SHANNEX PARKLAND AT THE GARDENS
IMPROVED ENERGY PERFORMANCE AND COMFORT THROUGH ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE
Nestled in the heart of downtown Halifax, Parkland at the Gardens by Shannex is a lively community for older adults which offers All-Inclusive to Supportive care options.
Kim MacDonald, Shannex VP Property and Support Services shares, “we’re on a journey of leading the way to greener living”. As part of its path to receive ISO 50001 certification, it has established its own
internal energy management system to achieve better comfort and satisfaction for its residents.
Shannex learned about iBOS® technology while searching for a system that delivers always-on support to provide residents and team members with consistently comfortable temperatures, without manual intervention. “We had already invested in a monitoring system and wanted to find a complementary technology that could also autonomously manage our energy consumption,” says MacDonald. In addition to the temperature set points established by Shannex, the iBOS® system incorporates a variety of other factors to predict the comfort temperature rather than reacting to a change in elements; thereby reducing the amount of energy required to maintain comfort.
iBOS® delivers a holistic view to energy consumption. It considers the building’s natural ability to store energy, factors in upcoming weather, and collects a suite of other data that impacts internal temperature. It will then predict the real need for long term heating and cooling and offset centralized HVAC systems. iBOS® AI automatically fine-tunes systems every two minutes, ensuring comfort
is maintained and using only the required paid energy to do so. All the sensors are wireless so there were no construction alterations required. Jodi Bartlett, the General Manager at Parkland at the Gardens, reports that the iBOS® system is an ‘absolute dream’ – she is saving energy and residents are comfortable.
Shannex is dedicated to leading the way to better living, which they believe requires an innovative approach to providing services to their residents. Shannex is installing the system in seven of its buildings to evaluate how best to manage energy use in the different types of its facilities.
The iBOS® AI system uses weather-related data points (e.g., humidity, wind speeds, temperature, solar radiation, etc.) in combination with building thermal mass calculations to inform more efficient HVAC operations. The result is that these systems start running far more efficiently, use less energy, and reduce their carbon emissions – all while keeping people a lot more comfortable.
At Parkland at the Gardens, iBOS® has:
- Helped save 899 Gigajoules in natural gas consumption since it was commissioned on February 1st, 2022, a 16% reduction. It has also helped save 52.49MWh in electricity, a 5% reduction.
- Reduced the hydronic heating setpoints by as much as 15°C, resulting in less boiler output and natural gas consumed.
- Optimized the operating setpoint of the building’s main ventilation units, allowing them to maximize the use of their free-cooling and heat recovery sections before relying on the mechanical heating and cooling sections.
- Maintained a comfortable indoor environment of 21-24°C, even with the reduction in mechanical heating and cooling, and identified areas prone to overheating or overcooling and made appropriate adjustments to the mechanical systems.