Summer Replay Results

CUE has enhanced its modeling platform to enable a “replay” of an entire summer. That is, CUE is now able to simulate a building’s operation for any historical summer – optimizing building operation around that summer’s actual hourly weather, utility demand programs, and energy prices. Such analysis permits evaluation of building operations and performance, financial risk, demand response, and even capital improvements … under a wide range of price and weather conditions.

As a first application, CUE is “replaying” select BOMA/Chicago 2009 demonstration buildings, including those participating in real-time optimization.

The following graphs summarize the monthly savings for a single building across 3 different years. The years were chosen specifically to demonstrate our technology’s ability to create value regardless of weather (See Cooling Degree Days chart below to better understand the chosen years weather vs historical).

Click on each graph to find a detailed sample day from that year for a better understanding of how CUE Technology achieves those savings. –

Historical Cooling Degree Days

This analysis reflects 38 years of cooling degree day (CDD) data from the National Weather Service. The thick solid lines represent the maximum and minimum values experienced each month over the 38 years, The thick dashed line represents the median or 50th percentile; the thinner dashed lines each represent a 10th percentile.
 

As an example of how this works, consider that the Midwest electric markets are dominated by nuclear and coal-fired electric generation. The June 16, 2008 electric prices shown below provide a dramatic example of the very low and often negative nighttime prices that characterize Midwest energy markets – a significant pre-cooling opportunity for CUE customers in an era of otherwise volatile daytime energy prices.

In the Midwest as elsewhere, electric demand is higher during the day than at night. Unique to the Midwest, the additional daytime “peak” electricity is provided from smaller, less efficient coal-fired plants. CUE technology optimally shifts daytime electric use from day to the night – to more efficient coal-fired plants, equipped with better environmental technology. This reliance on coal-fired plants for daytime peaking electricity also creates significant inefficiencies in the electric grid at night, including degraded plant environmental performance and negative electric market prices. Application of CUE technologies systematically improves electric grid efficiency and environmental performance, both day and night – especially valuable in large, grid-constrained metropolitan areas.

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