Customers frequently ask us what we mean by “precision weather forecast“.

ECCO2 Building Intelligence uses future weather data to save energy: If we know in the morning that the sun will shine in the afternoon, we may already turn down the heating, meanwhile exploiting heat stored in the building. With a better forecast, we can save more energy while achieving better control upon indoor temperature and – ultimately – optimize comfort.

Weather forecast models apply a “mesh” over the local map and calculate the forecast for each of the resulting square areas. Further adjustments are subsequently made to account for elevation changes, terrain features and such. The precision of the forecast is largely defined by the fineness of the mesh used in the calculation. And here is the catch: The required computing resources and associated cost increase exponentially with mesh fineness.

Nowadays, there is a plethora of free weather forecasts readily available for everyone to download. Some of our colleagues and competitors use them to save costs. We don’t. Swiss precision is not compatible with any kind of corner-cutting.

ECCO2 buys from our trusted partner Meteotest AG in Bern a high precision weather forecast, updated every hour, with a truly remarkable resolution of 1 x 1 km. The best of the best. Meteotest’s forecast is created from a combination of several simulation models. The most important (and best) model is from the European Centre of Medium-Range Weather Forecast (ECMWF). Raw data is subjected to further processing using proprietary processes.

Furthermore, Meteotest uses a feedback system to constantly improve their model.

The result? ECCO2’s forecast service is between 16 and 100 times finer than free weather forecast sources. How important is it? Imagine that the forecast called for a bright sunny day and your building ends up sitting in a stubborn layer of fog for a large part of the day. The energy balance is disrupted. Tenants get uncomfortably cold, and your building manager gets angry calls.

We at ECCO2 know exactly how important each of the many ingredients of our “Building Intelligence” solution is. We call it a “second generation” solution for a reason: we have engineered out every issue we could identify in 10 years of experience with first generation technology.

One crucial issue we targeted was comfort-related complaints. Absolutely everything we do in our Building Intelligence solution follows the same uncompromising quest for Swiss quality and precision. This is also why we host your data and entrust our security and all communications end-to-end to the prime name in Switzerland: Swisscom. Of course, there are cheaper options, but at the end of the day, top quality is the best value. At least this is how we see it at ECCO2.