Albany

The New York Power Authority unveiled its new energy monitoring data center — the NY Energy Manager — at SUNY Polytechnic Institute in Albany on Tuesday.

The new center, currently in temporary space at SUNY Poly — will monitor real-time energy usage by state buildings around the clock to help save the state money.

NYPA said it would spend $10 million over the next five years on the new center, which has been in development for about a year.

The authority also plans to hire 50 people and will move late next year into 5,500 square feet of space that will be located in SUNY Poly's new ZEN, or zero-energy, building.

NYPA already has 3,000 state buildings, including those on SUNY campuses, being monitored, with plans to eventually add all state and municipal buildings. Getting hooked up to the system is relatively easy, requiring wireless modems attached to electric meters and other energy devices. NYPA will eventually recover the costs through a subscription service, although it believes the savings statewide to far outreach that.

NYPA CEO Gil Quiniones said the center will eventually provide a massive amount of data and technical findings that could be useful to the private sector, potentially leading to new energy service innovations and job creation. One of the reasons that NYPA chose to locate at SUNY Poly was to be near companies like IBM that do so-called Big Data analytics and work on "smart cities" innovations.

"Information draws investment," Quiniones said during a tour of NYPA's temporary facility in SUNY Poly's NanoFab East building, which is currently staffed by two people. The office was opened only a couple weeks ago.

The NY Energy Manager is part of an initiative created through executive order to reduce energy usage in state buildings by 20 percent by 2020. The state uses 3,000 gigawatt hours of electricity a year, about 5 percent of all of the electric usage in the state.

NYPA officials said the NY Energy Manager's system, which breaks down energy usage and shows trends and areas for improvement, has already benefited NYPA's headquarters building, which is certified as an LEED Gold building, the second-highest certification given out by the U.S. Green Building Council.

Quiniones says the value of locating at the ZEN building, which is currently under construction at the SUNY Poly campus, is being in the same building as the state data center, which will also be a ZEN tenant, and also being able to work with energy building experts at architecture firm EYP, which is also located on the SUNY Poly campus along with a host of other technology companies.

"The ecosystem is really what made us choose this space," Quiniones said.

Times Union: Data center tracks power

lrulison@timesunion.com • 518-454-5504 • @larryrulison