Introduction [00:00:00]
Dr. Erik Wallin: Welcome to the first episode of Best of Breeds, a podcast by ProptechOS. My name is Erik Wallin. I am the Chief Ecosystem Officer of ProptechOS. ProptechOS is a platform for smart buildings and especially for applications based on the open standards of Brick Schema and Real Estate Core. Today's podcast is with ClimaCheck.
ClimaCheck is the leader in fault detection and diagnostic analytics for heat pumps, especially for heat pumps within the cooling sector. ClimaCheck is the inventor of the internal method, which is used globally for analyzing heat pumps. I have together with me today Carl-Johan Håkansson, the CEO of ClimaCheck, who will give us guidance into the opportunities that we have using the ClimaCheck system. Welcome, Calle.
Carl-Johan Håkansson: Thank you very much. Nice to be here. It will be super fun to discuss heat pumps and cooling plants optimization with you.
Finding Optimization Opportunities [00:01:30]
Dr. Erik Wallin: We have been working with you at ClimaCheck for many years, and it strikes me every time when we are running a new client that is using ClimaCheck on top of ProptechOS - almost every time, there are lots of opportunities for improvement. The heat pumps are poorly configured or they are mismatched to the secondary circuits. There's usually a list of issues to fix. It just strikes me how this is allowed to continue, wasting energy.
The really cool thing here is that ClimaCheck joined the Real Estate Core standard a couple of years ago and is now totally plug and playable on ProptechOS. So Calle, what is your secret sauce?
The ClimaCheck Approach [00:03:00]
Carl-Johan Håkansson: We think this is a no-brainer and we do our best to push this message out in the world. We're working with big companies like Ikea, Sands Casino in Asia, Bernard Hospital, Obama Health Hospital chain in US, and so on. But still, many companies or people aren't aware of ClimaCheck.
I often get that question from my friends: "Calle, what are you actually doing?" We are providing an online diagnostic system for heat pumps and cooling plants.
To explain it simply, we compare it to a car. Everyone knows about cars. When you're sitting in your car, you have your dashboard where you can see how fast you're driving, if your oil pressure is good, the temperature of the cooling liquid, and so on.
You have something similar in buildings called the building management system - a dashboard on your computer where you can supervise the building, see temperatures in rooms, and get warnings. ProptechOS collects these sensors in the building and integrates them effectively.
But if you're driving and suddenly a big red lamp appears on the dashboard saying there's something wrong with the engine, you go directly to the garage. The first thing they do at the garage is plug in a diagnostic tool to check what's actually wrong, because they can't do anything without this tool.
We're doing the same thing for the engine of the building - the cooling plant or the heat pump. Our diagnostic tool measures these devices to see if everything is running efficiently, and we can break it down by component. We can determine if the compressor, condenser, evaporator, or expansion valve is working optimally. If not, we can see that on gauges in our dashboard in ClimaCheck online, and property owners can take proper action to fix it.
Integration with Building Systems [00:05:30]
Dr. Erik Wallin: I think that's a good comparison. When we leverage the maximum of ProptechOS or Real Estate Core, we can also turn this into work orders for facility management systems or ticketing systems. It's all about automation - finding the errors and doing automation.
I know that you focus on supporting different domains or pillars. Could you elaborate on that?
Three Pillars of Value [00:06:00]
Carl-Johan Håkansson: Absolutely. We usually say that we lean on three pillars:
One is ESG, the environmental reporting, which can be a big burden for property owners. It's very important because green-rated buildings get better loans and interest rates. With ClimaCheck reports, they can use this right out of the box for reporting purposes. I think that will increase over time as ESG demands grow.
Dr. Erik Wallin: So what you're doing helps with EU taxonomy or SEC filing requirements - not just by saving energy, but by providing the KPIs needed for reporting, and helping monitor progress toward goals.
Carl-Johan Håkansson: Exactly. The second pillar is predictive maintenance. Today, usually you wait until something breaks down completely, resulting in damages, downtime, and significant costs. With ClimaCheck, we can reduce that by over 60% because we can see performance drift over time. We can detect if a compressor is slowly reducing in capacity and efficiency before it fails, and we can easily spot cooling media leakage.
Dr. Erik Wallin: I've seen examples with our common client, one of Europe's largest property owners, who was impressed when ClimaCheck notified them that a compressor would break within two weeks if not fixed. I've also seen your expertise pinpoint specific faults with high accuracy, giving installers clear direction on what to fix.
Carl-Johan Håkansson: Yes, in one case, one of our founders actually called a property owner on a Friday evening saying, "I can see this system will break down any hour. You need to stop it now." They sent people out and shut it down just in time.
The third pillar is energy saving. We can reduce energy consumption in a commercial building by around 10%. Typically, in an ordinary commercial building, cooling and heating might account for 40% of energy use, with the rest being ventilation, lighting, and other systems. We can optimize and usually reduce the heat pump energy use by 25%, which translates to 10% for the entire building.
The reason is that parameters in cooling systems or heat pumps are often set to factory defaults, when in reality they should have completely different settings. Just by changing some parameters without installing any new equipment, we can easily reduce energy consumption.
Low-Hanging Fruit [00:10:00]
Dr. Erik Wallin: Compared to other investments a property owner can make, this is really a configuration exercise. It's like driving 70 mph on the highway in low gear - the engine would be screaming, but you'd still be moving at the right speed.
Carl-Johan Håkansson: Exactly. A system can maintain the correct temperature in a building without being optimized, wasting a lot of energy in the process.
When property owners decide to implement energy-saving measures, they typically consider options like changing to more efficient windows, adding insulation, or installing solar panels. All these activities require heavy investments with return on investment periods of 10-15 years.
What we're saying is that with a very small investment in ClimaCheck and ProptechOS, you can achieve significant savings with a return on investment of less than one year. That's why we think this is a no-brainer and why we emphasize starting with optimizing heat pumps and cooling plants, as they account for a large portion of energy consumption.
Collaboration and Integration [00:12:30]
Dr. Erik Wallin: We've been working together on a nationwide project in Germany, benchmarking across the country. As heat pumps grow in popularity as a component for fighting climate change, one of the big benefits of using the ClimaCheck application on ProptechOS is that your staff only needs to use one system, regardless of whether it's a Daikin or another brand, or whether it uses BACnet or Modbus protocols.
Carl-Johan Håkansson: The big new thing is that with our ProptechOS integration, you don't need any extra hardware. Everything is exchanged from cloud to cloud. That's a significant change from a couple of years ago when many sensors were missing and additional hardware was needed.
Conclusion [00:13:30]
Dr. Erik Wallin: To wrap up, what I've learned is that you are the global leaders in heat pump analytics, especially for cooling plants. You have a patent for the internal method and are extremely focused. Like the idea that it takes 10,000 hours to master a skill, you've put in that time developing tools and analytics.
You're also using advanced mathematical statistical methods, including machine learning and AI. We're connecting your expertise, embedding it into algorithms, and creating work orders through ProptechOS to dispatch to the right places. It's about automation and scaling - doing this cost-effectively at high scale and speed, especially important given the limited time property owners have to meet energy reduction targets.
Carl-Johan Håkansson: It's basically thermodynamic math combined with 100 man-years of experience, now enhanced with machine learning. It's particularly effective for us because heat pumps consist of many parts, but with 15 years of component-level data, we can apply machine learning to create more customer value and achieve automatic fault detection and diagnostics, generating work orders directly from the system.
Dr. Erik Wallin: Thank you very much, Calle, for sharing your expertise, and thank you everyone for listening. There is more information about ClimaCheck and ProptechOS in the link that will be shown. Don't forget to subscribe to the ProptechOS Best of Breed podcast.
