Building Monitoring System (BMON)
BMON Information
You cannot manage what you don’t measure, and what you don’t manage can cost you. To address energy efficiencies especially critical in Alaska’s harsh environments, Alaska Housing Finance Corporation (AHFC) developed a free open source building monitoring system that measures real-time energy use and provides a complete summary of operating performance.
Designed to help managers of large facilities, multiplex/office building, or multi-family housing, the system is able to track building occupancy, temperature, electricity, and fuel use. It also is able to access data from multiple sources, including established weather stations, building automation systems, databases, and other points.
Reduce energy consumption and improve operation and maintenance efficiencies through the seamless building monitoring of critical equipment:
- Comprehensive monitoring, troubleshooting operational difficulties, and early warning detection sensors
- Coordinating morning warm-up times, sequencing of boilers, identifying electrical spikes, and optimizing the building’s fresh air supply
- Analyze heat and fuel sources, avoid freeze-ups
Alaska Housing realized close to 18% energy and cost savings after installing a building monitoring system at its Anchorage office building. To explore Alaska Housing’s near real-time building data visit bms.ahfc.us.
Alaska Housing Building Monitoring System benefits:
- Free, open access, web-based application
- Explore multiple options to display data including graphs, spreadsheets, scatter plots, and more.
- Download the non-proprietary and open source system for free.
- Give access to multiple operators with different capabilities to monitor the visual dashboard.
- Monitor real-time energy flows, determine the energy costs of specific systems and identify cost-saving opportunities.
BMON sites in Alaska
- AHFC – AHFC funded the creation of the BMON source code through the DOE State Energy Program and continues to upgrade and maintain the system. BMON is used in many AHFC facilities, public housing, and organizations that serve the public to improve the efficiency of building operations, prevent freeze-ups and provide data to building managers and decision makers.
- ANTHC - The ANTHC staff and rural utility operators use BMON to record a wide array of utility data and identify anomalies before they become potential catastrophic failures. The recorded utility data is also used to study daily utility operations to assist in water treatment optimization, determining energy conservation measures and future utility upgrades/improvements.
- YKHC - YKHC uses BMON to track energy use and prevent failures in 36 clinics across the Yukon Kuskokwim region
- Analysis North – Analysis North is the primary BMON developer and can set up new systems as needed.
- Seward Watch – A web service that offers tools to monitor boats and buildings in Seward at a low-cost.