What do Leicester, Staverton, and Finham all have in common?
Apart from being places in the Midlands region, they’re all Severn Trent sites that are now running on much less energy than they were before – thanks to our intelligent lighting systems.
In fact, in the last five years, they’ve seen energy savings of around 92% across all three sites. Their energy consumption has decreased to just 0.41w/m2, and they’ve saved around 96 tons of CO2 too!
This fits perfectly with Severn Trent’s ambitious sustainability plans, and our own passion for helping organisations to improve their environmental performance with smart workspace solutions.
Victoria Hughes, facilities manager at Severn Trent, said: “Scenariio is one of the companies who are helping us to take care of the environment by making sure our workspaces are operating efficiently. Both in terms of the amount of energy we use, and the way we use our buildings.”
We’re preferred and trusted advisors in the design, supply, and installation of data networks. Our company ethos is caring for our customer’s needs by providing leading products and high-quality service, through integrity and innovation - all delivered by a professional, experienced, and dependable, nationwide team.
Our mission is to make your business more intelligent. The team is passionate about enabling you to understand the advantages of a smart workspace, from sensor-rich networks delivered over structured cabling, to capitalising on the latest developments in the IoT. We aim to improve the way your organisation connects with technology to achieve responsive results, more efficient systems and, ultimately, business growth.
These impressive savings are the result of the smart lighting systems that we designed and installed for and with Severn Trent. Five years on, and the water company is now reaping the benefits.
Smart lighting is essentially a dense network of sensors that monitor and report on things like: motion, brightness, temperature, and power consumption. Having a ‘network’ of sensors, as opposed to one in each room, increases the amount of movement that can be picked up.
Now, Severn Trent has the ability to view and control what’s happening in these three sites. That’s because everything the sensors are picking up, can be looked at centrally via a user-friendly web portal.
The sensors also trigger energy saving actions. They automatically switch the lights on and off when they detect people are moving in and out of workspaces. And, if there’s enough natural daylight coming in from outside, then the smart lighting system will automatically dim the lights, to instantly save energy and cost. In the trade, this is referred to as daylight harvesting.
Instead of regular electricity wires, the smart lighting is powered by low voltage, SYSTIMAX® category 6 and 6A cables, from market leaders, CommScope. These cables are the same ones you use to send emails over. It’s cheaper to run for Severn Trent in the long-term, and means they can make moves, adds, and changes more easily in the future.
The network of sensors we installed, allow Severn Trent to make more informed decisions about how they use their buildings.
This is because the motion sensors collect critical occupancy data that shows the facilities team how workspaces are being used. And this information helps to answer questions like:
• Which of my sites are used more than others?
• Which are the busiest and quietest areas in my building?
• How often are my meeting rooms being used, by time and date?
• Which is the most utilised floor in my building?
• How many people are entering my building at any one time?
• Why is the second floor always empty in the afternoon?
These motion sensors inform short-term decisions, and long-term planning decisions about how Severn Trent can use their buildings estate more efficiently.
On a tactical level, sensors can also help to keep people safe from intruders. For example, alerts can be triggered when the sensors pick up motion in places that should be empty.
The sensors can also help to facilitate social distancing strategies, by alerting teams to congested areas in real-time. Or, by helping them to better distribute employees across the campus.
Heatmaps produced by the sensors can provide information to determine cleaning schedules too.
Our technical director, George Pritchard, has been working with the facilities teams at Severn Trent. He said: “The next step, is to help make the occupancy data more visual for our colleagues at Severn Trent. And also, do some deep diving into key areas, to unearth more useful building insights for them.”
The brains behind the smart lighting system, is the revolutionary smartengine product from wtec – formerly CommScope Redwood. CommScope is one of our trusted partners, and already had a relationship with the teams at Severn Trent. We’ve been working with CommScope for around 25 years’ now, and so together, we were confident Severn Trent would benefit from this technology.
Incidentally, we already had history with Severn Trent ourselves, and it’s a company that’s very close to our hearts. Why? Because our owner and managing director, Rob Pritchard, used to be employed by Severn Trent in the eighties – and it was Rob who designed and installed the original cabling that connected 28 of their sites.
So, what have been the benefits for all parties as a result of this smart lighting system?
• For Severn Trent: it’s been the ability to lower their carbon footprint (344,459 kWh and 96,793 kg of CO2 saved since install); reduce their operational costs (£44,780 saved so far); protect their assets; and allow them to make more informed choices about what they do with their buildings.
• For their people: it’s about creating a better and safer place to work. For example, through creating optimum lighting levels.
• For their customers: it’s helping to lower their bills, and protect the environment within the communities they work and live in.
• For us: it’s been wonderful to see the quantifiable benefits become a reality for Severn Trent, which will of course contribute to their environmental deliverables.
From a technical perspective, here are some of the technical elements of the project:
✔ Over 700 smart sensors were installed from wtec smartengine, formerly CommScope Redwood
✔ 16 smartengines (Redwood engines) were fitted
✔ Intelligent lighting systems now exist over three sites, covering a distance of around 2,300 square metres
✔ Self testing emergency lights by Mackwell N-Light
George summarised: “We feel privileged to work with a company as enthusiastic as we are, about protecting the planet – and look forward to helping them to deliver even more environmental and cost efficiencies, across more of their property portfolio.”
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