After a facelift in 2004, Woodlands Mall became the pilot site for Brookfield Properties Retail’s Peak Demand Reduction initiative. We introduced smart technology to automate systems, keep them communicating, and deliver real-time alerts, giving the team the power to act fast and cut energy use. The result? A saving of 5,000 kWh per month.
What We Did
Brookfield Properties Retail’s Woodlands Mall was overdue a push for smarter energy use. This two-level, enclosed mall got a facelift in 2004, and since then, it’s been part of Brookfield’s broader plans to modernize energy management across its portfolio.
When Houston-area utilities introduced peak demand pricing, Woodlands Mall was the perfect candidate to pilot a demand reduction strategy. OTI built a custom solution to automatically manage HVAC demand.
Challenges
Before this project, the HVAC system at The Woodlands Mall had never been analyzed using smart data tools, so no one really knew how the electricity meters were performing.
To get a clear picture, we kicked things off by digging into the utility billing data. That helped us understand the demand charges for the mall’s common areas and fine-tune the right strategy for managing peak loads.
The project itself ran across multiple seasons and wrapped up right in the thick of summer, when the HVAC systems were working overtime and keeping shoppers cool was a non-negotiable. Perfect timing for a real-world test.
Results
Just three days after we flipped the switch, on a day with temperatures in the high 90s, the Woodlands Mall cut peak demand by around 100kW. Since then, the site has continued to save about 5,000 kWh every month.
We didn’t stop there. By adding smarter peak demand prediction and pre-cooling algorithms, we pushed the savings even further, cutting costs by an additional 30% compared to the project’s initial launch back in July 2017.
The success spoke for itself. Brookfield Properties Retail has since rolled out similar demand management strategies across more of its portfolio.
