite different. So. We. Have managed to get through I think some pretty rigorous reviews, of cyber security for different types of companies thanks as well I will say we've gotten through we have a couple of banks, that are clients of ours but the federal government one looked a little bit too too, time-consuming, for, our still. Relatively. Small team to get through. Thanks. Lindsay Gary, asks is this technology been explored for IEQ and it was not in this test case, some. Additional parameters that need to be fed into sip to accommodate, a complete Q approach, I'm Lindsay I don't know if you've. Explored, that or been asked that by others. I. Will, certainly say that it's one of my, passions and one of the reasons we started the company to, add layers, of information, about, buildings, and allow occupants, to use. That information to choose where they locate. Them to operate. The building better so things, like you. Know understanding, co2 and, gathering co2 data from sensors in the space or particulate. Matter or those kinds, of things our. Aspirations. Are ours over time we would love to have, that data plug. It's, just to. Complete. That picture acoustics. As well.all mentioned and lighting these. Are all areas where we see an opportunities, for. Gathering. That information having. It collected, and used, to help people choose and I won't go into other details about all, that would work but it's certainly on our long-term vision. Right. Thanks I think. Chris asks did you consider using the data to group all ha call people and cold paul cold, call people together and this. Was discussed, but not explored further, there. Was a lot of valuable data being provided as part of the system you, know we just discussed but not pursued, Richard. Asked I can add a little bit to that if you don't mind sure. So. One. Of the things that has valued the most about this system especially, a partnership. With billing robotics at the time was the amount of data, that, they were providing, us, it. Was just phenomenal data. When. I you, know you want to say a time said it was kind of overwhelming, but the amount of information that they were provide, in. Terms of this entire process was just amazing. It, allowed us to look, and, approach. How we do HVAC. Control to tenants, on a whole, new level and, for. That I just, want to praise building robotics, on on what they did and to be able to give that data. Thank. You thanks for that much. Appreciated and I will fail so we do have clients who would, you use that data that place people, and spaces that they might find comfortable, and for. Those of you that. Don't have comfy, I will just say. Anecdotally a lot of what we find is that people who run. Cold or who like like, it to be a little warmer put them on the south side of the building as you can obviously. That's not always a choice but. Advice for assess the people who run hot or maybe they wear you. Know three-piece, suits or something along those lines the north side of the building is always a better option, and certainly, the east as, well. Things. We. Should ask the person nearest to the vent might overact overreact. As compared, to others more. Remote from the vent was that considered this, was. The system allowed for us to consider mechanical, changes that needed the thermostat, we should want an example, I'm Gabriel I don't know if you. Want to well. Yeah. There. Was a lot of considerations, that we made depending on how the system actually react, and I know I find a touch basis, on one, of the previous questions right so in, that particular facility, our exterior, space or exterior, zones.
They. Actually had heat built into the boxes, and while. Our interior. Zones did, not so. It. Offered, a different perspective so when they they would indicate that they were too cold during the heating season the, box itself would actually just shut off so the airflow would temporarily shut, off and, and. We'd have to rely basically, on the natural, heat generation, of the computers, or personnel, in that area to warm up the space. When. That didn't work and no, there's there was too, much going on you, know in order to try and heat the space that's when we took into consideration should. We be moving you. Know how we treat, the mechanical, space and and so, the interior spaces we kind of changed. Minimum air clothes we made some additional changes, in. This in one particular, case we actually shut, a vent off, for. That particular area because the. The, tenant was just simply too cold regardless. Even in a zero mode we just couldn't get that space to warm up so the, system itself gave us a whole new perspective like I indicated, it before and we kind of tackle each issue you, know as they came up and. And. Whereas we hate if you have a vent that's directly blowing, on somebody say you, know it's too hot in the area and they, want to cool the space down. You. Kind of have to also rely on your tenants to self-monitor themselves, so in an all open, office space type. Of location, I believe, they change the seating on a couple. Of people to kind of accommodate that as well. Right. Thanks, Gabriel, we're. Running short on time so I'm going to zip, through the rest of the questions, the. DMC, this is a benefit, or burden both, in the beginning was a burden but as the system started to take over they saw the benefits. Jackass. 20%, savings seemed very high. Normal. Rule of thumb as to degrees would say, 6% is, 20% real you. Are correct the two degrees is an average of 6% for a 24-hour, period, however, the 20% was total savings. Jim. Asked you think there is any other way to save money. Somebody. Answered meeting rooms this is now in use on current revisions, of the software. They. Have it asked on the cooling side what, is the Delta between high, and low set points, depending. On the zone it varied from 4 to 6 degrees. Rebecca. Also asked with the same IT issues, persist, in a, leased location. I, don't. Know if we ever, the. Question I know I, don't. Know think that's that anyone else I can, probably answer that I if. It's a less if, the. Application. Is being hosted by the last sword not by the government then, no they would, not we. Will be imperious they're operating the spaces and you know finally own space, right. Thanks. I'll. Ask, admitting, is expenses, can you offer. Actual. Cost per person per square foot, dan. I don't know if we did, any kind of. Rotation. Like that yeah. This is Dan we did not break it down on a per person per square foot basis. Okay. Thanks, Jason. Asked would there be any benefit, to merge this technology, with NC MMS. It, can possibly be incorporated. Into Sky spark which is the platform we use the. Use of custom rules great. Option to explore. Michael. Asked if, the space is associated. With the usage account can they use it in that conference room or non. Permanent space ins. Gabriel. My mark Dan, any thoughts on that so. That that was something that you, know early on in, the early adoption of this technology we. I know we spoke to building. Robotics to see if that was an option and I believe your cur visions, of the software, now, have that capability is, that correct Lindsay.
Yes. That's correct. Great. Thanks. That's. It for the questions thank you everyone for both attending, and the questions I'm going to turn it back over to Andrea. Thanks. Mike and, so. We want everyone to know that a copy of the slides as well as a copy of this presentation will. Be posted shortly, on. Gsa.gov, GB. Flash gbg and to. Also remind you that right after, this webinar you will be receiving, an. Email with a very. Short five question post webinar survey if. You complete, that you, can receive continuing, education, credit if you don't receive the email please reach out to Michael Hobson and thanks. Again to everyone for being here, - for participating. In the webinar and, for the presenters, and. Hope. To see you next month. Thank. You.
2018-04-18 22:28
