To improve energy efficiency and meet increasing expectations to sustainability in real estate, Axel Towers gains value-adding data management with high performance and minimal maintenance.
Sustainability is becoming increasingly prevalent in how we choose to shape our society. Energy efficiency holds great influence on important decisions – not only at government and business level, but also in the real estate sector. To meet the market’s increasing demands, ATP Ejendomme have invested in making guaranteed and transparent energy efficiency part of their value proposition.
“To an increasingly higher degree, data on energy and consumption are becoming a value proposition,” says Henriette Marie Borgen, Senior Communications Consultant at ATP Ejendomme.
“In the same way that we offer to take care of cleaning the tenancy, we also take care of everything regarding energy data and consumption monitoring.”
To support this claim, ATP Ejendomme have implemented an Energy Management System (EMS) and a dedicated Energy Manager responsible for improving the day-to-day energy efficiency of their buildings, including Axel Towers. Furthermore, ATP Ejendomme wants to digitise their operations and have therefore also invested in an asset and work order management system to manage the maintenance of the buildings.
With tenants of commercial office spaces becoming increasingly attentive to sustainable solutions, the result has been a so-called green re-pricing within real estate seeing buildings with more sustainable profiles rising in value compared to those without. However, extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, and to prove the energy efficiency of a building’s infrastructure, it is important to have transparent, trustworthy data displayed plainly.
Show it, don’t tell it, as Jakob Malmqvist, Senior Project Manager at ATP Ejendomme explains, “When you don’t have any data to show, it’s difficult to convince a customer that you can deliver on their requirements. We can figure out as many analyses as we would like, but if we are in possession of valid data from previous tenancies, it provides a much better basis of what we can actually promise.”
To produce these valuable data, the hyper-modern infrastructure of Axel Towers is now being supported by a Kamstrup solution retrieving extensive data from the building’s more than 200 meters through a wired M-Bus network connected to a new M-Bus Master Controller. A hosted READy Manager solution is then used to read the data and export them to both the energy and asset management systems at ATP Ejendomme and to the external systems that handle the billing of consumption.
With this new data solution, Axel Towers’ operation and energy consumption can now be optimised more efficiently. Also, by using the READy API to transfer data from READy to their Building Management System (BMS), which is more cost-effective due to less cables in parallel networks, they gain more data than by having selected meters send data directly to the BMS system.
The blend of high-density data collection with little to no tasks added to the workload is a key aspect of the data solution at Axel Towers. “We are not a utility,” as Flemming Petersen, Energy Manager at ATP Ejendomme says, “We don’t have a department that solely deals with metering. Occasionally, we have loads to take care of, and then there can be extended periods where nothing needs to be done.”
For businesses that aren’t necessarily experts in metering and data collection, high performance technology with low maintenance is dearly appreciated. When asked about the automatic firmware updates through Kamstrup’s hosted READy system, Jakob Malmqvist responds,
“It means so much to us that the system needs as little attention as possible during operation. Our property inspectors are tasked with taking care of anything from inspection and maintenance to documentation and reporting. Therefore, the more technical duties we can remove from daily operations, the better.”
We are not a utility. We don’t have a department that solely deals with metering.
Occasionally, we have loads to take care of, and then there can be extended periods where nothing needs to be done.
- Flemming Petersen, Energy Manager at ATP Ejendomme
In the end, the data collection system at Axel Towers works in everyone’s interest. There are many ways of applying technology to solve an issue, but if the solution ends up increasing the workload, you can continue searching for new solutions indefinitely. With the solution from Kamstrup, Axel Towers gains extensive energy data provided autonomously from the heat, cooling, water, and electricity meters at Axel Towers displayed on the READy platform, which they can then use as they please.
“There are many suppliers of different IoT devices that deliver the same.
But what makes Kamstrup stand out is that they make exceptional meters and deliver a well-made platform for retrieving the data, which we don’t need to update or spend loads of time on to keep the servers running.
This is definitely an advantage.”
- Jakob Malmqvist, Senior Project Manager at ATP Ejendomme
All in all, the combined metering and data collection system employed at Axel Towers means that their tenants can not only enjoy a stunningly beautiful office space, but also one with impressive energy efficiency and the means to maintain it.
