Photo copyright: Herning kommune
In this project, the customer has chosen a risk-free model, where ReMoni takes the entire cost and risk.
This means that ReMoni supplies equipment, installation and operation in return for a share in the documented savings achieved.
Consumption without the solution:
49,5 kWh/m2
Consumption with the solution:
32,8 kWh/m2
The building:
In this project, the customer has chosen a risk-free model, where ReMoni takes the entire cost and risk.
This means that ReMoni supplies equipment, installation and operation in return for a share in the documented savings achieved.
Consumption without the solution:
80,7 kWh/m2
Consumption with the solution:
54,5 kWh/m2
The building:
In this project, the customer has chosen a risk-free model, where ReMoni takes the entire cost and risk.
This means that ReMoni supplies equipment, installation and operation in return for a share in the documented savings achieved
Consumption without the solution:
57,8 kWh/m2
Consumption with the solution:
43,1 kWh/m2
The building:
Of course, the optimization has also been run on the building we have rented.
We took over the entire building in autumn 2022, when it was already reasonably energy efficient.
Consumption without the solution:
56,4 kWh/m2
Consumption with the solution:
36,1 kWh/m2
The building:
“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.
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.
Danish IoT supports Centrum Pile’s energy mapping
It is a major challenge for the concrete industry to transform a CO2-heavy production to better sustainability.
At Centrum Pile, they are aware that everything produced has a CO2 footprint – and that every effort must be made to reduce this as much as possible.
Centrum Pile uses the UN’s 17 Sustainable Development Goals as a guideline to become more sustainable.
To carry out the measures that reduces the CO2 footprint most effectively, it is necessary to know where to act.
That is why they are already working with the environmental management system ISO 14001 at Centrum Pæle. When Technical Manager Henrik Olsen had to do a compulsory energy inspection of the factory, he found out that you could start with ISO 50001 §6.3.
And then he started thinking:
– Can you map the energy usage of the entire production in 10 weeks if you get help from smart IoT sensors?
10 weeks is the time frame within a Marine and Technical Engineer student must do their thesis at the end of the study.
Student Jens Laasholdt accepted the challenge. However, the internship period was not quite enough, but due to the efforts of Jens, he was offered a permanent position to complete the project and to continue working on climate and energy optimization.
With the help of ReMoni’s patented IoT sensors and Cloud-based analysis tools, Jens began the challenge.
“The smart sensors from ReMoni were a huge help in solving the assignment. With continuous measurements every second or minute, we suddenly got a detailed picture of the production at a level we have never seen before “, says Henrik Olsen and continues:
“ReMoni does not just supply sensors, they have a coherent solution that works seamlessly – and they deliver data that is 100% reliable. The solution is extremely easy to get started with. We received great acclaim from the auditor from DNV GL – she had rarely seen such a thorough and detailed energy mapping. A great ‘thank you’ to ReMoni for the excellent data provided.”
In addition to energy improvements at the factory itself, Centrum Pile is also looking into contributing to “Green Construction” of the future, buying its energy from sustainable sources. That is why Centrum Pile is also working on selling their Energy Piles. With the Energy Piles, you can provide geothermal heat and cooling to the building at the same time as the Energy Pile is carrying the building.
New sensor technology finds errors and optimize the production at Unilever
In short time Energy Consultant and CEO of AX Energi, Mr. Peter Bruun has managed to optimize the performance on parts of the installations at Unilever’s production by implementing a new multi sensor. The sensor is called PowerMoniMain and has been developed by the GreenTech company ReMoni.
The sensor provides real-time data, electricity metering, operations information and gives you an overview of the current and historical energy consumption. PowerMoniMain enables you to monitor various technical installations and units at the same time – all day and all night.
Improve operational efficiency
As most Energy Consultants, Peter Bruun has been using a lot of time trying to detect the invisible power consumption by localizing the resource wasting installations. He purchased a PowerMoniMain, which made it possible for him to optimize parts of the production at Unilever in record time.
He continues: ”With continuing data for various installations I have got an insight, which I haven’t got earlier – this makes it easy for me, since the data patterns rapidly point out the problematic units.”
Monitor up to 15 technical installations
A PowerMoniMain can monitor power consumption on up to 15 technical installations at the same time. According to Peter the new, concrete insights in the current and historical consumption makes it possible to optimize the facility. For instance, it becomes easy to find installations that are using power during night even though the production has been shut down.
Peter Bruun likes to stay updated on new technology. For this reason, he immediately bought a PowerMoniMain when it was launched. From then it did not take long before it was installed at Unilever – a company focusing on savings and on reducing power consumption and waste.
Data appeared in ReMonis cloud-platform ReCalc shortly after sensor and gateway had been installed. From there it did not take many hours before he had found the problematic installations. Based on time and consumption it turned out that the compressor and some heating elements were consuming a lot of power outside of production hours.
Get an operation pattern for all kinds of electrical motors
No matter which power consumption or which electrical installations you would like to monitor over time, you can use a PowerMoniMain.
You get an operation pattern and power monitoring in switch boards and for all types of electrical motors such as compressors, pumps, ventilation systems, production equipment, CNC-machines and much more. In addition, PowerMoniMain can be used for monitoring the power consumption of charging stations or the actual power production of solar panels.
ReMonis PowerMoniMain provides data about the actual number of operation hours of the machines so that maintenance and service can be planned based on real data. With a high and continuing data sampling rate you get valuable data for an Overall Equipment Effectiveness (OEE) analysis of your production equipment.
”Luckily it is clamp-on, on the outside of the cables and a PowerMoniMain does not fill up space in the switch board,” Peter says: ”Well, actually the sensor can also stay in the switch board, so that we stay updated on the power consumption of this product line.”
Installed in the switch board
Practically a PowerMoniMain is installed in a switch board. From here the ReMoni gateway is sending data wirelessly to the cloud-platform ReCalc – and that is how simple it is.
PowerMoniMain can meter and monitor various installations at the same time and be used for both screening purposes and permanent power metering.
Research from the University of Southern Denmark reveals hidden waste
The research shows that flexible and accurate monitoring of light, ventilation, refrigeration and freezers in retail chains reveals hidden resource waste.
When it comes to optimizing resource consumption, there is room for improvement in the retail industry. This can be detected by using ReMoni sensors that measure the consumption profile in technical installations.
“We move the wireless sensors from equipment to equipment and measure consumption directly on the outside of the cables,” says Professor of Center for Energy Informatics at the Southern University of Denmark, Mikkel Baun Kjærgaard about the FlexRestore research project supported by EUDP.
“In this way, we get a quick and concrete response to how the consumption profile looks like. This procedure reveals energy waste and delivers important data. The project took us less than a day, and the data speak for itself. For example we see the influence of different ways to fill up products, which can lead to energy waste,” Mikkel Baun Kjærgaard says.
The future is flexible
The futures way of producing power is becoming more flexible in terms of resources like solar and wind energy. That is why the future monitoring of resources must be more flexible and detailed too, the professor explains. This is where the ReMoni sensors have an important say.
Mikkel Baun Kjærgaard concludes:
“The sensors are wireless and it makes our work easy because they are so flexible. They stand out because they are so easy to work with.”
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.”
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.”
Climate change does not only affect the weather but also spreads dangerous bacteria.
These bacteria force Municipalities and Building Managers to think innovatively when it comes to preventing and identifying Legionella in public buildings and institutions.
Identifying exactly where in the pipes the bacteria are spreading, has past been complicated in the past. Inspecting miles and miles of pipes can be a challenge, so when Silkeborg Municipality started screening local nursing homes for Legionella, they welcomed ReMoni’s solution that – not only tells where the outbreak is located – but even predicts where it is likely to appear.
“We have a limited amount of time to solve our tasks. With the FlowMoni sensor we can get the results immediately and get the job done quicker,” leading engineer Jesper Buchardt explains.
“We place the sensors strategically to monitor where there is backflow or accidental warming of the cold water, which should normally be below 20 °C to avoid bacteria.”
Read more about ReMoni’s Legionella solution in Energy Supply
Results right away
Since the sensors are wireless and flexible, it is easy to monitor single units and get accurate results.
“We do have other monitor equipment available, but a configuration of the systems can both be time-consuming and challenging. ReMoni’s sensors really live up to our expectations, because of the easy installation. We can read the results right away,” Jesper Buchardt explains.
Predicting risk of bacteria formation
By combining artificial intelligence and IoT the sensors register the temperatures. ReMoni’s solution can predict where there is a risk of bacteria formation, and if there is a risk, an alarm is sent to the Building Manager in charge. In that way, it is possible to prevent the outbreak.
CEO at ReMoni, Bo Eskerod Madsen explains:
“As a Municipality or business, there’s a lot of money to be saved because you can install the sensors yourself and read the data in real time – and we offer the solution at a fraction of the other available products on the market.”
