As an enterprise with a global manufacturing and office footprint, Lenovo is committed to finding new and better ways to improve its environmental sustainability. One big opportunity is to improve the efficiency of the heating, ventilation and air conditioning (HVAC) systems and auxiliary equipment that help keep the company’s workspaces safe and comfortable for employees.
Whether they are running in commercial offices or manufacturing facilities, HVAC solutions are usually energy-hungry systems. The air compressors, chiller plants, and boilers at Lenovo’s facilities typically ran on simple manual controls or basic timers, which made it hard to optimize their use and reduce wasted energy.
Qingping Zhou, PRC Asset Management at Lenovo, says: “In China, Lenovo has very large-scale facilities with complex, constantly changing energy requirements. For example, our Wuhan manufacturing campus has numerous departments, each with their own specific requirements for humidity and temperature. As external conditions change, meeting these requirements while ensuring optimal efficiency demands the ability to react extremely quickly and intelligently. Given the scale and complexity of our facilities, this is very challenging to achieve with traditional manual operations or standard control systems.”
Teaming up to harness the power of AI and IoT
Lenovo decided to use its own advanced capabilities in AI and internet of things (IoT) to build a smart energy automation solution for its facilities in China. The aim was to retrofit commercial buildings and factories across the country with cutting-edge technology to monitor and manage HVAC systems, boost energy efficiency and unlock operational cost-savings.
To fast-track its ambitious project, the Lenovo PRC Asset Management team teamed up with Lenovo Business Application Services Delivery (BASD): a group of over 1,000 experts specializing in industry solutions. Together, the two teams created the Lenovo Smart Energy Efficiency Solution (SEES).
Smart monitoring for complex working environments
Lenovo SEES uses AI and machine learning to model energy usage in each facility under a range of different operating conditions, drawing its insights from IoT sensors and direct integration with HVAC control systems. This baseline model allows the solution to predict the load on equipment when it encounters the same conditions in the future and calculate the optimal HVAC settings to maintain the desired temperature and humidity.
“Combining expected patterns of work at different times of day with weather data and sensor data, the solution accurately determines the most energy-efficient way to achieve the target conditions in our building,” says Zhou. “SEES directly controls the equipment, creating a solution that can respond almost in real time to changing conditions and requirements. All the industry know-how embedded in the algorithm delivers excellent outcomes while reducing the workload for our facilities-management teams.”
Boosting efficiency, reducing costs
Lenovo has now deployed SEES at its Beijing headquarters—an extensive 350,000m2 facility—and the Lenovo South Smart Campus (LSSC), a large manufacturing hub with a production capacity of 16 million smart devices a year. The solution is delivering advanced energy optimization capabilities at both sites, including visibility and control of energy usage by HVAC and associated equipment.
At Lenovo’s headquarters, SEES is helping the company to reduce its energy consumption by 34% a year—equating to annual savings of approximately $330,000. The solution will deliver a full return on investment within just two years, and has already enabled two of the six on-site engineers to increase the time they spend on higher-value strategic activities.
At the LSSC manufacturing facility, SEES has cut the energy used by air compressor equipment by 12% and is estimated to provide a full return on investment within two and a half years. Zhou states: “The automated solution provides much improved control over humidity and temperature compared to our previous manual approaches. Managers are satisfied because the solution meets their objectives, and employees are also happier because the working conditions are more comfortable.”
Inspiring an energy management revolution
Lenovo’s energy-saving success is already inspiring other enterprises to innovate their approach to energy management. One of the company’s leading suppliers of electronic components has used SEES to control HVAC equipment in its own factory, cutting energy consumption for the system in half.
“Lenovo’s public profile means that we receive a lot of attention for our energy-saving initiatives, including many visits to our facilities by other organizations,” says Zhou. “We are very pleased to be able to share our best practices in carbon reduction and energy efficiency, because we know that other organizations face very, very similar challenges. Our experience in working with Lenovo BASD to develop SEES is of great potential value to other organizations around the world.”
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