Today's "smart buildings" aren't smart at all — just connected. While many Building Management Systems are meant to look modern on the outside, most buildings are outdated with ancient control systems and programming on the inside that require human expertise to install and maintain.
With IEA claiming that buildings are responsible for over one-third of global final energy consumption and nearly 40% of total direct and indirect CO2 emissions, PassiveLogic has stepped up to the plate to redefine building automation with the first fully autonomous building controls platform.
PassiveLogic was founded in 2016 by Troy Harvey and Jeremy Fillingim with a vision to streamline the complexity of the building life cycle while addressing the largest climate and energy complications in the global economy.
Installed in one-tenth of the time compared to conventional HVAC controls, PassiveLogic's autonomous building systems can be installed or retrofitted in new buildings and can reduce energy consumption by 30% without data science expertise or AI training time.
PassiveLogic’s building controls platform develops its own control sequences on the fly in response to changing conditions. The platform can understand its own underlying physics of operations and generate continuous control paths. Those same physics can provide deep insights and analysis that can be used to automate the commissioning and optimization of systems. This allows the building to be aware of the future implications of their decisions, enabling the building to navigate around system “collisions” or energy “congestion” hours before it occurs.
Using a lightning-fast on-board physics engine, PassiveLogic analyzes millions of sequence futures every second with only the most optimal control given the current conditions being selected.
The company's Autonomy (News - Alert) Studio software Digital Twins provides virtual analogies to real-world objects to understand their behavior and interactions in a process called “deep physics.” This allows the system to connect a variety of things including the cause and effect between the physics of movement and the position of a person, the person's movement and their metabolic rate, their respiration, air quality and more.
Built into their Hive edge controller, PassiveLogic's autonomous platform enables connectivity to building systems, working together to provide an edge platform for sensors, equipment, and IoT without the need for a cloud connection. The Hive Digital Twin (News - Alert) engine automatically generates deep insights about a building, allowing local in-building AI to make real-time control and management decisions that co-optimize comfort, maintenance, efficiency and operational costs.
One setback in this industry is a lack of communication due to the clear absence of standardized terminology. Following the tracks of the evolution of the autonomous vehicle industry, PassiveLogic strives to introduce a set of autonomous standards for buildings comparable to the Society of Automotive Engineering’s (S.A.E.) Autonomous Vehicle Standards that define thresholds for layers of autonomy. By adding an additional three levels of standards including installation, self-commissioning systems, and self-networking systems, and by developing language to discuss the future of autonomous buildings, terminology for autonomous buildings can be streamlined and the world can come closer to having buildings that are truly smart.
Based out of Salt Lake City, Utah, PassiveLogic continues to shift the future of energy and reduce overall energy consumption around the world. In a world increasingly impacted by climate change, their platform can reduce the amount of toxic fumes released by power plants and help conserve the earth's natural resources.
PassiveLogic has received $16 million in funding with venture capital funds Keyframe Capital and Addition leading the Series A round. The US Department of Energy (DOE) follows the Series A raise with a $1.1M contract to define an industry Digital Twin technology standard for next-generation automation systems. Additional backing for the standard comes from Swiss HVAC component manufacturer Belimo.
