Energy efficiency and sustainability is the need of the hour. And commercial buildings and enterprises can collectively play an important role in energy conservation. Because of the rising cost of energy and its adverse climatic implications, firms are looking for running their facilities more efficiently using lesser energy without compromising the comfort factor. However, due to a lack of in-house knowledge, tools, and expertise to accurately track energy usage, organizations often fail to notice the many ways in which energy slips off as wastage. Helping companies address this predicament is Virginia-based SkyFoundry. The company brings to the table, the open SkySpark platform that enables organizations to get in-depth insight into their energy consumption and operational efficiency. The platform automatically analyzes the data from automation systems, sensors, meters, and other smart devices spread across an organization. It identifies faults, issues, energy consumption/wastage trends, and opportunities for operational improvements and costs reduction. “SkySpark helps you find what matters in the ocean of data,” says John Petze, principal and co-founder of SkyFoundry.

Based on predefined and fully programmable analytic rules, SkySpark automatically runs analysis against the energy usage and equipment operational data. With a variety of pattern recognition techniques, SkySpark’s analytics engine quickly recognizes the issues that demand attention. The platform provides clear, easily interpretable visualizations presenting these issues, including their frequency, magnitude, duration, and costs. SkySpark can be customized to fit the unique requirements of any human-built environment.

“We make software that does analytics on data in a specific space called built environment—everything built by mankind for society from office buildings to stadiums, hospitals, and factories,” adds John. The platform can also be used for a wide variety of applications, including equipment fault detection, energy management, resource reporting, monitoring-based commissioning, energy analysis, load profiling, facility benchmarking, and asset performance tracking.
Moreover, the SkySpark normalizes data based on standard factors such as degree days and building size as well as custom normalization factors by analyzing consumption and demand data. SkySpark also houses a rate modeler and tariff engine that calculates energy costs based on the market focusing on demand, consumption, service, equipment, distribution, and generation charges. SkySpark works with all types of data, including live data from automation systems, smart meters, web service feeds, historical data from CSV files and databases. SkySpark energy tools access energy data from metering systems by supporting a wide range of data acquisition connectors such as Haystack, Bacnet IP, Obix, and Sedona. In addition to housing a complete suite of tools for energy analysis and reporting applications, SkySpark also supports applications for monitoring any resource that is metered, such as natural gas, oil, and water. The platform thus provides holistic insights to enhance efficiency, reduce energy usage, and improve overall facility operations. It helps organizations to lower energy costs, increase occupant satisfaction, and improve the performance of the assets.

The success story of one of the US government’s general service administration (GSA) best exemplifies SkySpark’s value proposition. GSA has a huge number of buildings and were using a variety of equipment with different versions and technology. SkyFoundry, bought all of the data from diverse systems under SkySpark’s umbrella. The energy usage data collection was streamlined, normalized, and presented in a unified way, which ultimately enabled the client to achieve dramatic energy and operational savings across all their facilities.

With a mission to help clients achieve the best out of their energy savings investments, SkyFoundry strives to expand its presence across the globe and continues to enhance its products to deliver better actionable information from the data contained in intelligent building systems.