Multi-Housing News - July 2009 - (Page 26)

tech trends Building Smarter Finding the real and the practical in responsive properties By Christopher Hosford, Contributing Editor Remember The Jetsons? From the 1960s to the late 1980s, the animated cartoon sitcom about a futuristic family was a staple on ABC-TV prime time and Saturday mornings. The Jetsons lived in the Skypad Apartments, hoisted on adjustable columns high above the ground in Orbit City, where they enjoyed domestic robotic contraptions, hologram TVs and other space-age conveniences. Apartment buildings aren’t quite up to Jetsons speed yet; after all, the show was set in the year 2062. But some preliminary signs point to efforts to create smarter multifamily buildings that leverage automation and technology, primarily in support of conserving energy and, in the process, money. Intent on being a player in this field is The Related Companies, which owns and manages $15 billion worth of real estate assets throughout the country. Related is the developer of the Hudson Yards project in New York City, a government- and citysponsored mixed-used development to be built over old railway yards near the Hudson River. Over the next decade, Related will add 5.3 million square feet of residential space, including nearly 5,000 housing units, to the 26-acre project. Under-reported in all this has been Related’s desire to create a trigeneration system within the project, using waste heat both as a heating source during the winter and to drive building chillers during warm weather. “We think we can take the efficiency of power generation, which, with the local utility, is about 33 percent, and double it,” says Charlotte Matthew, Related’s vice president-sustainability. Responsive architecture Much has been made of so-called responsive architecture, multifamily designs that may one day reduce energy and operating costs by allowing buildings to sense and respond to exterior condi- tions such as wind, temperature and sunlight. For example, photochromatic glass sheathing or windows could darken when the sun shines, just as certain kinds of eyeglasses do. Electrochromatic walls function similarly when a charge of electricity is sent through them. Both technologies have the potential to cut energy costs by shielding a building from heat. But this is still experimental. The cutting edge of “smartness” today comes down to add-ons, renovations and supporting technologies that make plain old ignorant buildings smarter. One recent example is the Kent Avenue Apartments in Pennsville Township, N.J., a 101-unit senior housing community that last fall installed 462 solar panels on its roof. According to Goff Sun Power, the company that built the system, over its lifetime, the panels will produce about 2.8 million kilowatts, or about $304,000, worth of free energy based on the New Jersey average price of 11 cents per kilowatt hour. Smart metering is another solution that can add “intelligence” to an existing community. “The idea here is, for example, when a resident goes to the laundry room, the meter on the wall might indicate the cost of drying clothes when there’s a heat wave outside, versus doing your laundry at two in the morning,” says Mark Gentile, manager-product management with bill-processing company NWP Services. “What this kind of smart equipment allows us to say is, when the utility rate drops below X, it’s appropriate then to water the lawn or heat a pool.” Whether owners and developers adopt these kinds of technologies remains to be seen. “You hear about smart meters and demand load, turning off lights remotely and all that, but probably only about 2 percent of all properties use it,” says Kernie Brashier, CEO of ista North America, which offers utility sub-metering and utility expense management. “We’ve been pushing for it for years, but owners don’t want to pay for the infrastructure.” The problem is upfront cost. Brashier notes that ista North America’s standard water meter with transmitter runs about $35 before installation, but so-called smart meters can cost $500 apiece. “But the trend toward smart metering is coming,” he says. “We have concepts of it working now with a price of about $100 per unit. I just can’t get anybody to buy it yet.” Part of the whole sub-metering discussion is individual control of energy, which tends to focus residents on conservation. But it opens up other opportunities as well. “Once you move the control to the apartment door, you can connect it to the Web so people can control it remotely,” Matthew notes. “You could also control sound systems this way. It’s not new, but it’s also not pervasive.” What would help this greatly would be a move by local utilities toward “smart grid” technology, an emerging method of allocating energy as it is needed and charging variable fees based on peak periods. As this and other technologies become more affordable, and their economic benefits more obvious, we may start seeing them proliferate. “We want to see this,” Matthews says, “on the kind of scale where it’s not just a demonstration of what is possible, but real.” MHN To comment, e-mail diana.mosher@nielsen.com. MHN ONLINE Sign up for MHN’s Property Management newsletter at www.multi-housingnews.com/newsletters 26 July 2009 | Multi-Housing News | Official Publication of Multi-Housing World http://www.multi-housingnews.com/newsletters

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Multi-Housing News - July 2009

Multi-Housing News - July 2009
Contents
From the Editor
Executive Insight
Market Pulse
Profile
Market Report
Management
Case Study: Luxury
Finance
Kitchen & Bath
Products & Services
Tech Trends

Multi-Housing News - July 2009