Let’s also fight for the environment inside buildings!

In recent years, Mazovia Energy Agency (MAE) has observed a significant increase in the number of so-called energy efficiency projects to improve the performance of buildings, which, unfortunately, in most cases are not aimed at improving the climate in their interiors at the same time. Therefore, MAE is making efforts to implement new solutions with the objective not only to increase the energy efficiency as such, but also to define guidelines for the integration of media and energy management systems (EMS – Energy Management System), monitoring and control of devices inside. Their design depends on the needs of users, existing environment and responds to the required level of comfort and safety.

At the turn of August and September 2022, MAE undertook the task of improving the quality of the climate inside a 50-year-old school building in Wawer District, City of Warsaw. After pilot testing, the project is considered an undoubted success due to the full integration of EMS, full communication with different technical devices and existing infrastructure inside the building. In this way, users and managers have gained a single tool for monitoring energy and media consumption, combined with sensors that examine comprehensively air parameters indoor.

Moreover, with the help of a few applied modules and connection to the innovative software, the maintenance services can easily manage all devices and indoor systems. As a result, one has the opportunity to perform advanced control scenarios, e.g. lighting, heating/ventilation of rooms depending on the presence of people. The system also analyses external parameters such as temperature, natural lighting intensity, CO₂ – based on data from sensors and weather stations indoors and outside. At this point, MAE not only fully controls the air quality in classrooms, determining energy savings and mitigating climate change, but also automatically controls the lighting, ensuring that there is no light pollution as well.

Such functionalities open up new areas in the field of improving the energy efficiency of buildings, complementing earlier thermal modernization activities. In addition, they enable planning various operations necessary for the proper functioning of a building, possible to be carried out, e.g. outside working hours of people in selected zones/ rooms. All these features and technological and organizational possibilities of EMS energy management systems and BMS building management systems create a new quality of operational and functional service for modern buildings, especially public, commercial, office and industrial buildings.