Much of our work involves energy studies and retrofits to commercial buildings.

You’ve heard a lot of talk about the deployment of the Smart Grid. Most of the initial smart grid deployments are focused on the de-ployment of smart meters that enable utilities to gather usage information in near real time — or what they call Automated Meter Infrastructure (AMI).

Often when we are evaluating or assessing an existing building, we are on the lookout for equipment and systems that are in poor condition or approaching the end of life.

The application of energy recovery units allows for the ability to do total heat recovery and recover both sensible and latent heat from an exhaust air stream, using that heat to pre-condition outdoor air required for building ventilation.

Recently there has been a lot in the press about “big data.”

There are many potential benefits to knowing not only how many people are in a building, but ideally where they are located

Both new and existing building projects should have lighting control provided, either as part of a standalone system or, ideally, integrated as part of the BAS. But we often find that there are many reasons automated lighting control is not provided, ranging from simple economics to frustration with the programming and support of these systems.

There are many elements to a BAS. Of course, the ability to control systems through direct digital control (DDC) is always a require-ment, but ideally, we expect these systems to be much more.

Bill Gates, the founder and former CEO of Microsoft, has dedicated his time and efforts toward running the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

Reality ushers in more factors than simply what the technology can do.