Remote energy management of buildings during COVID-19
Reducing costs of running buildings during times of reduced occupancy while meeting the demands of health and safety.

In light of the COVID-19 situation a growing number of commercial buildings have been sitting empty during the past few months. Where possible companies have moved to remote working models as government advice restricts travel and face to face interactions. Maintaining safe and legally compliant buildings is essential. 

As the lockdown ends many organisations will operate at reduced capacity as social distancing measures continue. Furthermore it’s likely that occupancy rates and working hours will never return to pre COVID-19 patterns as a new normal emerges. Facility managers and landlords need strategies to manage their empty, or under occupied buildings and ensure they are ready to transition to this new normal. They need to manage the risks faced by unoccupied buildings, minimise energy consumption of assets such as HVAC and lighting while maintaining power to critical systems such as fire, security or data centres.

As part of the government funded ENERGY-IQ project, Qbots Energy are developing and trialing the   QEnergy™ platform & service model which provides remote energy management services coupled with dynamic energy supply contracts. These smart energy contracts will deliver savings on energy bills, along with a dashboard to track and manage the predicted savings.

ENERGY-IQ project offers a free trial of the service worth over £5,000, to eligible businesses. The benefits include:

• Free analysis of your energy data & consulting for smart controls, battery, solar and EV, potential savings and IRR for any investments;  
• No upfront set-up fee for smart box for BMS or central controller & data collectors along with QEnergy dashboard for 12 months. Please get in-touch if interested (barnaby.king@qenergy.ai). 

Q Energy service uses secure and low cost Internet of Things (IoT) technology to remotely monitor and control Building Management systems (BMS) and other local control systems. Artificial intelligence algorithms make data driven decisions in real time to reduce the cost and environmental impact of a site, whilst also monitoring and predicting the building environment in real time. Because   QEnergy™ makes use of live data and machine learning it will quickly and autonomously adapt as building usage patterns change. 

The Q Energy service dramatically reduces face to face interactions, with only a skeleton on-site team required to carry out statutory building maintenance work, employees can monitor sites remotely through the QEnergyTM dashboard, while critical actions and alerts are communicated via email and mobile device notifications. Unlike other solutions,  Q Energy enables existing buildings with outdated BMS and control systems to become smarter.

This is made possible through the installation of Qbox IoT gateways and controllers which collect energy and operational data and issue control signals to onsite systems. This hardware can convert outdated communication protocols which are still present in many buildings – modernising a BMS at minimal cost.

 QEnergy™ also offers Property owners and Facility Management (FM) teams remote visibility of all sites within a large portfolio. providing 24/7/365 asset monitoring through alerts and recommendations of unexpected events occur such as:

• Over or under heated spaces  
• Vacant spaces consuming energy 
• Water flushing cycle stopped 
• Unusual operation of critical assets 

Along with energy management additional features including critical system management, key workflow management, remote decision making, business continuity planning and disaster recovery, can be provided according to specific customer requirements.