‘With the help of IoT and Cloud Computing, 75F’s solutions can save up to 50% of the energy used for HVAC and Lighting’
We spoke to Gaurav Burman, APAC President, 75F to understand his organisation’s focus areas for the Indian Facilities Management space. Gaurav Burman is the APAC President of 75F Smart Innovations Ltd. His previous assignment was with Schneider Electric, as Director – Marketing where he was also a part of the Management Team, South Asia. Gaurav has handled diverse portfolios in his career including product management, alliances, channel sales, and enterprise sales.
Prior to Marketing, Gaurav spent 20 years of his life in Sales and worked with companies like PCL, IBM, L&T, APC, and Schneider Electric. He was recently recognised as one of the 50 Most Talented CMOs in India in 2013, and one of the 100 Most Talented CMOs in the World by the US-based CMO Council. Here are the excerpts from the interview:
Interviewed by Adeesh Sharma
Tell us something about 75F and its focus areas in India?
75F is an award winning IoT Building Management Solution that delivers unparalleled operational efficiency and occupant experience saving up to 30- 50% energy and making commercial buildings truly smart by predicting and automating building needs.
Backed by investors like- Breakthrough Energy Ventures, Oil and Gas Climate Initiative and Clean Energy Trust, 75F features amongst top 10 global BAS companies in a study by Frost & Sullivan in 2020.
The system can save 564 trillion BTUs per year -the energy equivalent to shutting down 29 coal power plants. Currently, 75F globally manages over 300 facilities covering approximately 18 million square feet. In the APAC region, 75F focuses on commercial buildings in the IT/ITeS, Retail, Hospitality, BFSI space.
Tell us more about your energy efficiency and sustainability mission and its deep connect with Facilities Management.
75F’s solution contributes to our customers’ social, environmental, and economic success by increasing employee productivity, reducing energy use and other operational expenses, increasing property value, and increasing profits. The value offered to customers across the value chain can be best summed up as improved OE2. Below are the outcomes we can deliver and how they are achieved:
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Up to 50% Savings on Energy
HVAC and Lighting account for 65% of the total energy consumption in commercial buildings and traditional systems can guzzle a lot of energy as they are reactive and depend on dampers. 75F’s solution uses continuous commissioning with the help of sensor data and is predictive and proactive. With the help of IoT and Cloud Computing, 75F’s solutions can save up to 50% of the energy used for HVAC and Lighting leading to significant savings on utility bills.
Not only this, our smart sensors also consider other factors like indoor air quality and smart lighting that improves occupant comfort and indirectly leads to an improvement in employee productivity, thus improving the company’s triple bottom line. -
Sustainability Impact
75F’s solution deployed across just 16 facilities in 2019 resulted in 4,672,461 kWh of energy saved and 2,191,418 tons of CO2 emissions avoided. It also resulted in 7.5% improvement in Occupant Comfort and an ROI ranging from as low as 1.5-4 years.
How can IoT be leveraged effectively in Intelligent Building Management Systems?
IoT collects and analyzes data collected from the various smart devices that monitor energy consumption and use. Based on this data, the system can determine the best course of action to ensure both energy efficiency and occupant comfort. For example, sensors can detect the absence of human presence (unoccupied status) in a room and communicate to the switches to turn off the lights and the air-cooling systems. At the same time, air quality sensors can sense a rise in levels of CO2 and communicate with the HVAC systems to use outside air to reduce CO2 to healthy levels. If the temperature outside is cool, then the sensors automatically instruct the system to use outside air for free cooling, which leads to significant energy savings while maintaining the indoor air quality for comfort and productivity. The technology makes buildings smart and intuitive.
While energy savings can provide an ROI case in as little as 1-3 years, that is just a fraction of the ROI potential. Organizations can see ever greater ROI on the building management costs, which are often 10x higher per square foot vs energy costs. Yet, the greatest value in smart buildings is in the improved workplace experience, as organizations spend as much as 100x on staffing per square foot compared to energy. IoT can this be leveraged in Intelligent Smart Building Solution to help a building work for the clients by making it smart, intuitive and automated.
What sort of technology solutions have you designed specifically for Indian Facilities?
HVAC automation is specifically designed for India market this includes Dynamic Airflow Balancing, Dynamic Chilled Water Balancing Technology and Outside Air optimization as detailed below:
- 75F Dynamic Airflow Balancing (DAB) is a proactive zone control system that remotely monitors and controls conditions in individual spaces for superior comfort and efficiency. Predictive machine learning algorithms optimize heating and cooling capacity by redirecting conditioned air to the spaces that need it most, a strategy which is proven to lower utility costs by up to 45%
- Dynamic Chilled Water Balancing Technology is a unique control solution for the Chilled water line of the Chiller System to understand, analyze and fine tune the performance under various conditions.
- Outside air optimization provides optimum position of the outside air damper, to regulate amount of outside air that is bought into the building.
