At the same time, commercial energy management vendors are finding that these technologies can help them gain access to large new customer bases that were previously cost-prohibitive to access, according to a new report from Pike Research.
The study, Building Energy Management Systems for Utility Customers, forecasts that global spending on building energy management systems will total $41m in 2012 and will reach $319m worldwide by 2020.
“The market for BEMS for utility customers is still nascent, with most of the leading activity being driven by utilities in the US and Canada,” says senior Pike Research analyst Eric Bloom.
“On the vendor side, the BEMS market is made up of large, well-established players as well as smaller, more nimble companies that have the ability to disrupt the market dynamics with innovative technical solutions and pricing models. Other formidable market entrants include large IT firms, which offer expertise in handling enterprise-level integration and large volumes of data.”
The study notes that the capabilities of BEMS solutions vary widely. While active systems can control all or portions of the building’s infrastructure systems, passive BEMS perform a monitoring and analysis function only.
“Enterprise-wide solutions can report information to all levels of a large and geographically diverse organisation, whereas others are designed for a single facility. Some systems require connection to a host of meters and building systems for their data, while others require no touch at all and can be implemented remotely, without ever visiting the structure,” according to the report.
