Intelligent energy management system

supports greater collaboration to optimise

energy use at Kew Gardens

Royal Botanical Gardens

engie.co.uk/solutions To find out more0113 306 2000 or enquiries@engie.com

“C3NTINEL has provided invaluable insight into energy and water use across our sites at Kew and Wakehurst; it is now a key means of engaging with our facilities management team in order to identify opportunities for efficiency improvements.” Tom Parrot Energy Manager Kew Gardens

RequirementThe extensive grounds at Kew Gardens feature a diverse range of buildings, plant and equipment, which are managed and operated by facilities management personnel, building users, buildings managers and other stakeholders. The site’s energy manager recognised that to implement successful and effective energy-management practices, all of these teams needed access to up-to-date information on energy usage and facilities performance.

SolutionThe C3NTINEL® online energy-management system from ENGIE offered the perfect solution. It is able to collect and collate data from multiple sources, ranging from on-site meters to utility company data feeds, and make it easily accessible on an open and transparent online platform.

The facilities at Kew Gardens range from state-of-the-art laboratories to listed Victorian glasshouses, all with specific energy and building management requirements. The intelligent C3NTINEL® software is able to use its ‘learning’ algorithms to identify normal patterns of energy usage, so that it can detect exceptions and alert relevant parties to potential problems.

The system is smart enough to take into account weather patterns and temperature, drawing data from the on-site Met Office weather station, to work out whether or not energy consumption is following expected patterns. For example, a sudden spike in energy use for heating in the greenhouses may seem to be out of the ordinary, but if this coincides with a cold snap, the C3NTINEL® system will recognise that the heating systems are simply doing their job and working effectively.

When unusual events are detected by C3NTINEL® the ENGIE data analysts investigate to establish what factors may be responsible and then raise an alert which is communicated to the site’s energy manager. The alert will include an annotated graph clearly showing the incident in question and any supporting data to assist. This can then very quickly be relayed to the people who need to deal with or investigate the incident, whether facilities management teams, building occupants or building managers.

Darren Pearson, Director of Digital Energy at ENGIE, says: “Energy monitoring systems alone cannot reduce energy consumption and expenditure – they simply provide the tools and information that enable an organisation to do so. A system like C3NTINEL® only adds value when the insights it provides are followed up by actions to rectify the faults or incidents identified. And that is precisely what Kew Gardens are doing very effectively to maximise the value of this software.”

The system has facilitated much greater collaboration between diverse teams managing very different buildings and facilities at Kew. Details of all alerts and actions taken are stored in the system for anyone to access, enabling checks be made on the effectiveness of any interventions.

Intelligent energy management system supports greater collaboration to optimise energy use at Kew Gardens