This month we shine the spotlight on our partners at Gotham 360. We got in touch with Jeanifer Kearney, Gotham 360’s Founder and Executive Partner, to learn more about her company and the great work they do to help their clients meet their energy efficiency goals.

How Gotham 360 Started

Prior to forming Gotham 360 in 2007, Jennifer served as the Director of Energy Programs for New York-Presbyterian Hospital, the largest not-for-profit, non-sectarian hospital in the country. In this role, Jennifer managed a $70 million energy procurement portfolio including power, renewables, natural gas, and fuel oil. In addition to procurement of supply, Jennifer was responsible for the development and construction of an 8MW synchronous cogeneration system which was the first of its kind in the borough of Manhattan. Her efforts resulted in savings in excess of $11 million annually, and ongoing national recognition by the EPA as an ENERGY STAR Partner of the Year. During her tenure at the Hospital she was also involved in the development of two LEED rated hospital buildings, one of which is certified “Gold”.

Leveraging her expertise in the healthcare space, Jennifer founded Gotham 360 to support other healthcare organizations with strategies for the development and deployment of energy programs based on established best practices combined with a disciplined leaning toward innovation. Clients from the higher education, industrial, multi-family, and commercial sectors soon followed and today Gotham 360 is recognized as a groundbreaking woman owned business addressing some of the more complex challenges in the energy management and sustainability markets.

The Evolution of the Energy Management Space

Increasingly cheaper and abundant natural gas, from the advent and evolution of horizontal drilling, paired with aggressive legislative and financial incentives toward renewable energies and reductions in greenhouse gas emissions have spurred massive change in the energy management space. We have seen an exponential increase in the number and sophistication of DER (Distributed Energy Solutions) installations. Likewise, we have witnessed massive growth in ancillary technologies and methodologies that leverage the benefits of DER, such as demand respond, load shifting and peak shaving.

Advantages of Having Access to Building Data on a Granular Level

The BuildingIQ platform provides Gotham 360 and our clients with real time energy data. This granular level information allows us to help our clients make more informed decisions about energy usage and facility operations. These decisions drive down energy costs, enhance sustainability initiatives, assist in the deployment of Demand Response and Load Shifting programs, as well as prolong the life of the building’s equipment.

The fully-customizable dashboard portfolio is another benefit of partnering with BuildingIQ. It provides facility operations managers with intuitive, real-time insight as to how their buildings are functioning. This is especially beneficial for our clients who maintain multiple facilities or large campuses, as the BuildingIQ portfolio displays an overview of every building on a single screen – with the ability to dive deeper into any of the specific facilities with just a few clicks.

Aside from the obvious benefit of more data to crunch and analyze, one of the key benefits of data granularity —in the sense of more data points— is an ability to use AI to create proxies for missing data or to analyze the accuracy of existing data. Systems like BuildingIQ’s already use energy data as a proxy for the health of a piece of equipment, e.g., a steady increase in consumption in the absence of other changes indicates a need to service the piece of equipment, which we view as just the beginning of AI driven building operations.

A Vision for the Future of Energy Management and Building Automation

Gotham 360 sees Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Mixed Reality (MR) as the most important technological advancements that will impact the future of energy management and building automation. In the future, AI and Mixed Reality will bridge the gap between real-time energy monitoring platforms, such as BuildingIQ, building management systems, and the humans that oversee them. Powered by AI-processors, BMS’s will be directed to monitor, manage and execute their own energy usage programs. Load shifting, peak shaving, occupancy-based optimization, and demand response initiatives will be streamlined and fully-automated.

Supported by next-generation BuildingIQ’s data analytics, the AI-BMS of the future will be able to forecast peak days and suggest preemptive, curtailment protocols. Human operators will link directly with the BMS via a BuildingIQ Mixed Reality interface – where they can deploy the suggested actions to a virtual building or campus, and experience the predictive results inside an asynchronous 3-D BuildingIQ Portfolio Environment.

Additionally, the AI-BMS will anticipate and schedule routine equipment maintenance, monitor legislative and utility-based incentives, and recommend infrastructure upgrades accordingly.

How many AI’s does it take to change a lightbulb?