The situation
Operating costs are climbing and every system has its own screen.
The BMS knows what the plant is doing. The meters know what it drew. The calendar knows what was on. No screen puts those three together, so the question of what tonight should have cost has no owner and no answer.
Where the money actually goes.
It is rarely one dramatic fault. It is a hall conditioned for a full house that sold a third of its seats, plant running two hours before anyone arrives because that is what the schedule has always said, and a setpoint somebody changed for one event in a season nobody remembers.
All of it looks healthy on every screen, because the building is doing exactly what it was told. The cost is the part nobody added up.
What to do about it
Put the three sources on one page, with the arithmetic showing.
- Install it on the operations machine. A script, and it starts on boot. Node and nothing else, because it brings its own database.
- Give it read-only accounts. For the controls, the meters and the calendar. Read-only accounts, held to a stricter standard than the rest of this family needs.
- It turns those into today’s calls. With the arithmetic under each one, and anything standing in for a real source labeled on its own row.
- Make the call, or do not. The decision stays with you. CrossVenue reads the building and stops there.
The tool for it
CrossVenue is the one for this.
It stores readings and works the conclusions out when you ask, so the arithmetic is on the page rather than baked into a number you have to trust.
Bring us a night that cost too much.
One facility, one baseline, before anybody argues about a portfolio.