GRIDARA

How it works

What changes: your energy bill. What doesn't: everything else.

No new hardware inside your core systems. No change to your existing BMS configuration. No impact on occupant comfort. What follows is the mechanism, in the order it happens.

The sequence

First site visit to full operation, step by step.

  1. GridAra connects to your building's BMS over BACnet/IP or Modbus TCP.

    No new hardware inside your core systems. A small gateway reads zone temperatures, air-handling unit supply air, chiller plant status and whole-building demand from the points your BMS already exposes.

  2. The integration is read-write and non-invasive.

    GridAra issues additive setpoint adjustments — a degree or two of chilled-water or zone offset, within limits agreed with your engineers. It never replaces your existing control logic. If the GridAra gateway goes offline, your BMS continues operating exactly as it does today.

  3. During the solar window, GridAra pre-cools using near-zero-cost solar power.

    The plant runs harder while on-site generation is high and wholesale prices are low. Your building's own thermal mass — slab, structure, water volume — becomes a controllable asset that stores that cooling for hours.

  4. Your building coasts through the evening peak and participates in demand response events.

    As peak demand charges and price events hit in the late afternoon, GridAra reduces load while the stored cooling holds zone temperatures inside the agreed band. This runs automatically, without occupant impact. Demand response signals use OpenADR 2.0b.

  5. Commissioning takes six to twelve weeks from first site visit to full operation.

    Site assessment and point mapping, controlled testing against your BMS, then a supervised go-live. This is the real timeline — GridAra does not compress it or imply something effortless.

The daily pattern, seven days a week

Load moves in time. Comfort does not.

The same total cooling is delivered across the day. GridAra shifts when the plant does the work — into the solar window, and away from the evening peak. The pattern below runs every day of the seven-day cycle; weekends, when the building is near-empty, are part of the same cycle, not an exception to it.

Illustrative Daily cooling-load profile, baseline versus GridAra-managed Across a 24-hour day, on-site solar generation peaks around midday. A baseline building's cooling load rises into an evening peak between 16:00 and 20:00. Under GridAra, load is pulled forward into the midday solar window to pre-cool the building, then reduced through the evening peak as the building coasts on stored cooling. EVENING PEAK · DEMAND CHARGES 00:00 06:00 12:00 18:00 24:00 Time of day Cooling load / generation (relative) Solar generation Baseline load GridAra-managed load Pre-cool window Coast through peak
Schematic, not measured data. Curves show the shape of the effect: total delivered cooling is unchanged; the plant does more of its work while power is cheap and clean, and less when the grid is stressed.

See it against your own plant.

A building assessment maps your BMS points and models the load-shift your specific plant and thermal mass can support.

Book a Building Assessment