By Joshua Burd
Logical Buildings, a technology firm that helps landlords manage their energy costs, has launched a new $110 million facility for a so-called virtual power plant project that seeks to help apartments owners realize new savings and reduce their carbon footprint.
Working with Keyframe Capital, the company said the fund will provide thousands of operators in New Jersey and New York City with reputational and financial incentives to invest in upgrades such as smart thermostats to better monitor energy usages. Logical Buildings described the platform as the first of its kind, noting that funds would be repaid through energy savings and grid revenue, while establishing a channel for deploying energy transition projects in the vast multifamily sector.
Requiring no upfront capital by landlords, the program comes at a time when many operators aim to comply with upcoming emissions reduction and energy efficiency regulations.
“Imagine providing residents with smart thermostats that reduce building energy usage, lower resident utility bills and generate cash rewards, while simultaneously enhancing comfort and convenience,” said Jeff Hendler, CEO at Logical Buildings. “With our new project facility this is now a reality. The multifamily market remains largely untapped when it comes to impactful decarbonization and energy transition projects. Our project facility provides building owners with access to new opportunities to create thousands of grid-connected smart apartments at once, instead of the traditional ‘one home at a time’ approach to residential energy savings.”
Logical Buildings, which has a long list of New Jersey owners as clients, has largely built its business on software platforms that monitor energy usage in real time. Those programs integrate with smart meters like the ones installed by Con Edison as part of a $2 billion infrastructure upgrade in New York, with the ability to link to each apartment’s smart thermostat and record temperature changes and related impacts in 15-minute increments.
Operators, meantime, stand to benefit from access to Logical Buildings’ engineering expertise to help identify the projects that generate a return on investment and measure, verify and continuously maximize the value of the virtual power plant for each building.
“We’re thrilled to be part of this transformational energy story,” said Alex Brown, a partner at Keyframe Capital. “Logical Buildings’ breakthrough software provides hugely important environmental and financial benefits to building owners and residents, while simultaneously enabling all categories of real estate to experience smarter, tech-enabled comforts. It’s a win for owners, a win for residents, and a win for the planet.”
