identified and designed an energy-efficient solution, installed the required ele-
ments and maintained the systems to ensure energy savings during a payback
period. The project was guaranteed to save the state $9.5 million every year
through reduced energy usage, process improvements in facility automation,
monitoring, management, and more efficient real estate portfolio management.
The ESCO was at risk because earnings were based on performance. If the
energy savings were less than that guaranteed, the ESCO was required to
make up the difference. The state paid for the services through budgets for
utilities, operations, and maintenance. The state then obtained guaranteed
energy savings and paid for the upgrade to higher-performing buildings
through operational budgets. The total cost for upgrading facilities and con-
trol and information systems was $24 million, including fees to the ESCO of
$18.5 million.
Project Scope
The state’s real estate portfolio was approximately 32 million square feet in
1,000 buildings. Existing buildings came with baggage because they already
had building technology systems installed. In Missouri many of the auto-
mation systems used proprietary or legacy network protocols that needed to
be migrated to open protocols though the use of gateways or middleware
to translate protocols. In addition, the information available on the system
performance in existing buildings was sparse.
The only way to determine the eventual energy saved was to determine a
baseline. After the upgrades it was necessary to conduct a “before” and “after”
comparison to calculate the effectiveness of the improvements. The bench-
marking included current energy usage and energy cost.
Once a baseline was established, the project focused on integration of exist-
ing and new systems, the design and deployment of a statewide communica-
tion network to gather data from each facility, and the development of
higher levels of the information management system such as dashboards, ana-
lytics, human–machine interfaces (HMIs), and integration of other systems.
The objective was to be able to remotely and continuously monitor and
manage the building systems and the operating conditions, provide fault detec-
tion and diagnostics, use the tools for initial system commissioning, transform
data from building systems into actionable information, and integrate or inter-
face this system with the utility bill payment system and metering data. Several
management systems within the larger asset management project, such as con-
ditions assessment, capital planning, and work order systems were integrated
into the energy management, technology and communications project.
208 Smart Building Systems for Architects, Owners, and Builders