The City of Copenhagen saved DKK 120,000 easily and quickly without new investments

”Our biggest aha moment was the saving of DKK 120,000 a year. 
Even without using Capital Expenditures – and only by adjusting the existing systems based on data.”

“It begins with DTU (Technical University of Denmark) requesting a school for a project regarding energy efficiency in the Smart Cities Accelerator program”, says Louis Jacobi, energy manager at the Children and Youth Administration (BUF) in the City of Copenhagen. 

He continues: “We have Tagensbo school, which is an older school, but which has since been renovated and rebuilt in 2011. It is very representative of the schools in the municipality. DTU comes with these smart IoT sensors and then we start monitoring and collecting data.”

We decide to look at the district heating – or actually at the cooling of the return water. This is because there can be saved a lot of money. After the easy installation of sensors, minute data begins to flow in quickly. Via online dashboards, the BUF energy team and DTU can see the status at the school. 
“We keep an eye on the cooling, but also on the flow temperature – we often see that it is too high in relation to the outside temperature,” says Louis.

“For us in the BUF energy team, it is about operating the buildings as inexpensive as possible without compromising on the indoor climate. The money should preferably be spent on the students – not on operations.”

Poor cooling means that the district heating plant must either send more heating water into circulation or raise the temperature of the water if there is to be enough heat for everyone. Both provide greater energy consumption – Either because the pumps that sends the water around in the system need more electricity to pump more water out, or because a greater heat loss occurs in the pipe network and the heating system when the temperature is raised. 
“With all the new sub-measurement points, we are approaching real energy management. This provides value,” explains Louis.

And value was provided. Specifically, just around DKK 120,000 a year in savings on the heating bill. And to be noted, without expensive investments, only adjustments of the inhouse systems were made.

“For us in the BUF energy team, it is about operating the buildings as inexpensive as possible without compromising on the indoor climate. The money should preferably be spent on the students – not on operations. We would like to hit 21 degrees in the classrooms all year round, but it can be difficult when we have no secondary measurement points “, says Louis – and continues: 

“Today we have buildings that are over-ventilated, simply because they are too hot. Ventilation and heat are running and working against each other, but we cannot adjust based on main meter data alone. Imagine if we had sub-measuring points out in the heating strings and in the ventilation system with connected alarms. See that would be real energy management,” says Louis with dreamy eyes.

Fact:
The 11 partners in Smart Cities Accelerator+ are supported by the EU program: Interreg Öresund-Kattegat-Skagerak. By the autumn of 2022, the partners must develop scalable models and methods to avoid peak periods in electricity and heat production and to make energy consumption in buildings as efficient as possible. 
One of the four main areas within the Smart Cities Accelerator program is ‘Data-driven tools to ensure a holistic, energy-efficient and indoor climate-optimal building renovation’ and here ReMonis IoT sensors and cloud solution have been used at Tagensbo school in the City of Copenhagen.

Louis Jacobi graduated within energy technology from the Copenhagen Business Academy in 2017. He then studied be an energy manager in 2019. Louis has been employed as Energy Manager in Copenhagen Municipality’s Children and Youth Administration (BUF) since 2019. 

Tagensbo School is originally from 1938. The premises have been modernized, and the existing gymnasiums have been converted into leisure centres and specialist rooms. A large extension houses a new school and administration building as well as a large multi-purpose hall, which also serves as a culture house for the district outside the school’s opening hours.

Project in a daycare center reveals huge resource saving potential


There is a great amount of money to be saved in public buildings, businesses, and institutions

Something, the use of ReMoni’s wireless IoT sensors demonstrates in a project, ran by Danish Energy Management, the Technical University of Denmark and Aarhus University.

Fact-based decisions are in high demand when it comes to energy optimization in private as well as public companies and institutions. This is something Jakob Nørby, who works as a Market Manager for energy innovation at DEM (Danish Energy Management) explains:

“We want our customers’ decisions to become more fact-based than the case is today. I believe that it will lead to more and more robust cases for energy optimizations/renovations.”

The measurements in the daycare center clearly show need for improvement

Energy project in a local daycare center

As part of the project called E-snap, supported by the Danish Energy Agency, a handful ReMoni clamp-on IoT sensors was installed in a local daycare center in Aarhus.

The purpose was to recalculate the saving potential of, among other things, the heating system in the building. The sensors measured certain temperatures on the district heating pipes, which on the surface otherwise worked as they should. However, after the sensors were set up, the measurements showed that the heating system did not work properly:

“Our needs typically arise when we suspect that technical plants do not perform optimally and thereby have a huge energy loss. This suspicion can be confirmed by means of for example IoT sensors,” Jakob Nørby explains.

Read the full article about the project in Dagens Byggeri

 

Monitoring pays off

Jakob Nørby says that the starting point for the project was focused on the ventilation – which 

should only run in the opening hours. But this also turned out not to be the case. After the sensors were set up, the return of investments (ROI) had doubled.

“We knew there were some errors in the technical installations. Sometimes it just does not work as expected. But we did not know that the case was as strong as it actually turned out to be,” Jakob Nørby explains, while emphasizing that he is an impartial advisor, and that there might have been other sensors than ReMonis that could be used in the project.

However, when the choice fell on ReMoni, it was because of the complete solution. Everything works together from the start and when the sensors are mounted on the outside of the cables, everything else runs automatically.

 

Cost-effective energy overview 

Jakob Nørby sees great possibilities in ReMoni’s solution.

“In fact, there’s not a building we cannot find savings in. Office buildings, public institutions, and factories – just to name a few. We can quickly and easily get an overview of the energy situation. And at a much lower price than we have seen in the market so far.”

Taking the pulse on Odense City with clamp-on IoT sensors

Odense City IoT sensors

Odense City is in a rapid and fast paced development.

Everywhere new buildings sprout and create an increasingly dynamic cityscape. The diversity of the public buildings stretches from innovative and modern libraries, medieval castles, public restrooms, protected ancient houses and museums of art and history.

The public buildings buzzes with citizens and tourists, who creates energy – energy that Kristian Bork takes the pulse on each and every day, in order to save resources and, of course, cold cash.

From his desk in the Building and Maintenance department – in the third-biggest city in Denmark – the systematic building maintainer controls everything from public restrooms, community schools, museums and cultural institutions. It is Kristian’s responsibility to maintain the building and all the installations within it – something that requires innovative solutions because of the vast challenges of the different buildings.

Reducing the carbon footprint

Beside the maintenance, Kristian works to reduce the buildings carbon footprint.

As a part of Odense’s green Energy Lean project, the city wants to lower the CO2-emission from 244 public buildings with 40% – as inexpensive and effective as possible of course. Energy monitoring has until now been expensive and complicated, so these challenges require a brand-new way of thinking.

That is one of the reasons why Kristian is excited about ReMoni.

Clamp-on sensors helps you keep track of the consumption

By clamping on ReMoni’s IoT sensors on the outside of electric installations, water and heating pipes, Kristian keeps track of the energy consumption by logging into the software program ReCalc. Here he receives alarms in case of overconsumption and leaks. Kristian explains: 

”ReMoni makes mapping the entire building easy. Without cutting any wires, I can monitor all energy consuming devices – not just the building’s main measurer. It’s easy to set up – you don’t need to have any prior knowledge to install it.

Troubleshooting is a piece of cake and because of artificial intelligence, you can easily predict and prevent damages and waste of resources,” he says and rounds up: “It’s brilliant.”