Convia Takes "LEED" in Los Angeles
Company's Energy Management Strategies Spotlighted at Herman Miller's New Showroom
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Jane Chadesh
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LOS ANGELES – Dec. 18, 2009 – Organizations looking to enhance their sustainability efforts now have a new place to view the latest advancements in energy management. Convia, Inc./A Herman Miller Company announces the debut of its Convia Controls smart building platform at the Herman Miller Showroom in Los Angeles. [ View images » ] Once a warehouse, the new 18,000-square-foot LEED® Platinum pending showroom fully incorporates the Convia technology to serve as the ultimate showcase of energy management strategies and reporting for commercial buildings.
Designed by tvsdesign, the showroom was recently recognized for its depth of sustainability with a 2009 REmmy award in the Corporate Citizenship category from the CoreNet Global Southern California chapter. Convia plays a significant role in helping Herman Miller measure and maintain its own energy goals in the new space, while also allowing customers to view and experience the potential energy saving attributes of an integrated energy management solution.
“The incorporation of Convia technology in the Herman Miller showroom brings together and displays the dynamic capabilities of the Convia system, demonstrating the power of innovative thinking and making the technology accessible like never before,” said Randy Storch, president of Convia. “Serving a user’s every electrical want or need – in addition to saving customer and environmental resources – the Convia system is an essential building block in developing a space where energy conservation and management is a top-of-mind issue.”
Achieving Optimal Performance with End-to-End Control
Convia reduces energy expenses in the showroom by integrating the space’s power delivery and other infrastructure and technology applications into one easy-to-manage platform. The technology allows for the integrated control of lighting, plug loads and HVAC/thermostat set points – which can account for nearly 93 percent of total energy use within a building. This whole-building level of control, gives Herman Miller the ability to adapt to the ever-changing needs of the people visiting and working within the showroom.
Recognizing that more than 50 percent of workers spend time away from their desks, Herman Miller installed its Energy Manager devices, which are powered by the Convia technology, into the space. The devices sense occupancy and control power in the company’s systems furniture to save energy and lower costs. When a person sits down to work, an occupancy sensor detects their presence and turns on the devices in the cluster plugged into those two circuits, known as “plug loads” (e.g. task lights, printers, monitors or chargers). When the cluster is unoccupied, the devices automatically shut off. With plug load energy expected to rise by 70 percent over the next decade, Energy Manager provides an effective solution to control this energy. Other key components of Convia that are featured in the showroom include:
- Energy Savings: Occupancy sensors are located throughout the space programmed to trigger multiple devices for events, reducing the amount of devices electrically engaged at any given time.
- Daylight Dimming: Light dimming levels are automatically adjusted based on the time of day and the level of natural daylight available, which is essential to avoid distracting employees.
- Wall Switches: The switches enable users to control daylight dimming. Simply click once and lights turn on and daylight dimming is activated. Push and hold the switch and lights brighten and daylight dimming is disabled.
- Wand: Through Convia’s “plug and play” connections and wand, users can renovate space via virtual rewiring (without the hardwiring of devices or switches), allowing them to customize and configure their space with ease. Such technologies will help Herman Miller increase efficiency, improve space utilization, raise productivity and lower overall operating expenses.
- Reusable Components: Eliminating waste and creating a truly modular environment, walls within the space are moveable, allowing renovations or changes to occur seamlessly without tearing down walls or ripping out wires.
Understanding the Big Picture with Up-to-the Minute Reporting
With Convia’s Energy Track Reporting Tool™, showroom occupants can track their energy use at a zone (e.g. individual workstation or workstation cluster) or circuit level. Convia’s Energy Track displays the space’s actual energy usage on a simple and intuitive dashboard interface. Energy metering chips integrated into the Convia-enabled control components allow for accurate reporting. Unlike traditional energy management control products, which can only manage energy based on estimates of consumed use, Energy Track allows showroom occupants to accurately determine the efficiency of their space.
In addition to the L.A. showroom, prospective customers can also experience the energy saving capabilities of the Convia technology in Convia’s main showroom and headquarters located in Buffalo Grove, Illinois.
About Convia, Inc.
Convia, Inc./A Herman Miller Company, seeks to advance energy management strategies and change the way people design, build, personalize and manage space. Founded in 2006 and headquartered in Buffalo Grove, Illinois, Convia offers an end-to-end level of control that enables a building to adapt to the evolving needs of the people and organizations who occupy it while helping facility managers broaden their energy goals. Through its partnership with Wiremold/Legrand, the leading provider of modular electrical distribution components, Convia Controls are imbedded into Wiremold® ’s flexible electrical wiring systems to provide a control platform that fuels the adoption of flexible, sustainable spaces. Such platforms can ultimately reduce real estate and building operating costs while improving employee productivity.
