Demand Logic, a web-based energy saving system for commercial buildings, has released the results of a unique ‘virtual-metering’ project with King’s College London. Since the project began in January 2013, Demand Logic has identified energy savings of £390,000 per year and carbon savings of 2500 tonnes per year.
This latest initiative covers three campuses: Guy’s, Denmark Hill and the Strand. Approximately 100 buildings ranging considerably in size and usage pattern were involved in the project, over 1500 plant items were tracked (including boilers, pumps and air-conditioning units) and over 100,000 sensors and devices were monitored.
The Demand Logic platform identifies energy saving opportunities in the heating, cooling and ventilation systems which are extremely hard to pinpoint in large, complex buildings. The system works by analysing data generated by the building control systems, which often stays hidden.
Demand Logic found that the College’s facilities were generally running very efficiently, and their controls were excellent. But a lack of data analysis capability meant that many problems had not been found.
In one case, boilers were rapidly cycling on and off because they did not have enough load. The team also found several conflicting set points (temperature settings) had been applied to the same open plan office, causing both heating and cooling of the same space.
Mike Darby, Chief Technical Officer for Demand Logic, said: “This is just the beginning at King’s. The system found the low hanging fruit quite early on, and then we focussed on developing even better methods for analysing data. Now these are going live, I am convinced we’ll find many more savings.”
Ian Armitage, Campus Operations Manager at King’s College London, said: “I believe that good control systems in buildings are the key to saving energy without compromising user comfort. Demand Logic has helped the College to find a host of issues about how our heating and cooling plant is controlled, leading to significant savings which we are using to fund investment in our student facing facilities. Our campus buildings generate a vast amount of data, but accessing and analysing this is a real challenge. The Demand Logic web system allows us to see at a glance where problems are likely to be. Without this, it’s like trying to find a needle in a haystack.”
In order to ensure that opportunities raised by the Demand Logic platform were acted upon, the College brought together a team of key staff, comprising facilities managers and other personnel from each campus. This group was able to share and comment on live and historical visualisations of the heating and cooling systems, for example showing when large items of plant, like chillers or ventilation plant, were running.