“Understanding energy usage trends is critical for every building operator. Verdigris’ solutions with their modern, differentiated technology have delivered unprecedented value to LCOR over a 3 year period. We gained rapid investment payback, high fidelity real-time data to drive better decision making, a clear understanding of usage and costs benefiting our operations, sustainability and finance teams. This has been a strong and successful partnership.”
– Brian Bozeman, CTO
The Challenge
LCOR Overview
LCOR is a fully integrated, multi-family development, investment and operator with a focus on the US eastern seaboard. LCOR manages about 13M sq ft of real estate, has over 9K residential units and 38 development projects under management. More information available at www.lcor.com.
Business Challenges and Needs
A few years ago, as the business saw strong growth, LCOR’s executive leadership team, led by Brian Bozeman, Harmar Thompson and Mike Hogentogler was faced with the need to better understand the level of energy consumption in their real estate portfolio. The key drivers for this need were the trends towards sustainability, pressure from investors/ tenants, and operational considerations.
Meeting these needs was particularly challenging in residential buildings, where the local utility billed the tenant units directly but did not account for energy usage in common areas or garages. In addition, LCOR wanted to measure energy efficiency against benchmarks such as ASHRAE and EnergyStar which required granular visibility and segmentation of energy consumption. Furthermore LCOR wanted a system to accurately measure, report and explain changes in tenant billing for common areas energy usage.
In addition to the sustainability and benchmarking drivers, LCOR’s facilities maintenance group led by Matt Knolle saw the value in energy intelligence to address equipment operational issues caused by power surges and instability. There was also a gap in their HVAC monitoring which tends to be the main source of operational downtime and disruption. These issues were resulting in higher operating costs and impacting the quality and reliability of services provided.
The Approach
LCOR’s technology, operations and sustainability teams collaborated to find a solution that could address the tenant sub-billing, data reporting and operating performance issues. After evaluating the options in the market, including legacy systems such as LG Smart Panel and Square D from Siemens, CTO Brian Bozeman selected Verdigris energy intelligence platform for the following reasons:
1) Simplicity of installation and ability to get to data value almost immediately
2) Easy access to data and historic trends, saving time to complete Energy Star reporting by over 50%
3) Ability to validate internal energy forecasting models to real-world consumption
LCOR deployed over 400 sensors and 31 gateway systems across 3 buildings - Sage (Northern VA), Altaire and Cielo (Washington DC). Within weeks, the implementation was complete and electrical data from the sensors was flowing seamlessly to the Verdigris Cloud, leveraging wi-fi or LTE connectivity.
The Director of Operations’ team uses the Verdigris analytics dashboard to gain insights into power, voltage and energy trends as well as anomalies requiring investigation. In addition, the team also receives weekly summary reports on energy consumption and savings which could be conveniently shared with investors and other stakeholders.
The solution was also able to support special requirements such as the LEED benchmarking study that was conducted at the Cielo property by an independent entity.
The Results
Within a year of implementing the Verdigris sub-metering system and analytics platform, LCOR was able to realize tangible, high-impact results including:
1) Achieve real-time, reliable insights into power loads, energy trends and end-use consumption to guide informed operational decisions
2) Obtain granular sub-meter data to drive accurate, explainable cost allocation to tenant units with respect to common areas
3) Enable easy data collection and access to historical energy data for portfolio level benchmarking to standards including ASHRAE, EnergyStar, GRESB, which helps satisfy investor needs for energy reporting and improved design on future buildings.
4) Minimize operational risk and costs associated with equipment outages by leveraging electrical data to detect and rectify performance anomalies
5) Improve financial performance through optimal cost management and building value appreciation, 12 month investment payback
What's Next?
LCOR’s partnership with Verdigris highlights how energy-intelligent buildings are changing the game in the real estate sector. Going forward, LCOR plans to extend the value created by the Verdigris energy intelligence platform to new properties in New York and Washington DC in 2025-26 covering 600 additional apartments. This would enable buildings (new construction or retrofit) to become ‘energy-submeter ready’ that drive efficient audits, ensure standards-compliance and manage operational risk.
Footnotes
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