Your tenant in the eastern wing is chronically cold. You’re fighting an uphill battle for safety as your tenant’s employees bring personal heaters into the space. In the western wing, however, your tenant’s employees can’t get cool enough. They complain of high energy bills while swearing the humidity will lead to mold problems. Uncomfortable tenants are more than a headache. They are a threat to your bottom line. Thermal comfort can impact your tenants’ desire to renew their leases. Additionally, a commercial property with low thermal comfort may indicate inefficiencies in its climate controls or building envelope. High turnover and an inefficient building will adversely affect your bottom line. Thermal Comfort + Your Bottom Line The American Society of Heating, Refrigerating and Air-Conditioning Engineers defines thermal comfort as the condition of mind that expresses satisfaction with the thermal environment. It is subjectively assessed by using the Comfort Scale or Thermal Index, both of which evaluate temperature, humidity, air velocity, and radiant temperature. As comfort is subjective, a commercial building’s thermal comfort ranking will vary from person to person. Health and Safety Executive recognizes an international standard which suggests that a building has “reasonable comfort” when at least 80 percent of its occupants are thermally comfortable. Improving Thermal Comfort in Commercial Properties There are three ways to notably improve tenant comfort and protect your investment: 1. Identify and Fix Leaks Address leaks in the building envelope. Contact a contractor to identify areas where your heating and cooling efforts are defeated by oversights in construction or maintenance. Resealing windows and adding weather stripping to doors, for example, are two quick fixes for drafts. Leakage significantly decreases the energetic efficiency of an HVAC system. As a result, the HVAC system may be working overtime to regulate indoor conditions. Have your units...
What’s Your Energy Strategy?
Get These Five Benefits
Did you know that the average commercial building wastes 30% of the energy it consumes? Or that energy costs will rise as much as 60% in areas of the U.S. by 2028? It’s true, according to an analysis and calculation of Yardi consolidated property data. These facts should be red flags for property management companies without an energy strategy in place. Luckily, adopting an energy strategy is not as daunting as it may seem. In fact, taking incremental steps towards a comprehensive strategy can generate measurable savings in a matter of weeks with a relatively modest investment. Here are five reasons why an energy strategy is good business: Reduced costs Operating expenses such as utilities and maintenance are easy first targets for reduction through an energy strategy. By taking advantage of usage data and trends, property managers can quickly identify excessive usage, lower maintenance costs and identify benchmarks for energy consumption across a portfolio of properties. Increased value Assets that cost less to operate and generate higher rents quickly become more valuable. An energy strategy promotes both savings and revenue by reducing operating costs, reducing the need for rental concessions, making properties more marketable and, as a result, increasing potential net operating income. Efficient accounting The benefits of automating property management processes such as payment processing, procurement, vendor management, etc., are now viable for energy management. Gone are the days of a stack of paper utility bills waiting to be opened and paid. Automated utility expense management sends digital invoices to accounting staff and mines data from smart metering equipment to validate usage. With a relatively low upfront investment, property managers can reduce duplicate payments, avoid late fees and be confident that their utility spend is accurate. Happy tenants Doing business in a building that is LEED certified or meets ENERGY STAR® benchmarks can make a tenant feel proud, comfortable and socially responsible. They’re also less likely to call for maintenance with modern, energy efficient equipment servicing their building. That satisfaction reduces tenant turnover and increases competition for your space. Happy investors A successful energy strategy demonstrates to investors that your organization is proactively maximizing occupancy and revenue, and minimizing operating expenses. It’s also a great way to reassure investors that your properties are working to achieve local, state and federal government energy conservation goals, as well as boosting Environmental, Social and Governance scores for socially conscious investors. Need help getting started? Start with a focus on utility expense management as an approachable first step with low upfront investment required. From there, you may take bigger steps, such as energy intelligence at the property level with real time metering, ENERGY STAR benchmarking and prescriptive alerts for any property in your portfolio. The next level of investment is characterized by advanced energy automation in HVAC equipment, fault detection, diagnostics and demand management. No matter which level of strategy you take, the potential return on investment is tangible and may be evident as soon as your next utility invoice. Yardi Pulse clients have seen as much as 5% annual savings in energy costs with the first two incremental steps alone (utility expense management and energy intelligence). Annual energy savings of up to 15% or more are expected for properties that implement further energy automation measures. If you are a current Yardi Voyager user, contact our team for a complementary consultation. We’ll do an analysis to compare your costs with benchmarks. It’s a simple way to get an idea of the potential savings that an energy strategy can deliver to your...
