Actility, the operator of the new Internet of Things and M2M network ThingPark Wireless has developed with the CSTB, the Scientific and Technical intitute for Building Management, a new and innovative service for analyzing energy consumption by occupied buildings. This new service measures energy performance and defines potential improvements by taking into account various factors such as temperature, human bahavior and electricity pricing. The new service is a long-awaited response to the challenge of new energy-efficient buildings. Habitat Toulouse, the local housing authority, will be first player to roll out this service to monitor the building retrofit program of its social housing properties. Actility and the CSTB will provide the full end-to-end service from sensor instrumentation to the radio connectivity network and the data management and analysis platform.
Using ThingPark Wireless®, the new IoT M2M service network for smart buildings
For energy consumption data from occupied buildings to be fully reliable, external factors such as the actual behavior of residents need to be taken into account. The instrumentation and analysis service built by Actility and the CSTB is meant to respond to this key issue. The instrumentation and data acquisition service for buildings relies on Actility’s new ThingPark Wireless service network.
The unique technology used by Actility allows the ThingPark Wireless network to connect wireless sensors in indoor settings while rolling out low-power base stations on roof-tops. Housing properties are instrumented with temperature, humidity, illuminance sensors together with sensors for electricity and gas. This provides a complete set of data for energy performance monitoring. Actility achieves a very low cost of roll out since the ThingPark Wireless network relies on the LoRa™ long range low power technology allowing for a full city coverage with a small number of base stations rolled out on building roof tops.
Once a building is fully instrumented, data collected by the ThingPark Wireless network is delivered to the ThingPark Cloud platform allowing multiple analytics applications to be developed for all other vertical requirements of smart buldings:
‘With ThingPark Wireless®, Actility brings its leadership in Machine-to-Machine (M2M) technology to smart building applications with a turnkey end-to-end solution which includes everything from sensor instrumentation to wireless network connectivity and analysis tools’ stated Olivier Hersent, CEO of Actility.
Automatic diagnostics of energy performance measurement for smart buildings
Once the data acquisition phase is performed, a specific energy performance control application called Smart-EPC provices the full data analysis platform for a complete and automatic energy audit. With the output from Smart-EPC, building managers can assess the relevance of their retrofit programs by measuring their detailed impact.
‘With the service proposed by Actility and the CSTB, we have a measurement and feedback tool to support our commitment towards efficency improvement and higher performance of our housing properties’ added Gérald Lepain, Director of Housing at Habitat Toulouse, the first user of Smart-EPC based on ThingPark Wireless®.
A major breakthrough for measuring building energy performance
To achieve massive roll-out of building retrofit programs the measurement of energy performance remains the primary objective. The Smart-EPC application based on the ThingPark Wireless network, designed and rolled out by Actility and the CSTB brings new capabilities to the building sector:
‘To achieve the ambitious objective of 500 000 properties per year, building managers need innovative tools allowing them to assess the real perfrmance levels of occupied buildings. This major breakthrough following our common research work with Actility will significantly improve the reliability of the performance improvement estimates. We are happy to say that this solution is ready to rolled out and represents an unprecedented and cost-effective alternative for all players in the market’ mentioned Bertrand Delcambre, President of the CSTB.
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