Improving Performance of District Buildings Through Intelligent Monitoring System

Challenge

Faced with multiple building monitoring challenges, a major school district sought a fully integrated system for its buildings that would integrate both Information Technology (IT) and Operational Technology (OT). Additional requirements included the improvement of indoor air quality (which became especially important following the COVID-19 pandemic), temperature and humidity control, lighting control, occupancy tracking, management of safety measures for building accessibility, and more.

Overall, the goal was to increase overall energy efficiency, decrease operating and maintenance costs, maintain the health and safety of building occupants, and provide access to data for more analytics-based building monitoring and management.

Solutions

To track, alert, and report on building performance, a solution was needed to collect data from sensors and building systems and bring that data into an IoT platform. The solution included Advantech’s UNO-420 gateway, KMC Commander®, and an IoT and Automation Platform from KMC Controls®.

Advantech’s UNO-420 gateway is a fanless design with Intel® Atom™ E3815 Processor, 3x COM port, 2x LAN port (including Power Over Ethernet [PoE] technology), and 8x programmable GPIO. The gateway collects data from sensors, devices, controllers, and other building systems, which feed into the KMC Commander.

The KMC Commander IoT and automation platform is a secure platform that tracks the data and trends based on the preferences set by the school district. Users can also use KMC Commander to set up alarms and notifications, create schedules, and configure internal and external user profiles segmented by authorization with custom dashboards.

Results

The solution provided a complete view of operations which informed policies and operational changes within the district schools and offices. Smart energy management solutions provide a complete view of your energy use so you can draw deeper insights on consumption, model and predict efficiency gains, optimize policies, and measure improvements for energy reduction typically between 10-30%.

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