Property management is all about juggling priorities – keeping tenants happy, monitoring costs, and ensuring building operations run smoothly. But from what we’ve heard, HVAC systems can feel like the troublemaker of the group.
Breakdowns happen at the worst times, maintenance schedules get lost in the shuffle, and managing it all manually? Forget about it.
And it’s a big energy guzzler too. Roughly 40% of building energy consumption comes from HVAC systems. In multifamily buildings, nearly 1/3 of that is wasted.
That’s where HVAC optimization software steps in. And here at Parity, we believe we’ve perfected our service to make your life easier while helping your building’s systems work smarter, not harder. But more on that later.
HVAC optimization is the process of enhancing the efficiency, performance, and cost-effectiveness of heating, ventilation, and air conditioning systems. We previously wrote about HVAC optimization in more detail here.
Here are 3 reasons why Property Managers love HVAC Optimization Software.
Keeping energy costs under control is a constant battle for property managers, especially in multifamily buildings where usage can skyrocket.
HVAC optimization software helps you save big by slashing utility costs and reducing maintenance costs.
It’s like putting your HVAC system on autopilot – fine-tuning performance so you’re not wasting a dime on inefficiencies. By automating adjustments based on real-time data, the system reduces energy consumption while keeping residents comfortable.
It’s not just about saving money on utilities—it’s about running a smarter building that’s better for your bottom line and NOI.
Over time, those savings add up, giving you more room in the budget to reinvest in your property and make other improvements tenants will love.
Picture this: you’re cruising through a regular workday, only to get an emergency call about an HVAC failure. Now you’re scrambling to find a technician, tenants are unhappy, and repair costs are climbing fast. Sound familiar?
With HVAC optimization software, those surprise breakdowns become a thing of the past. Often, small fixes or improvements early on can prevent costly and invasive repairs later.
Plus, managing HVAC systems manually can be time-consuming and stressful.
With HVAC optimization software, your systems are monitored and optimized in real-time. When issues arise, the software picks up on it. Examples include high domestic hot water temperatures or low steam pressure.
The software flags these issues before they become a major problem. You might even get a centralized dashboard to see a comprehensive view of your HVAC system’s performance, making oversight simple and efficient.
The result? Fewer emergency repairs, less downtime, and more happy tenants who aren’t freezing (or sweating) through avoidable HVAC problems. And it frees up time for building staff and property managers to focus on other aspects of their job.
Navigating energy regulations like NYC’s Local Law 97 or Boston’s BERDO can feel like an uphill climb. HVAC optimization software makes compliance much easier.
By monitoring energy usage and emissions, HVAC software provides the insights and reports you need to stay on the right side of the law. No more guesswork, no more scrambling—just a straightforward way to avoid fines and keep your property in the clear.
Plus, you can prove compliance or show progress toward emissions targets with detailed data ready for audits or inspections.
Hitting those benchmarks shows tenants and stakeholders that you’re serious about sustainability. This is a great way to attract new tenants and retain current ones.
We helped a Manhattan rental building lower its potential LL97 fines by an estimated $94,000 in one year, which translates to 353 tons of CO2 emissions.
At a different building in New York City, we saved 181 tons of CO2 from entering the atmosphere. That is the equivalent of $48K in potential reduced exposure to LL97 fines.
By integrating with a building’s existing HVAC controls, our control optimization software remotely and automatically makes real-time control adjustments based on data from your building and external factors like weather forecasts.
If our service detects an operational anomaly with your equipment, we send color-coded alerts, tiered e-mails, and text messages to building staff as soon as the issue arises. Our service can identify issues in a building before your occupants are impacted.
Plus, we directly reduce CO2 emissions by improving your HVAC systems’ efficiency. We deliver automatic energy savings to reduce your exposure to fines from building performance standards like LL97, BERDO, BEPS, and more.
All 3 of those benefits are a part of our industry-leading Optimizer service.
HVAC optimization software isn’t only a tool—it’s a game-changer for property managers who want to simplify their lives and maximize their building’s potential.
If you’re ready to say goodbye to HVAC headaches and hello to a smarter way of managing your building, we’d love to show you how we can help.
Email contact@paritygo.com or call 1-833-372-7489. You can also visit our website to learn more about how we reduce utility bills in multifamily residential buildings and hotels.
Our HVAC systems were “running wild,” said former board president Dan Donnelly. “In terms of energy, we were performing in the bottom 5% of New York City buildings.”
The building had a D energy grade and faced Local Law 97 (LL97) penalties estimated at $65,000 in 2030.
252 East 57th Street is a 65-story luxury high-rise in Manhattan that is part condo and part rental – each with different HVAC systems.
The rental units use heat pumps, but the condos use four gas-fired boilers for heating and compressors to operate chillers for cooling. Each of the 95 condo units are equipped with four-pipe fan coil units for heating and cooling at any time.
After discovering the poor energy grade and looming LL97 fines, the condo board set up an energy committee led by Dan Donnelly to figure out how to reduce the building’s carbon emissions.
Dan was well-informed about LL97 and building/HVAC efficiency. He was very keen on automation and understood he took the building as far as he could with the existing building staff and Building Management System (BMS) in place.
Gene Kastner, the former Resident Manager at 252 East 57th Street, referred Donnelly to Parity for a high-level and technical overview.
After scoping out the building, we discovered that the largest limitations and problems at 252 East 57th Street came from the HVAC system operations.
We came in with our Optimizer service to fill in the gap and included a large upgrade to their BMS.
Our projected guaranteed savings for 252 East 57th Street was at least $90,000 during the first year.
We over-delivered and saved the building $165,917 in utility costs!
This means that instead of our projected 1.7 year payback, they got their ROI in 8 months.
We also supported Dan’s concern with the LL97 fine. We reduced 252 East 57th Street’s exposure to fines by $60K. That also translates to 226 tons of avoided CO2 in our atmosphere.
We pride ourselves in our ability to decarbonize buildings across NYC by fine-tuning their HVAC systems to run more energy efficiently. And our work here was one of many examples of us doing exactly that.
Let’s take a look at how we were able to reach the $165,917 in savings.
Our savings were largely driven by maximizing evaporative over mechanical cooling. Evaporative cooling, known as free cooling, uses outdoor temperatures via the cooling tower to reject heat from the water in the system, which uses less energy than the compressors to operate a chiller.
“When the system was designed, it was relying a lot more on the chiller,” Kevin Lin, our Director of Systems Integration explains.
The resident manager was then tasked with manually switching to free cooling when outdoor conditions allowed, something that could easily be overlooked. With the new system, the transition to free cooling takes place automatically.
“Last December, we were able to reduce peak demand by 300 to 400 kW, which is significant,” Kevin reported.
Another area of savings came from modifying the building’s make-up air units, which replace air that is ventilated from apartments with exhaust fans.
The condo apartments also have high-end kitchen range hoods that remove a large volume of air. The make-up air units were working at the maximum, even though the range hoods were not in use all day.
“We were able to adjust the airflow so the load met the demand,” Kevin says.
Similarly, the domestic hot water preheating system wasn’t set up to be energy efficient. Water was being preheated 24/7, even during the day when demand was low. We updated this with a combination of variable frequency drives (VFDs) that heated water automatically based on demand and our software.
“A lot of times the pump was just moving water when there was no water on the other side that needed to be preheated,” Kevin says.
After installation and commissioning are complete, we monitor the building’s HVAC systems to ensure energy efficiency is met and alert the building staff if any issues arise. We do this with Pi (Parity Insights).
Pi keeps Resident Managers like Gene informed about critical HVAC metrics, helps detect and solve anomalies, and provides timely alerts. Our dashboard offers a window directly into how we are optimizing your HVAC systems.
We have a robust alerting system that we fine-tuned to Gene’s exact specifications to warn him of HVAC issues at 252 East 57th Street before resident comfort is affected.
When you partner our control optimization software with our Pi dashboard, you get an advanced energy efficiency solution primed to lower your utility costs, guaranteed.
Are you ready to bring Parity into your building? Email contact@paritygo.com or call 1-833-372-7489 to see if your building is a good fit. You can also visit our website to learn more about how we reduce utility bills in multifamily residential buildings and hotels.
BEPS is an acronym for Building Energy Performance Standards. It refers to laws regulating energy use for buildings by local, district, and state governments.
Building Performance Standards (BPS) laws have been passed by various governments across the country. They all vary significantly.
The parts of the DMV with active BEPS laws are the State of Maryland, the District of Columbia, and Montgomery County, MD.
The legislation is changing often as data is gathered on buildings in the region and as our local governments learn what works best from other building performance laws around the country.
These laws aim to achieve a government’s long-term greenhouse gas emission goals by splitting their timeline into smaller compliance cycles.
Compliance cycles were designed to encourage building owners to take action early with small steps toward energy savings, instead of requiring immediate, expensive, and time-consuming overhauls. Each compliance cycle is 5 years long.
To start, multifamily buildings are given an energy use or emissions target to meet based on their size.
If your building meets the target you can relax and forget about BEPS until the next cycle starts in 5 years. If not, you have 5 years to implement changes to reduce energy usage to the target level or face fines.
Then, the next compliance cycle starts with a new, lower building energy target.
DC’s goal is to reduce energy use in buildings by 50% by 2032.
It uses two compliance cycles to achieve this goal. The first compliance cycle began in 2021 and will end in 2026.
DC’s energy target is based on a building’s Energy Star score. Energy Star scores measure a building’s energy use intensity relative to similar buildings in the US, presented as a percentile from 0 to 100.
A building with a score of 100 is in the top 1% of energy efficiency in the country. A score of 1 is very inefficient, while a score of 50 is average.
The target Energy Star score for multifamily buildings in DC is 66. This means that multifamily buildings must be more efficient than 66% of comparable buildings in the US.
The maximum energy use intensity reduction DC’s BEPS law is asking for in each compliance cycle is 20%.
So, if achieving an Energy Star score of 66 would require a greater than 20% energy use reduction in your building, you can instead target the 20% reduction and avoid any fines, even if your Energy Star score is less than the target of 66.
The maximum fine is set at $10 per foot.
The only buildings that would get the maximum fines are buildings that need to reduce their energy use intensity by 20% or more AND make zero progress towards reducing their energy consumption during the compliance cycle.
If your building needs to reduce by 20% but only achieves a 10% reduction, you’d pay $5 per square foot.
If your building only needs to reduce by 10% at the beginning of the cycle to achieve an Energy Star score of 66, the highest fine you could get would be $5 per square foot.
If you got halfway to your target, you’d be fined $2.50 per square foot.
If your building in DC is not meeting its BEPS target, we recommend you implement energy saving measures before the start of 2026. January 1st, 2026 will be the first day of energy use that counts towards compliance.
Montgomery County is using site energy use intensity as the measurement for its BEPS program. This is the amount of energy used per square foot, represented as kBtu/ft2.
The end goal of the county’s BEPS plan is to get multifamily buildings to 37 kBtu/ft2 and is using two compliance cycles to get there.
At the start of the program, multifamily buildings will have their baseline usage set. After 5 years, they will need to meet an interim standard which is halfway to the goal of 37 kBtu/ft2. from where they started. After another 5 years, they will need to be at 37 kBtu/ft2.
A 300,000-square-foot condominium with a site energy use intensity of 57 kBtu/ft2 in 2024 will need to reduce its energy usage to 47 kBtu/ft2 by the end of 2030 and down to 37 kBtu/ft2 by the end of 2035.
For multifamily properties between 25,000 ft2 and 250,000 ft2, the program begins and ends one year later than for properties greater than 250,000 ft2 so enforcement will occur at the end of 2031 and 2036.
The exact fine structure for the Montgomery County BEPS program isn’t clear yet. Current laws limit the fines to $500 for the first offense and $750 for each subsequent offense but whether these fines will be applied annually, daily, or anywhere in between has not been determined.
Maryland’s state-wide BEPS program goal is to incentivize all buildings greater than 35,000 ft2 to achieve net-zero direct greenhouse gas emissions by 2040.
Net direct greenhouse gas emissions are the amount of CO2 being released on-site, typically from the combustion of fuels for space heating, water heating, or cooking, represented as kgCO2/ft2.
Baseline values will be finalized in 2025, then buildings will enter compliance cycles which end in 2030, 2035, and 2040.
Currently, the legislation indicates all multifamily buildings will be held to the same targets. The targets for condominiums will be 0.82 kgCO2/ft2 in 2030, 0.41 kgCO2/ft2 in 2035, and 0 kgCO2/ft2 in 2040.
When fines begin in 2030, Maryland properties not achieving the BEPS standards will be fined annually for each ton of CO2 released by the building beyond the standards. Fine amounts are tied to the EPA’s estimated social cost of carbon dioxide emissions which will be $230/ton of CO2 in 2030.
Maryland also planned on having Site Energy Use Intensity limits, which track both onsite combustibles and electricity usage, but has removed these limits. These are expected to be reinstated in 2027 when they announce new limits that are chosen using the 2025 baselining data to inform the new targets.
You have to follow both.
We recommend taking the time to understand where each law sets the targets for your property.
In most cases, the state law will set more aggressive targets for a given property. The state law also sets a clear structure for its fines. Be sure to keep track of it.
There are currently no BEPS laws or corresponding fines in place for the state or local governments in Virginia.
However, utilities are expensive no matter where you are and many of the improvements related to BEPS can be economically favorable. When done right, energy efficiency measures can lower your community’s operating costs.
If you find that your building’s energy baseline is above the targets for your jurisdiction, there are several options available to achieve compliance.
There is no one-size-fits-all solution to energy performance so it may be worth contacting an energy auditor or advisor in our market to help navigate this process and understand your options.
“Silver Spring” – Image Credit IntangibleArts via Flickr.
Is your building facing BEPS fines? Do you want to learn more about BEPS? Email contact@paritygo.com and we will get back to you soon.
As the seasons shift from the scorching heat of summer to the bone-chilling cold of winter, and vice versa, building managers need to prepare their properties for the transitional period known as shoulder season.
Parity has found that shoulder season is when buildings waste the most energy because their HVAC controls aren’t properly set.
Among all the seasons, shoulder season emerges as the crown jewel of energy savings when it comes to HVAC systems. With milder temperatures prevailing in fall and spring, there’s less of a need for energy-intensive heating or cooling efforts.
As a result, HVAC systems can and should be able to consume less energy since the outdoor temperature will oftentimes be closer to the desired indoor temperature. By seizing the opportunity to maximize the use of natural ventilation and judiciously adjusting your HVAC settings during shoulder season, energy bills dwindle while occupants still enjoy a cozy and comfortable living space.
While the allure of shoulder season lies in reduced reliance on HVAC systems, they can still be your allies during this time.
Photo by ready made on Pexels
It requires a lot of manual work to prepare your building’s HVAC systems for the heat or the cold. But by leaving your summer or winter HVAC controls on during the fall or spring, you’re leaving savings on the table.
An example is if you’re over-cooling your building with summer controls. You could be wasting energy if your condenser, water pump, or chiller is running too much because the demand in your building for cooling is much lower in the fall than in the summer.
Our HVAC optimization service can automatically and remotely reduce energy consumption by reducing equipment speeds and adjusting temperature setpoints to meet the building’s heating or cooling demand. Let’s take a look at 2 examples.
A 4-pipe Fan Coil building in Midtown runs cooling year-round. The building has a Free Cooling Loop, however, due to the glass construction of the building, there is still a significant load on the building during winter months. This forces the building to run the Chiller deep into the winter.
Parity can automatically switch between free cooling and mechanical cooling operation depending on the building load. We enable the building to reduce energy and costs significantly.
Another example is a building with a Water Source Heat Pump and Gas-Fired Steam Boilers for Heat Injection.
Parity installed VFDs on the primary condenser pump and cooling tower allowing our algorithm to ramp up and down speeds according to building demand. We also reset the secondary condenser water setpoint based on the outdoor wet bulb allowing for improved water source heat pump efficiency with minimal impact on overall central plant consumption. Lastly, we added automatic summer/winter operation to boilers allowing the boilers to operate on low fire mode for DHW production during off-season conditions.
Shoulder season empowers property and resident managers to harness the full potential of your HVAC system. Shoulder season isn’t just about comfortable temperatures; it’s about smart, sustainable living that benefits both your wallet and the planet. With the help of a company like Parity, you can navigate this transitional period with ease.