What Are GEBs?
Key Takeaways
Grid-Interactive Efficient Buildings (GEBs) combine energy efficiency and demand flexibility to remake buildings into a cleaner and flexible resource for the grid, saving money for owners.
GEBs act on signals from grid operators — shifting, shedding, and augmenting energy loads when called upon.
When GEBs achieve ADM/ADR targets, they earn savings and incentives. Owners keep 100% of savings, Prescriptive Data does not take a cut.
Grid-Interactive Efficient Buildings (GEBs) integrate and optimize the latest technologies in distributed energy resources (DERs)--including energy efficiency, demand response (DR), solar PV, electric vehicle charging, and battery storage– to monitor and modulate building energy loads in a manner that is smarter for the building owner, occupants, and the electric grid.
A GEB is smart, efficient, connected, and flexible, meaning its energy usage can be shifted, shed, and overall optimized dynamically. Intelligence comes from analytics supported by sensors and controls within a GEBs-aligned system like Nantum OS, that can flexibly control a building’s energy demand profile while maintaining occupant comfort. Two-way communication between the building and the grid is critical to ensuring both sides are aligned towards efficiency and integrity. Both the Department of Energy and the American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy have highlighted the growing importance of GEBs to the future stability of the electric grid and the expansion of large-scale renewable energy projects.
Prescriptive Data’s initial approach to developing a GEBs-centric system for energy management is to automate strategies to help customers save serious money on commercial electric bills that charge based on peak usage. Prescriptive Data will also automate customers’ utility demand response strategies, helping customers earn incentive revenue to offset the costs of implementing GEB technologies like Nantum OS.
Nantum OS augments and enhances the four key functionalities of GEBs:
Nantum’s cutting–edge AI uses its own analytics to make smarter decisions about when to be flexible with your energy service provider.
Nantum enhances energy management by optimizing energy use, correlating real-time demand and occupancy data to real-time utility grid signals.
Acting as a brain for the building, Nantum builds connections between sensors, building systems and equipment, and DERs such as on-site generation or battery storage.
Automated control over building systems gives Nantum’s machine learning algorithms better control to optimize operations around the clock, giving more flexibility to shift, shed and modulate loads.
Grid-Interactive Efficient Buildings will be a powerful tool to integrate the increasing levels of renewable energy and distributed energy resources anticipated in the coming years — yet significant barriers to widespread adoption remain. At the macro level, smart building activity has not effectively penetrated the non-Class A office market. Moreover, most existing GEB demonstrations focus on individual DERs or buildings. At the building level, willing building owners must first determine how to engage the GEB market (i.e., through a DER aggregator or by partnering directly with a utility), then invest in capital and operational changes absent a clear, monetized value stream.
Prescriptive Data is laying the groundwork for the future state of smart, connected buildings by proactively assessing opportunities and barriers, developing new Nantum OS capabilities to meet market needs, and proactively seeking partnerships with utilities and built environment stakeholders. Prescriptive Data looks forward to collaborating with Nantum customers to meet the future needs of GEBs.
