Challenge / Goal
Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown County Council published in 2019 their Climate Change Action Plan (CCAP) 2019-2024 which envisions the achievement of the following four targets:
- A 33% improvement in the council’s energy efficiency by December 2020
- A 40% reduction in the council’s greenhouse gas emissions by 2030
- To make Dublin a climate-resilient region, by reducing the impacts of future climate change-related events
- To actively engage and inform citizens on climate change
Likewise, the council intended to capture and use data from energy consumption in order to drive changes in behaviour and policy. Therefore, the council needed to implement technologies and solutions that could help achieve these objectives.
Solution
The canteen in County Hall was chosen as the initial test site. An Internet of Things (IoT) network was established on-site with industry partner Cognition.
The IoT network comprises 12 sensors, placed at strategic locations around the canteen and kitchen. They measure and monitor the consumption of electricity and environmental conditions such as lux (light), temperature, and humidity. The sensors are connected to LoRa (low-power wide-area network) networks that transmit the data to the cloud.
During the first month of the project, the sensors ‘passively’ monitored the environment, collecting baseline data against which improvements could be benchmarked. Energy usage (kilowatt hours), asset usage (on/off time), occupancy, temperature, humidity, lux levels and the variances of these environmental conditions were measured during this phase. Once the monitoring phase was complete, data could be collected and monitored to make improvements. Large amounts of data are collected from the sensors at 15 minute intervals. This data is then analysed in the cloud and can be visualised on a dashboard.
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