What started as a small initiative soon ballooned into a transformative project, resulting in massive energy savings and a considerable reduction in the stores’ scope 1 and 2 GHG emissions. Sleep Country Canada’s journey with Brainbox AI inspired a transformation in their operations. It deepened the value of BrainBox AI’s smart, sustainable solutions – highlighting the potential ripple effects that cases like this could have in the retail real estate sector.
The Pilot
Starting small to think big, Sleep Country, Canada’s leading omnichannel mattress and bedding retailer, initiated a pilot in four of its buildings using BrainBox AI’s advanced AI for HVAC technology. The results were impressive. By connecting BrainBox AI to their HVAC rooftop units, Sleep Country saw electricity and gas savings of 15% and 19%, respectively, and a reduction of 15 tCO2e – and that’s only in 1860 sq m square feet of store space.
Buoyed by this success, the mattress giant scaled up and committed 214 of their stores to be awakened by the AI technology. Results from 49 of those 214 locations delivered a 24% cut in energy consumption and a 25% reduction in GHG emissions. However, integrating AI into these piloted stores didn’t just reduce their overall energy consumption and carbon footprints. It also sharpened insights into their HVAC operations, giving the company the agency to pinpoint energy inefficiencies and act on them, improving their overall processes without compromising customer or associate comfort.
From 4 to 214
The success of this pilot set the stage for a more profound collaboration between Sleep Country and BrainBox AI. Sleep Country expanded the autonomous decarbonization solution’s deployment to 214 of its stores, representing 102,000 sq m of retail space across Canada.
Challenge: The catalyst for innovation
However, with expansion often comes unforeseen challenges. For BrainBox AI, scale and impact are critical competitive advantages, but even pluses can present hurdles. For example, for Sleep Country to deploy BrainBox AI’s technology at scale, they needed to adopt a new method of connectivity, which, in this case, took the form of cloud-connected, AI-enabled thermostats. Navigating this obstacle was a strategic move on their part, as it facilitated the comprehensive mapping, learning, and streamlining of each store’s HVAC system. It also led to them gaining access to a sophisticated control panel through which Sleep Country could view their real-time emissions and energy data, manage set-points in real time, view and understand store energy performance, and more – an approach that opens the door for multi-site retailers to access even greater operational efficiency across their locations.
The significance of Sleep Country’s journey
This journey between Sleep Country and BrainBox AI is a crucial example of technology’s transformative power in retail real estate. Most importantly, this partnership showcases the potential of autonomous AI optimization to realize retailers’ environmental objectives while addressing the most significant energy consumers in buildings – HVAC systems.
About BrainBox AI
Founded in 2017, BrainBox AI was created to address the dilemma currently facing the built environment, its energy consumption, and its significant contribution to climate change. As innovators of the global energy transition, BrainBox AI’s game-changing HVAC technology leverages AI to make buildings smarter, greener, and more efficient. Together with their international partners, BrainBox AI supports real estate clients in various sectors, including office buildings, hotels, commercial retail, grocery stores, airports, etc. Headquartered in Montreal, Canada, a global AI hub, BrainBox AI`s workforce of over 170 employees brings talent from all sectors with the common thread of being in business to heal our planet.
