My office: a 100% intelligent building !

Hello, my name is Steve, I am the owner of a small company of 95 people. Since 1 year we have built a new office building fully automated: it’s great! I mean, both the working comfort and energy efficiency issues.

Since our work in December 2008, we discovered the ease of use of everything that affects particularly the lighting and heating, in 1 word: Genial!

My partner in charge of management / purchasing recently confirmed for the year 2009, a decrease in our electric costs by 25%.

The change was complete: no more light switches to turn “on” or “off”, no more thermostats, no remote control shutters. Our building has become overnight an intelligent building, rational, and therefore totally predictable with respect to the comfort that has thus improved.

You all know what is broken thermostats, thermostats that are inaccessible because you have changed furniture, when the heating stays “on” all day with nobody in the office that day, also “a little thrill in the back” that pushed the thermostat to 23 ° C on a friday after noon and which stayed unchanged for the weekend, the air conditioning running at its mini 18 ° C while building closed the same night, the ventilation system that renews air for the maximum capacity of the building while two thirds of the potential occupants are salespeople who are never at their desks…. all this is over.

Note that the automation solution installed is finally very simple: without going into technical stuff, I know that the automatic algorithms have been easy to define and inexpensive to implement and have even helped to save equipment and simplified capital works.

For lighting the algorithm comes down to:
When there is nobody in the building, that is to say when the building is closed, light is “off”. When there is someone inside, light is “on”, but the amount of light to be provided is a complement provided by the nature.
Also need a clock, a light sensor on the roof of the building with correction charts for rooms looking south, north, east and west.

For the heating it is similar:
We need a clock, an internal temperature sensor, a temperature sensor outside. Our building being originally constructed with excellent insulation, a measure of the inertia of the building was necessary to define the time it has to start to heat each monday morning. The algorithm defined a temperature “fit” between 19 and 21 °C in winter and below 27 °C in summer.
Thus with a temperature kept stable, everyone was perfectly adapted to this stable situation and dress accordingly.

Now you know everything about our “intelligent building” by monitoring and regulating the just necessary consumption, everyone was a winner,

• the company employees for the simplicity and effectiveness of comfort
• overhead costs of our company which have significantly been reduced: this is energy efficiency

If like me, you live an experience of this type, daily, thank you for giving me your vision, to see the adjustments and improvements that you have implemented, with your personnel or …

In advance thank you!

Steve Tettoc

PS: I have nothing to sell! I made a simple experience because I am amazed by the gains of such a solution.