News | Monday, 6th February 2023
Commercial buildings to get energy efficiency boost thanks to new partnership
Research project aims to reduce carbon footprint produced by buildings
A system to increase the energy efficiency of commercial buildings is being developed as part of a new partnership between Manchester Metropolitan University and leading climate-tech start up, OakTree Power.
OakTree Power help businesses become greener using cloud-based AI solutions that can improve energy efficiency in their buildings by up to 30% – reducing their overall carbon footprint.
This new partnership will look to increase that capability, taking energy efficiency improvements from 30% to 40-45%, in line with the International Energy Agency’s call to lower building energy use by 45% by 2050 to reach net-zero.
To do this, Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) will be utilised to develop a Sustainable Energy Management Systems (SEMS).
“Through this partnership, we hope to reduce the carbon footprint produced by public buildings through the development of effective AI and ML based energy management systems.”
The state-of-the-art SEMS will address a range of factors that are currently limiting the effect of energy efficiency improvements on buildings. This can include the age, size and location of buildings as well as the influence of occupancy patterns and weather conditions.
The systems are also expected to significantly reduce the time and cost of deploying SEMS for new customers, which will help the business to grow.
While SEMS typically focus on single areas of a building’s energy use, such as air conditioning, the partnership will help to develop this to include non-critical electrical plants and equipment such as pumps, fans and air conditioning chillers.
Alhussein Albarbar, Professor of Sustainable Systems Engineering at Manchester Metropolitan University, said: “As experts in strategies for optimising energy consumption in buildings, we are delighted to be working with OakTree Power and contribute to improving energy efficiency by 30% to 40%.
“Through this partnership, we hope to reduce the carbon footprint produced by public buildings through the development of effective AI and ML based energy management systems.”
Experts from the University will help OakTree Power to improve the AI and ML areas of the business and develop OakTree’s current cloud platform into a SEMS that can automatically produce bespoke predictive models, which have the potential to increase energy efficiencies even further.
Chantel Scheepers, CEO of OakTree Power, said: “Our vision at OakTree Power is to always aim for greater energy efficiency.
“As such, evolving our platform into a Sustainable Energy Management System (SEMS) is not only a major milestone for the company, but for the entire commercial property industry.
“Having already achieved baseline energy reduction by 30%, through the combination of three OakTree Power products, the development of this new product with the support of Manchester Met – a university with a ground-breaking track-record in developing AI and ML based algorithms for net zero energy building application – gives us a great sense of price.”
The project will be carried out for 24 months under the University’s Knowledge Transfer Partnership scheme – a long-standing, government-funded initiative that allows businesses to improve their competitiveness, productivity and performance. It sees organisations joining forces with researchers and academics at the University to address specific business challenges.
