Balancing Energy and Comfort through Machine Learning in Commercial Buildings
Register @ http://bit.ly/1y5yu1i
February 4, 2015
333 Coyote Hill Road, Palo Alto
Lindsay Barker, VP of Business Development, Building Robotics
In looking at commercial building energy consumption, many of the known opportunities for positive behavior change have been found through turning off lights, turning off plug loads at night, and other similar easy actions for workers to take in their daily routine. But often the largest energy usage in buildings is HVAC- an energy use that is inextricably tied to people and their preferences and behavior. How can we create a system that encourages efficiency and good behavior in HVAC use? And what does that behavior look like?
At Building Robotics, we’ve developed software called Comfy that addresses these issues head on. Modern internet-based, mobile-ready technology allows us to provide much more granular and dynamic services to people, including comfort in offices. With Comfy, we do this in 2 ways. First, with machine learning, which allows us to provide dynamic environmental conditions, without taking the time of the facility manager. Equally critical is great user experience, which allows us to incorporate the intelligence and needs of real people, however unpredictable, while being simple, delightful, and sticky. In this talk, we'll discuss the results of our early pilots, showing how people are using Comfy, and how that in turn impacts the building around them.
At its core, Comfy presents a vision and framework for a system that needs both real people and machines to work together to produce great environments for people that reduce unnecessary energy use. We hope to inspire others to think of ways to use people-centric, machine-learning-based technology to solve environmental problems while helping people in their daily lives.
Lindsay Baker leads business development and client relationships for Building Robotics, an emerging venture-backed software startup in the building industry. Prior to BR, she worked at Google’s headquarters with Mary Davidge Associates, catalyzing sustainable operations of Google’s portfolio. She is a PhD candidate in Building Science at UC Berkeley, where she also received her Masters. Prior to that, she worked at the USGBC developing LEED rating systems. She has served as a writer, convener and consultant in the sustainable buildings industry for over 10 years.
SCHEDULE
• 6.30 to 7:00 pm: light refreshments
• 7:00 to 8:00 pm: talk + Q&A