Energy management in a public building: A case study co-designing the building energy management system

Abstract

Buildings are important contributors to energy consumption accounting for around one-third of energy consumed in cities, where large public buildings are the dominant energy consumers. Accordingly, building energy management system (BEMS) can be defined as a system with combination of both intelligent and green building technology [1]. Previous literature has already presented a set of technical features of a BEMS. Therefore, in this paper, we shall focus on stakeholders of a BEMS and we aim at understanding how to engage and empower them in order to design a system that fits the needs of the different sub-groups in public buildings. We have tested the Living Lab method to co-design the BEMS, with a case study in a large public building. The main findings can be summarized as follow: the implication of all the stakeholders since the beginning is crucial to reduce failure risks. The establishment of a steering committee empowers key stakeholders to improve the BEMS. Information given by smart-meters installed to monitor energy consumption has to be transformed into actionable indicators to be helpful for the building service maintenance. Automatic advices based on algorithm should be proposed as, even though they might be more expensive. The proposed method offers a relevant contribution to the existing body of knowledge, as it allows BEMS designers to integrate the relevant stakeholders in the co-design of the system and describes how to proceed. In the future, we intend to apply our approach to other public buildings to further improve and validate the method.