Case Study: Carnegie Mellon University achieves 30% energy savings and improved operational efficiency with Microsoft Azure

University Improves Operational Efficiency, Cuts Energy Consumption by 30 Percent with BI Solution

Carnegie Mellon University’s Center for Building Performance and Diagnostics needed a better way to manage complex, disparate building systems and hundreds of sensors in its Robert L. Preger Intelligent Workplace and across multiple facilities. Data was siloed by system, making analysis slow and limiting operational insight; CMU sought a centralized, real‑time, and easy-to-use solution that could scale to multiple buildings and users.

CMU implemented OSIsoft’s PI System integrated with Microsoft technologies—Windows Azure, SQL Server, and Power BI—to consolidate data, create real‑time dashboards and natural‑language queries, and share role‑specific reports. The solution delivered clearer operational visibility, identified faulty equipment, and cut plug‑load energy consumption by about 30 percent in the lab (with similar savings for a partner bank), while enabling scalable monitoring for new contracts and city‑scale initiatives.

Carnegie Mellon University

Azizan Aziz

Senior Research