Energy Usage in Small Commercial Buildings – EM Research: COBEE 2022

SUMMARY:

Small buildings make up a majority of the existing commercial and industrial building stock but have historically been challenging to upgrade and study. The advent of low-cost sensing and control from smart thermostats has begun to address these challenges. However, the effect of the thermostat installation and the associated centralized management has not been well investigated. To this end, we leveraged a unique data set from a portfolio of over 400 small commercial buildings which had undergone thermostat upgrades. We used the data to compare the energy use intensity of these buildings to other benchmark values and study the energy and environmental impacts of the thermostat upgrades. We found that this portfolio’s energy use is similar to other reported values but caveats need to be considered. Ultimately, we determined this portfolio achieved savings of 14% and 19% for natural gas and electricity usage, respectively.

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