The University of Bordeaux monitors IAQ, reduces its energy bill and carbon emissions

Context & Challenges

With its 52,000 students and 3,000 teaching and research staff, the University of Bordeaux is one of the largest in France.

As property owners of 300 buildings, the university has created a Real Estate department that works to:

• Manage the real estate portfolio of the university and digitalize it. 
• Meet the energy transition objective and environmental performance in the real estate sector.
• Manage operational contracts and the technical performance of the entire real estate portfolio. 
• Implement a preventive maintenance strategy within the university's buildings and equipment.

Challenges

The Energy Performance department is a critical part of the real estate service, led by Timothée Aubursin, the university's Energy Manager. Their goal is to reduce existing buildings and new build's energy consumption and carbon footprint. As of 2021, to comply with French government regulations, they have also added the monitoring of the Indoor Air Quality(IAQ) as one of their main tasks. 

IAQ is the qualification of the air circulating in buildings and its effect on the health and comfort of building occupants. Surveying and controlling common pollutants indoors helps reduce the risk of indoor health concerns.

Traditional monitoring air quality systems can be expensive stations that measure a minimal range of parameters. Due to the high cost of these stations, it is not practical for buildings to implement these systems, especially in small and medium-sized buildings. 

To accomplish their objectives, the energy performance department sought an affordable, accessible, interoperable solution that allowed them to connect to buildings' equipment, particularly LoRaWAN devices, to collect and visualize energy performance and IAQ data with no coding skills required.

LoRaWAN, as a communication protocol, provides flexibility for the managers of buildings to enable the Internet of Things and monitor IAQ.

Solution

To quickly communicate with LoRaWAN devices and recover data points of BACnet networks and Modbus TCP meters, the Energy Performance team has deployed 25 Boxes to use in the form of Wattsense Towers.

The Tower is one of the products offered by Wattsense and consists of a remotely managed IoT device that collects data and controls equipment through the Cloud. It's a multiprotocol device that can communicate with the main communication protocols in the building management sector, such as LoRaWan, BACnet IP, ModbusIP, Modbus RTU, M-bus, and Wireless M-Bus, LON, KNX, LPB, Diematic.

Using the Wattsense Tower, Mr. Aubursin can easily connect to any LoRaWAN sensor in minutes. LoRaWAN-connected sensors and meters provide energy use data that allows the energy performance department to monitor usage trends, address wasteful habits, and implement energy management strategies. 

Results 

Using the Wattsense Tower as its connectivity solution, the energy performance team of the University of Bordeaux can connect directly to LoRAWAN devices and implement their energy management strategies without requiring complex coding skills or third-party assistance. 

They monitor and collect 50.000 BACnet data points.

To conclude, the remote management of the Tower allows an off-site user to interact with the building's various technical hubs, providing comfort and security. The responsiveness and availability of the Wattsense technical support team were also instrumental in the success of the energy performance team's project.