King’s College London, the capital’s second-largest university, has for five years operated a building energy management system (BEMS), allowing it to monitor and automatically control the energy consumption in its various facilities.
So familiar is it now with the BEMS that it is confident enough to customise the systems beyond what is offered by manufacturers, says Keith McIntyre, energy and environment manager at King’s College.
One modification the university has undertaken has been to add meters to identify where energy is being wasted, which is fed into a central software application.
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The college has also invested in cutting-edge chilled beams in the new Cicely Saunders Institute, which are powered by a ground source heat pump. Chilled beams allow operational staff to remotely control heat in individual offices and to respond to small changes in the environment by making use of data collected by a passive sensor within the beam. By using this in conjunction with the BEMS, staff can accurately regulate the thermal input into individual rooms and accurately record the total thermal load in all areas of the building.
“What it means in practice is that the ventilation will be ramped down if nobody is detected within a room, or lighting switched off if it is being left on overnight,” explains McIntyre.
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