Case Study: University of Nebraska-Lincoln improves energy efficiency with Microsoft and ICONICS

University transforms energy management with big data solution

The University of Nebraska-Lincoln (UNL) faced the challenge of reducing energy consumption across its large campus by over 15% while preventing the inevitable degradation of building equipment performance over time. To move beyond traditional maintenance and achieve its sustainability goals, the university collaborated with vendor Microsoft and its partner ICONICS to implement an innovative solution.

The solution implemented by Microsoft partner ICONICS was a fault detection and diagnostics (FDD) system built on Microsoft SQL Server. This big data and IoT solution monitors equipment in real-time, sending alerts at the first sign of performance drift. This allows UNL to fix issues proactively, maintaining energy efficiency gains and avoiding catastrophic breakdowns. The results were significant, with the system detecting faults that would have caused nearly $200,000 in annual energy waste and enabling potential savings of up to $25,000 per air handler each year.

University of Nebraska - Lincoln

Chris Walsh

Director of Building Systems Maintenance