Software drives energy savings at school in Arlington

Customized software installed at an Arlington school last summer led to energy savings of about 15 percent over a 10-month period, according to the town’s energy manager.

The fault-detection and diagnostic technology was developed by Microsoft and Foxborough-based Iconics for Microsoft’s vast headquarters in the Seattle area, according to Ruthy Bennett, who serves as energy manager in Arlington and Bedford.

Iconics is providing software called Facility Analytix.

If the temperature in a room is too low, the graphics on the screen will indicate the room in blue. It will appear red if it becomes overheated or above the set-point. Faults are set to detect inefficiencies and report on potential diagnoses.

“It’s reading the operation of the equipment in real time,” Bennett said. “There are a lot of pieces of data – how fast it’s running, are the components open or closed, what’s the outside air temperature, what’s the setting you’ve selected for the piece of equipment [such as air conditioning] to run or not run.”

One change resulting from the new system involves filters, which in the past had been changed on a set schedule.

“Instead of saying we’re going to change the filters twice a year, regardless of whether it was necessary or not, we can start to understand if the air flow into this particular room has lessened over time and estimate if the filter needs to be changed more frequently,” Bennett said.

If that is the case, the filter will be cleaned ahead of schedule.

“What usually happens,” Bennett said, “is we’ll get a call from a school, with someone saying, ‘It’s too hot,’ or, ‘It’s too cold’” – information that is only marginally useful.

“But now I can look on the screen and see, first of all, what is the temperature in the room, what is the temperature in the surrounding rooms, did the room hit set-point at all during the day, etc.,” she said.

Bennett said there are many other data points that will help staff understand why a room may be too cold. As the energy manager, she can draw on multiple pieces of data to inform the maintenance staff of conditions surrounding a fault in order to narrow down the possible factors.

If there is a problem with the building’s heating, ventilation or air conditioning system, data from what is known as fault detection and diagnostic software can illuminate what might be causing the problem, she said.