Beebryte: Intelligent consumption
What if you could save 40% of your electricity consumption without having to change your installation or carry out costly work? That’s the promise of BeeBryte, a SaaS solution optimizing heating-ventilation-air conditioning (HVAC) and refrigeration systems.
BeeBryte agreed to answer our questions to clarify their project:
What environmental issues does BeeBryte address?
Every day, global electricity consumption exceeds 70TWh, with 90% coming from industry and buildings. In all, this percentage also represents a third of energy-relatedCO2 emissions. Among industrial and commercial buildings, heating-ventilation-air-conditioning (HVAC) and refrigeration systems account for the biggest slice of the pie.
At BeeBryte, we’re deploying a solution to optimize this consumption. Our software-as-a-service (SaaS) encompasses data analysis, activity prediction, and optimal control of refrigeration equipment and HVAC systems thanks to artificial intelligence. This technique reduces consumption andCO2 emissions, generating savings of up to 40% on electricity costs.
What is BeeBryte ‘s solution?
Our IoT software gateway solution reduces energy bills by remotely sending commands to refrigeration and HVAC equipment.
Taking into account weather forecasts, building activity and the price of electricity, our algorithms anticipate the thermal demand of sites to produce cold/hot at the best time, while respecting comfort and the operating range determined by the customer.
What added value do you bring to your customers?
Our customers save up to 40% of their energy costs by reducing their consumption and shifting their consumption to when energy is cheapest. Thanks to our dynamic, automatic control – whose commands are transmitted directly to the equipment via the gateway – the solution enables further optimization of consumption, while freeing up time for the customer’s teams, who can then concentrate on higher value-added activities.
For example, in a refrigerated warehouse near Lyon, we reduced the electricity consumption of the chillers by 98,000MWh per year, representing savings of €78,000. Internationally, we generated the equivalent of €190,000 in annual savings for a logistics customer with warehouses in Singapore. These savings correspond to a reduction of around one thousand tonnes ofCO2 emissions.
The service is adaptable, however, and is not exclusively reserved for warehouses, but makes sense for any industrial or tertiary building with heavy use of HVAC or refrigeration systems.
Have you identified any competitors? If so, what are your competitive advantages?
We have identified a few competitors in the field, but none of them do exactly what BeeBryte does. Overall, we can see that the software approach to energy efficiency – which includes control and is not limited to the supervision/recommendation combo – is not very widespread.
Among those perceived as our competitors are companies offering to reduce consumption by adding or replacing equipment. These companies are in fact partners for BeeBryte, since our solutions complement each other. Those present in the software sphere focus on a particular aspect and prioritize self-consumption, for example, or concentrate exclusively on energy efficiency.
What sets us apart is, first and foremost, the fact that we make maximum use of existing equipment. In most cases, our IoT gateway is the only addition needed to make the solution work, even if it is sometimes accompanied by temperature sensors and electricity meters. Our solution is therefore simple to deploy and non-disruptive to the customer’s business.
In addition, our differentiation lies in the dynamic aspect of equipment control and the anticipation of external factors such as the number of people in the building or the weather. Combined with our patented optimization method, this enables us to accumulate several strategies in addition to energy efficiency, including price arbitrage and peak shaving.
Finally, our business model is based on pure sharing of the savings generated. In other words, no savings generated, no payment to us – it’s as simple as that! So there are no installation costs for our customers, and therefore no financial risk.
What’s currently preventing you from completely filling your market?
Traditionally, energy efficiency solutions on the market involve replacing and upgrading equipment – which is rarely the most sustainable solution if you take into account the environmental cost of materials and the production of this equipment. Our software solution disrupts these habits and changes their vision of this sector.
Our challenge is to convince them that this type of solution is possible and can generate this level of savings, while respecting occupant comfort and operational constraints.
To reassure our partners, we implement maximum transparency by combining a savings calculation method that complies with IPMVP and ASHRAE recommendations, monthly reports, and 24/7 access to an equipment and performance monitoring tool. Added to this is the possibility for the customer to regain control at any time if they so wish.