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Carbon Lighthouse’s patented AI platform CLUES® earned the 2019 North American Technology Innovation Award for how its deep data analytics capabilities unlock guaranteed energy savings for commercial real estate owners and investors. The company’s unique Energy Savings-as-a-service model taps into the Efficiency Reserves – or wasted energy – of a building and uses CLUES to reveal optimization opportunities for financial, environmental and operational impact never before possible in CRE.
Buildings are infinitely unique with thousands of system combinations. From the start, CLUES was designed to be adaptable. Carbon Lighthouse’s unique Energy Production approach uses the latest advancements in AI and machine learning built into CLUES layering in 100 building-specific data streams per site in addition to data like occupancy, location, weather patterns, energy use behaviors to develop thousands of potential energy use scenarios.
And behind every award-winning technology is a long line of brilliant minds that develop the technology and then put it to work to extract the most value. It’s no different at Carbon Lighthouse. In fact, Carbon Lighthouse engineers and CLUES together have analyzed over 100 million square feet of commercial real estate nationwide and worked closely with on-site teams to unlock more than $150M in energy savings for customers – all while eliminating over 243,000 tons of carbon.
For L&B, a real estate investment advisor with $9.0 billion under management, sustainability and the incorporation of ESG factors are key considerations when evaluating and managing real estate investments on behalf of clients. L&B partnered with Carbon Lighthouse on One Biscayne Tower, a class A office tower in the heart of Miami’s bustling business district, to further enhance its existing energy efficiency measures and to ensure future incremental energy use savings over time through data-based machine learning.
Carbon Lighthouse worked with on-site property engineering and management teams to assess One Biscayne Tower’s existing HVAC and lighting systems. Deployment of hundreds of sensors throughout the property yielded more than 34 million data points, uncovering previously hidden opportunities to further enhance the energy efficiency of the tower including:
- Providing better visibility and control of existing HVAC equipment (duct pressure, air/water supply temperatures, chiller staging automation) and central plant conditions based on building electrical demand and outdoor air conditions, while optimizing tenant comfort
- Ability to isolate energy zones during after-hours and unoccupied floors
- LED lighting retrofit in common areas with controls
Carbon Lighthouse and L&B collaborated to implement the energy savings measures at One Biscayne Tower. The property team used the detailed technical specifications developed by Carbon Lighthouse to implement the lighting measures, leveraging their expertise and material procurement abilities. For the central plant optimization, Carbon Lighthouse hired and managed the existing contractors to implement the light equipment additions, mostly sensors incorporated into the BMS, and the detailed BMS programming. All of the energy conservation measures, whether implemented by the property team or Carbon Lighthouse, result in annual electrical expense savings which are financially guaranteed by Carbon Lighthouse and backed by Munich Reinsurance.
“Carbon Lighthouse worked closely with our on-site engineering team to pull detailed technical specs enabling both their team and ours to seamlessly implement savings measures.” – Loretta Diaz, One Biscayne Tower Property Manager
The result: L&B was able to achieve 132% above the projected savings in just three months and is set to lock in more than $500K in savings over the lifetime of the project.
“For the first three months of our service, Carbon Lighthouse delivered more energy savings than projected at One Biscayne Tower and gives us confidence that we are not only achieving current savings in energy usage and cost but using the most advanced technology on the market that will yield further improvements over time.” – Corinne Hoffman, Asset Management Director with L&B
As CLUES collects more data, its algorithm becomes more accurate and demonstrates zone isolation and central plant measures for One Biscayne Tower generating more energy efficiency and cost savings than projected. Further, despite warmer weather and increased utility costs due to higher demand, L&B used less energy to meet the same cooling demand. And Carbon Lighthouse’s engineering team will continuously work with the on-site team to monitor One Biscayne Tower’s energy use to ensure guaranteed savings.
