In the U.S., around 13% of greenhouse gases are spewed out of commercial and residential buildings. You’d be forgiven for scratching your head and asking why. If you tour a typical New York building, you’ll often find that the tech that runs deep in the underbellies of the brick-clad behemoths looks like the 1960s and smells even worse. Runwise is already in 4,000-ish buildings, and today announced it raised
“Most buildings in New York — and pretty much the entire country and the world — run on controls that were designed in the 1960s and 70s, made by a handful of companies. If you go into a brand-new Bank of America high-rise glass tower, it has a control box that has a fancy digital display, and it’s literally inside the same control from 1960s or 70s,” Hoffman explains, and gets a little animated in his incredulity. “It runs what’s called an outdoor reset, which is basically a static Excel table. If it’s heating this many minutes, turn on the heat. If this is the temperature outside, do this. It has no idea what’s going on inside the building. It’s all hardcoded. It’s completely bonkers. And this is controlling millions of dollars of energy spend in almost every building!”
“Most buildings in New York — and pretty much the entire country and the world — run on controls that were designed in the 1960s and 70s, made by a handful of companies. If you go into a brand-new Bank of America high-rise glass tower, it has a control box that has a fancy digital display, and it’s literally inside the same control from 1960s or 70s,” Hoffman explains, and gets a little animated in his incredulity. “It runs what’s called an outdoor reset, which is basically a static Excel table. If it’s heating this many minutes, turn on the heat. If this is the temperature outside, do this. It has no idea what’s going on inside the building. It’s all hardcoded. It’s completely bonkers. And this is controlling millions of dollars of energy spend in almost every building!”