How we cut office energy costs by 30% and earned it back on the first bill

The goal

Spend less on energy, while keeping an enjoyable office

How can we spend less money on energy, while maintaining an enjoyable office environment? With energy prices at an all time high, this was the big question in the Clarify office last winter.

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The challenge

Connecting disconnected systems

As with many buildings, our office does not have one unified control system. Lights, heating and ventilation all live their separate lives, without much concern for each other.

We had a hunch that ventilation and heating weren't working together optimally, but had no data to back it up. So what can you do when you can't control the systems together and you're on a tight budget?

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The solution

Using data to learn and form strategies

We ran a quick experiment: connecting to the existing control systems in the building and adding low-cost IoT sensors from Meshtech to capture the actual conditions in every room.

Combined in Clarify with live consumption data from the HAN-port on our energy meter and power prices from Nord Pool's public API, this gave a much better factual foundation.

The data quickly confirmed, visually, that heating and ventilation were working against each other. Just by exploring it we formed a better regulation strategy and fine-tuned both systems to work in unison, while documenting the effect on every room.

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The results

Cutting costs, saving energy, increasing comfort

• 30% reduction in energy costs. With no impact on the office environment, and the investment returned on the first monthly electricity bill.
• Continuous monitoring across seasons. Office environment and usage patterns are tracked for optimisation under varying conditions.
• Live cost calculations and alerting. Alerts on any parameter or combination of parameters make it easy to take action when needed.