Selecting a Pilot Site with Enertiv

We get it, even though there are tons of case studies of Enertiv delivering value at scale, there may not be an appetite internally to roll it out across the portfolio on the first contract.

In those cases, Enertiv generally does a “Phase I” to demonstrate our capabilities and build a working relationship with your team.

There’s both an art and a science to selecting these initial sites. The goal of this article is to give you some criteria to use when making the decision on which properties to begin with.

First, we’ll start with some general criteria that can apply to all property types.

Property Team

• In-house or 3rd-party property teams who are open-minded, willing to try new technologies, and motivated to make the necessary changes to bring value to their assets and the portfolio at large.

Tenants

• Tenants that value transparency into utility consumption and seek out tech-forward landlords when evaluating space.

Tech Stack:

• Properties with limited technology solutions to optimize operations.
• Properties with too many technology solutions to optimize operations.

Beyond that, it will depend on the solution, goal and property type. The most common situations are covered below.

Office

Assuming there is a large and diverse office portfolio, which properties should you choose to demonstrate Enertiv’s full value proposition?

The truth is that Enertiv has delivered value in assets ranging from 50,000 sq ft to 1.5 million sq ft.

However, these are some of the key attributes we have identified that have led to successful outcomes with Enertiv. Typically we recommend piloting Enertiv at 3 unique assets to test the various different capabilities and value propositions of the Enertiv Platform.

Office Property Types

• Class A-C
• Urban Highrise, Suburban Office Campuses
• Assets that are 1-+100 years old

Target Equipment:

• HVAC equipment:
  • Chillers
  • HVAC Pumps
  • Cooling Towers
  • Boilers
  • Heat Exchangers via BMS
• Air Handlers
• Rooftop Units
• Heat Pumps/ ACs
• Ventilation systems
• Sump Pumps
• Domestic Water Pumps
• Electric Heating

Existing Systems for Integration:

• BACnet capable BMS
• Yardi or MRI for ERP/Accounting

If nothing has jumped out to you so far, good Phase I assets would be in the 200,000 - 300,000 sq ft range located in a suburban market. They would have a BACnet compatible BMS in place and bill tenants for utility consumption on a monthly basis.

This is because suburban office assets usually have fewer and less-well-trained operators than an urban high rise, yet still has centralized equipment, requires robust workflows and often has plenty of waste.

Multifamily

Multifamily portfolios are often even more diverse than office portfolios. Assets usually range from garden style properties to downtown high rises.

Again, Enertiv can and does deploy in all of these. For example, for garden style assets, we’re providing digitization, maintenance and capital planning solutions, but real-time monitoring wouldn’t make sense because there is no critical equipment.

And so, an ideal set of Phase I assets would be apartment buildings in the 15-25 story and 250-300 unit range. It helps if the assets are luxury or at least market rate.

Even in luxury multifamily, we find that the staff is not very technical and gains a lot of value from having a system that saves them time, helps them reduce risk. Moreover, the digitization services Enertiv provides helps blunt the effects of high turnover that is often seen in multifamily.

Conclusion

Enertiv does serve industrial, retail, hospitality, senior living, student housing, medical office and data centers as well.

However, in many of these cases, the deployments are software-only, meaning that there’s less of a need to select pilot sites.

When a Phase I is necessary, defining the success criteria before hand almost always leads to rapid expansion and scale.