Modern buildings are complex machines. With heating, ventilation, and cooling systems running 24/7, a single building can have up to 15,000 sensors generating a massive ocean of data.
Siemens already uses this data to create energy reports that spot inefficiencies and recommend fixes. This often results in major energy savings. Unfortunately, manually combing through massive datasets takes performance engineers days, which means only large buildings can justify the effort.
The project set out to change that by developing a software support tool that automates major parts of this analysis. The goal is to make high-quality energy reports accessible to a much wider range of buildings, including smaller ones.
A Rule-Based Automation Engine
At the core of the tool is a rule-based system designed together with Siemens’ performance engineers. It automatically processes large volumes of sensor data and flags patterns that indicate potential issues or optimization opportunities, the same kinds of insights engineers previously had to identify manually.
To keep the system flexible, we developed a central rule database where these rules can be expanded, adapted, and refined over time. This ensures that the tool does not remain static; instead, it grows with new insights and new building types.
This broader availability has far-reaching effects: the more buildings that can be optimized, the greater the overall reduction in energy consumption and CO₂ emissions.