Opportunities and Challenges for Retrofits
While implementing the latest technology solutions is a given in new construction, the real opportunity lies in retrofitting the existing building stock. That’s not to say the process is straightforward, but when existing buildings are the starting point, the solutions are more robust.
“It is actually the most difficult to start with an existing building, but the beauty is if you solve for the existing building case, it solves for all other use cases,” notes Tanuj Mohan, chief technology officer and co-founder of Enlightened Inc., a Sunnyvale, Calif.-based provider of IoT solutions for commercial buildings. “If you can do it in an existing building properly, the new construction problem is a lot simpler.”
Mohan says the days of putting power packs into junction boxes and pulling wires to sensors have all but disappeared. Now, OEM manufacturers can simply integrate sensors into their products so only fixtures are being installed, and control systems can be configured later on without any additional construction work.
Additionally, with the price of sensors decreasing, McHale says there’s huge potential to more intelligently retrofit buildings, which is good news for facility executives. “One of the driving forces of the Internet of Things has been this proliferation of sensors, so the cost of sensors has come down a lot,” he says. “Our ability to process data is increasing bandwidth, so how [quickly] these things will be able to process and how much data … they can transfer is increasing, so it’s all leading to a situation where these things are becoming more affordable.”
Given that 80 percent of the buildings in the existing stock will still be in use in 2050, McHale says we need to be smarter about how we’re using them. To his point, Mohan notes that because of aggressive energy-saving incentives in the market and even complete rebates for installations, people are pushing the cheapest solutions for the maximum return on investment. But he says it’s the wrong way to look at the issue because, “if a dumb system goes [into a building], you’re stuck with it for 10 years.”
That being said, many in the industry still react to emerging technologies with a “bolt-on” mentality when it comes to retrofitting existing buildings. For example, Mohan says some facility executives have added networking components to existing lighting controls that have made them remote but neglected to incorporate data collection, which is a big missed opportunity. Yet this “bolt-on” thinking is where most of the industry is today, he adds.
When it comes to network connections in existing structures, however, the options are limited. Mohan says wireless is really the only solution because it’s too expensive and risky to lay the miles of cable needed for power over Ethernet connections. Fortunately, wireless technology is becoming more reliable and secure all the time.