An agile company that offers an innovative service: energy distribution while allowing individual billing for each tenant.
Context
EKIVOLT supports its tertiary customers in developing their energy transition strategy by offering a distribution service based on the "remote reading" of energy consumption. To propose a fair and balanced distribution, EKIVOLT invoices each tenant using sub-meters.
Challenges
For EKIVOLT, the challenge of this project was that although a part of the sub-meters was connected to an existing BMS, another group of meters, in charging stations for electric vehicles, was added to the building more recently, and they were not connected to the management system. For this installation, EKIVOLT is used to deploy IoT sensors using a low-speed, long-range radio communication technology such as the LoRa network. However, in this case, as the sub-meters were located in the basement of the building, it was not possible to use the public LoRa network because the bandwidth was low there was a high risk of not being able to send the data successfully.
To solve this problem, EKIVOLT chose the Wattsense solution, which quickly centralizes the data collected from all devices with a box by communicating with different protocols, such as the BACnet protocol and the LoRa network, to connect with IoT sensors deployed by EKIVOLT on certain sub-meters.
Solution and results
“The box was installed by an EKIVOLT Project Manager as a communication device between the different sub-meters to communicate in BACnet or LoRA. The box transfers the collected data points to the Wattsense user console and our invoicing tools. The invoice information is, therefore, totally secure and automated”Arnaud Roche, Project Manager at EKIVOLT
The box is a remotely managed IoT device to collect data and control equipment via the Cloud. In this project, the box is used to read devices remotely and enable the use of data by EKIVOLT's ERP and its customers.
“The Wattsense solution offers us flexibility in the face of various problems, such as complex networks and multi-technologies. Thus, the solution allows us to resolve issues from our offices as we can manage the project remotely.”Arnaud Roche, Project Manager at EKIVOLT
For EKIVOLT's customers, the results are multiple; clients get more accurate billing and can also comply with the NOME law. 24/7 access to consumption data is provided, facilitating accurate analyses to implement energy efficiency measures.
The NOME law was created as part of the European competition law. Opening up to competition and creating a single market on a European scale is part of the EU's energy policy.
The partnership between EKIVOLT and Wattsense continues to grow with the following results :
- Data from more than 1000 sub-metering devices are collected every 10 minutes.
- 25 sites are connected, including two office towers in La Défense, in Paris.
Finally, thanks to the data retrieved by the Wattsense Box, EKIVOLT can have a digital overview of the consumption of a building and offer its customers customized services or offers, such as the declaration of data on the OPERAT platform.
The OPERAT platform is an initiative of the French government for the mandatory collection and monitoring of energy consumption in the tertiary sector.
