Overview
According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, residential and commercial buildings represented 41% of total U.S. energy consumption in 2014. With current energy resources dwindling and legislative action looking to reduce energy consumption, organizations such as Jaguaar Corporation have been motivated to look for innovative, or smart, technologies that can be used in their buildings to improve energy supply sustainability, reduce greenhouse gas emissions, and reduce costs. Along with increasing the use of renewable energy resources in its buildings, Jaguaar Corporation has been placing more emphasis on improved coordination and management of building operations.
Optimizing Energy Consumption
While searching for solutions to implement a smart building automation system, Jaguaar Corporation decided to partner with Cougaar Software, Inc. (CSI), a leader in cognitive computing. While initially unsure of the cost of such technology, Jaguaar’s first year savings indicate that the Brilliant Building system will pay for itself in 3 years. Today, CSI’s technology for Brilliant Buildings is used to help monitor and control Jaguaar’s buildings using multivariate optimization, dynamic scheduling, and game theory-based resource allocation. Leveraging complex internal state models, Brilliant Buildings reasons over energy use across Jaguaar’s systems, balancing utilization and performance to manage their operations. This system also addresses green benefits by improving indoor air flow and energy efficiency. Utilizing variations in the collected information like the cost of power grid electricity at various times, Brilliant Buildings is able to improve energy efficiency while maintaining optimal comfort of Jaguaar’s employees.
Situational Reasoning for Building Complexes
Instead of relying on human data input, CSI’s automated solution monitors sensor feeds from all of Jaguaar Corporation’s systems as well as various other sources such as weather, community events, traffic reports, and local news feeds. Jaguaar Corporation is able to rely on its smart system to fuse and reason over this information to create a knowledge-based representation of the energy conditions affecting all its buildings. By leveraging CSI’s Situational Reasoning Framework (SRF), the Brilliant Building application is able to reason and infer over current and future conditions, actions, operational intent, and target outcomes. Cognitive agents are then able to look across all available information to find opportunities to adjust the configuration in order to improve efficiency, conserve power and other resources, and improve building service level for its occupants.
Benefits of CSI Technology
By partnering with CSI, Jaguaar Corporation was able to bring together the value of smart and green buildings across all their infrastructure. CSI’s innovative ActiveEdge® platform with its APEX and SRF capabilities allows the integration of smart technology into a Brilliant Building application. When combined with tenant recycling programs and sustainable construction materials, CSI’s technology allows buildings to achieve a complete green building sustainability program. The Brilliant Building application has the potential to achieve unprecedented building efficiency and a rapid Return on Investment (ROI) by delivering energy savings and operational efficiencies while also maintaining the well-being of its buildings’ tenants.
