New product leverages rocket science principles and drone technology to optimize energy efficiency
Joulea, a new cutting-edge software platform, is reducing energy costs and consumption for commercial buildings using rocket science. Its launch marks the creation of an innovative assessment of all building systems and external factors to lower and track carbon emissions, streamline reporting and compliance, optimize day-to-day building system performance and reduce overall portfolio energy costs. With Joulea’s industry-leading model accuracy, building owners and managers can identify needed repairs and upgrades to building systems to meet financial and ESG goals.
“Our technology takes a holistic approach by monitoring how all building systems and external factors interact so we can identify improvement opportunities and reduce operating costs,” said Ramtin Motahar, Joulea’s founder and CEO. “We see our clients as astronauts, using our platform to collect information and aggregate building data. Joulea is ground control, analyzing the data to reduce inefficiencies, fueling greener decision-making and elevating our clients to new heights.”
Joulea’s groundbreaking technology applies aerospace product lifecycle management techniques to create a commercial building’s digital energy twin. Industry standards for energy efficiency are exceeded using Joulea’s model to monitor all systems for opportunities to manage and improve efficiencies. Additionally, Joulea targets corporate and governmental energy benchmarks, so building owners and operators can improve environmental sustainability at each property and across their entire portfolio.
Motahar earned a master’s degree in aerospace engineering in addition to two bachelor’s degrees in economics and industrial engineering at Georgia Tech. While working in commercial real estate development, Motahar’s initial idea took flight when he returned to Georgia Tech for his master’s, where he met several of Joulea’s future advisors and team members who played active roles in preparing the software platform for launch.
Joulea’s reimagined approach allows building assets to be managed using a comprehensive user-friendly software platform. This starts with creating an energy model of the building based on construction type, operation and location. Using additional information regarding energy use and building systems data, Joulea creates a continuously calibrated building energy model. Next, Joulea captures the building’s envelope using its industry leading, patent-pending drone technology to autonomously fly the entire building through swarm. Sensor images are safely collected and added to the model, producing a highly accurate, holistic analysis of the entire integrated structure. Finally, the capX Planner with the embedded models generates dynamic financial and ESG scenario analyses of renovation costs with their respective carbon emission reductions and financial payback of the improvements to help commercial building owners and asset managers understand how to improve their building.
Joulea uses new insights uncovered over time to proactively manage real-time changes in the building’s environment and reduce the model’s error rate, far exceeding industry standards. All of this happens in a matter of days compared to weeks-long wait times experienced with other technology.
On average, commercial buildings allocate one-third of their operating budget toward energy consumption. While they are designed, built and operated under certain parameters, buildings rarely encounter ideal conditions, especially as they age. Current energy management practices evaluate energy usage unilaterally, failing to optimize efforts across all building systems. This results in up to 33% of the budget spent on energy to occur as waste. The average commercial building in the US is 53 years old, increasing the likelihood for inefficiencies from weathering and failures over its lifetime.
Joulea’s technology is currently being piloted with national commercial building owners and asset managers in the Atlanta area. For more information on demos or pilot programs, please visit https://www.joulea.com/get-demo or contact Joulea at info@joulea.com.
About Joulea:
Joulea is a revolutionary software platform that leverages the power of rocket science to reduce energy costs and consumption in commercial buildings. Founded by Georgia Tech alumnus Ramtin Motahar, Joulea provides commercial building owners and managers with a capX Planner that has an embedded continuously calibrated building energy model that accounts for all building systems and external factors. This is in order to track carbon emissions, streamline reporting and compliance, optimize system performance and reduce overall portfolio energy costs. For more information, follow Joulea on LinkedIn and Twitter or visit the website at www.joulea.com.
