Johnson Controls announced it has surpassed a milestone by filing 200 U.S. utility patent applications for innovations surrounding its OpenBlue Central Utility Plant offering and related energy optimizing product offerings. Additionally, it received its 90th U.S. patent grant for innovations related to OpenBlue Central Utility Plant product and energy optimization innovations. Central Utility Plant is a key component of the newly announced OpenBlue NetZero Buildings as a Service offering.
The most recent grants, U.S. Pat. No. 11,061,424, awarded July 13th, 2021, and U.S. Pat. No. 11,036,249, awarded June 15, 2021, include innovations which allow for a building energy optimizer to predict regional peak demand time periods. Peak regional demand (associated with both high cost and high emissions) predicted by the Johnson Controls system can be used to optimize energy performance based on the probability that any given period of time will be a peak contribution period.
Johnson Controls' OpenBlue Central Utility Plant (CUP) can monitor thousands of building variables, using information from connected equipment and external sources such as weather forecasts and utility rates. This allows customers to fully optimize their building management systems. CUP automatically generates and implements optimization decisions, controlling equipment from a variety of manufacturers.
More than 40 Johnson Controls customers have already purchased CUP, allowing them to reduce energy costs, increase productivity, ensure equipment reliability and reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
Over the past five years, Johnson Controls has invested close to $3 billion in engineering, research and development and has increasingly been awarded patents by global patent offices. These innovations reflect R&D investments in OpenBlue and other digital offerings, including air quality, energy optimization and sustainability of services, systems and equipment.
Beyond the energy optimization portfolio noted above, Johnson Controls is separately investing in additional intellectual property related to OpenBlue Digital Twin and OpenBlue Clean Air.
