EMS Alerts in Residential Facilities

Take advantage of energy management systems in powerful ways, like customizing alerts.

We’re noticing a trend in MDU’s in major US cities like in New York City, Boston, and Chicago. They’re increasingly using state-of-the-art energy management systems to collect an immense cache of relevant, granular data. (MDU’s are loosely defined as real estate developments or complexes that include apartments and or condominium units.)

One of the countless ways to take advantage of this data avalanche is to set up alert triggers. From within your energy management platform, you can set up emails and text messages that can warn you of potentially major events like impending HVAC breakdowns or relatively minor circumstances like low batteries. It can also trigger events based on these alerts.

If your facilities team is forced to do more with less, alerts can help ease the stress and streamline their workflow.

Here are examples of some common alerts:

• • If the outdoor temperature reaches 40°F, switch the thermostats from cool mode to heat mode if the room is unoccupied. 
    • Also, issue an email alert notification to my building custodian.
  • If the temperature in any of our unoccupied rooms dips below 55°F when in the Winter profile, I want my building custodian to get a text message alert immediately.
    • I also want the heat to engage automatically.
  • When the battery life remaining in any thermostat reaches 15%, I want my building custodian and me to receive email alerts once daily until the batteries are replaced.
  • If the pipe sensor is above a specific temperature, switch all thermostats into heat mode. 
    • Do not issue alert notices, but have it display on my EMS Alerts screen.

If you can envision it, it’s entirely possible you can build it.  Here are some questions to ask yourself in advance when thinking about setting up EMS system alerts in your energy management system:

• • What is the purpose of the alert?
  • What criteria do I want to use when creating my alert?
  • Who should receive the alert?
  • Do the recipients want to receive the alerts via text or email or both?
  • Do they want to be alerted immediately or once daily?
  • Should some other additional automated action take place?

If you are in the market for a new energy management system, make sure the one you select not only collects relevant data, but analyzes that data in useful ways, and is robust and flexible enough to issue all the alerts that will help you do your job efficiently, and then trigger appropriate responses.

Want to learn more about EMS platforms and how they work? Download our white paper, How Energy Management Systems Work.

Are you ready to talk to an EMS professional? Contact us at [email protected] or 888-703-9398.