“Building electrification” describes the shift away from fossil fuels to electricity for powering loads inside buildings. It involves the electrification of heating and cooking systems and the addition of renewable energy technologies such as behind-the-meter solar and energy storage batteries. The process can also include integrating electric vehicles, smart charging stations, and smart electrical systems controls. Electrified buildings, through strategic deployment of the appropriate digital technologies, can also acquire the ability to store solar energy and to export potential surplus energy to the grid.
When budgeting for both new building assets and facility retrofits, forward-looking owners of commercial buildings and manufacturing sites now integrate digital intelligence into core systems when their goal is to manage and optimize energy use. These digital technologies include smart metering, sensors (to capture electrical system performance data), power management, monitoring software (to analyze the data in real-time), and electric vehicle (EV) charging stations. Electrified HVAC systems, along with intelligent PV energy generation and battery storage systems, complete the list of technologies that all work to lower energy consumption and carbon emissions.
Other building owners who are hesitant to embrace these innovative technologies are concerned with how these facility infrastructures will impact the grid (will they face higher energy bills and destabilize the grid?) and the technology investment payback.
To help demystify the level of building electrification risk, let’s highlight some of the key elements to consider when modernizing to electrified heating, EVs, and onsite generation and storage:
- Deploying facility environmental controls – Today, most buildings lack the data and monitoring required for tightly controlling energy consumption. In many corporate office buildings, the very individuals who consume the most energy never see the electrical bill. Smarter energy management systems put knowledge into the hands of these individuals so they can actively participate in curbing costly usage and reducing CO2 emissions.
- Controlling grid interactions – Modern technologies incorporate more electronic components and require high-quality electricity, including stable voltage levels, little if any flicker, and smooth sinusoid waveforms. But renewable energy sources, controllable loads, and energy storage systems — besides reducing grid electricity consumption and associated high bills — help utilities meet load demand challenges. Yet the intermittent nature of renewables on local energy networks means that building owners and utilities must embrace new ways of interacting. Buildings require a centralized intelligence system that integrates and manages devices — collecting data, analyzing loads and capacities, sending out intelligence like shifting or shedding loads — and monitors energy flows between building and grid.
- Accommodating EVs – EVs offer an effective and concrete solution for reducing the carbon footprint of transportation, but they also represent new challenges for building owners. Charging stations with several chargers can represent a significant load increase. As more cars plug into the network building electrical systems, building owners must upgrade to handle the additional capacity. However, an efficient smart charging infrastructure reduces costs and limits grid impact. The building owner can use the energy stored in EV batteries as an efficient, smart charging infrastructure and as a power source for supporting utility electrical networks during peak consumption periods or in the event of an emergency (i.e., storm or severed cable).
Research points to multiple facility electrification and digitization benefits
Buildings can experience economic and environmental benefits from deep electrification using building and peak power digital management. The Schneider Electric Sustainability Research Institute (SRI) has conducted the research to quantify building electrification benefits.
Through a detailed modelling analysis involving over 1,300 simulations that assess various building types across 19 regions of the world, SRI research has revealed that digital technologies can bring 20-30 percent carbon abatement across the entire existing building stock with paybacks well below 8 years (for a detailed report, download the SRI white paper ”Decarbonizing buildings to the benefits of consumers and system operators.“)
Furthermore, complementary analysis by SRI demonstrates that Behind-the-Meter investments can be both financially viable and highly effective in reducing energy bills and carbon emissions. Building owners stand to gain the greatest benefits—both economically and environmentally—by integrating electrified heating, building management systems (BMS), photovoltaic (PV) panels, and battery storage. For a deeper dive into the investment case and practical strategies, download the SRI white paper “Towards Net-Zero Buildings: The Investment Case.”
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