Blackstone Energy Services focuses on delivering responsible solutions that help clients save, sustain, and thrive through customized strategies for energy and carbon reduction. Its expertise lies in optimizing energy procurement, improving energy efficiency, and implementing effective emission reduction strategies. Based in Toronto, Canada, Blackstone approached J2 Innovations to explore how the
FIN Framework could serve as the future platform for both edge and cloud applications for their existing purpose-built energy management solution,
blackPAC™.
Leveraging J2’s FIN Framework technology and expertise, Blackstone has been able to provide an improved blackPAC suite services.
blackPAC is a state-of-the-art DERMS platform that consolidates a facility’s energy data into one scalable and user-friendly interface on the web. It empowers both private and public sector facilities, such as universities, colleges, retail, REITs, municipalities, hospitals, etc., to control, report, and ultimately minimize their energy costs, consumption, and carbon emissions. Whether you’re managing a single facility or an extensive portfolio, blackPAC™ offers real-time visibility and simplified sustainability reporting that positions you on the right path toward net-zero carbon consumption.
Blackstone chose FIN Framework because it met their key requirements which included:
- Simplifying edge to cloud connectivity
- Increasing speed to market
- Offering simple site installation and commissioning
- Customized dynamic dashboards providing optimal control over energy use and costs
- Flexibility of hardware deployment
- Potential for implementing control actions in addition to monitoring.
FIN Technology for blackPAC
FIN can be embedded on an edge platform hosted in the cloud. J2’s solution for Blackstone utilizes this unique capability and enabled blackPAC to serve dashboards both from the enterprise and the site. This solution offers secure remote access and a way to manage multi-site customers who want to view aggregated data and perform comparative analytics across all their sites, using a cloud-hosted instance of FIN. FIN’s Edge2Cloud technology, included in blackPAC, addresses remote access and site-to-cloud connectivity issues while also providing comprehensive user and device management for large multi-site applications.
As part of the upgrades, Blackstone enhanced their edge hardware, which now offers ample capacity for local data storage and the option to implement control functions as needed.
Flexible and Scalable Dashboards
The FIN framework is the backbone upon which the blackPAC modules are built. It includes features like logic builders and database builders, which enable contextual point mapping. This capability makes the blackPAC dashboards both flexible and scalable.
Suite of blackPAC Modules
- Enterprise: Portfolio-wide dashboard for reporting energy, carbon and overall performance.
- Utility: Live utility meter monitoring with targeting and M&V tools.
- Live ICI: Forecast and monitor peaks for demand performance, maximizing global adjustment savings.
- Active ICI: Active and automated building demand management & peak shifting for ICI savings.
- Solar: Live solar PV monitoring with targeting and M&V tools.
- Optimize: Automated real-time optimization of building systems, using AI for continuous improvement.
- Carbon: Emissions tracking and reporting on live and historical data.
- ActiveDER: Automated management, coordination and control of renewable resources.
- Drive: Automated management and control of electric vehicles & peak shaving for ICI savings.
