Working closely with the main client, developer, M&E Contractor, Controls House & Managing Agents Synapsys have delivered an EMS and Billing solution for a prestigious new development in West London.

SIP+ Data Loggers and Interfaces were used to integrate over 400 ModBus, M-Bus and Pulse meters to the onsite BMS. The amount of hardware was significantly reduced by using SIP+ devices with our SIPslice M-Bus and SIPslice Serial protocol modules, reducing the amount of panel space required and engineering time with SIP+ having multiple on board drivers. This allowed a high degree of functionality and flexibility when commissioning data to the onsite BMS, onsite dashboards and exporting data to our SIP Billing software platform.

By selecting SIP+ as the core method of acquiring data the building is also future proofed for any future demand for data as each device can map data to up to 20 recipients via email and FTP whilst on board IoT tools including MQTT and REST can be activated to integrate with analytic software when required.

SIP+ works seamlessly with SIPinsight Billing, our advanced billing software that ensures ALL energy costs are accounted for and assigned to tenants in the correct way. Thermal energy is apportioned based on individual tenant demand and all residual electrical energy being accurately identified, calculated and apportioned to each tenant and each tenant being billed direct by the system. SIPinsight Billing will then generate a summary report for the managing agents and their carbon consultants each month.

For more information about how our EMS and Billing solutions are being used to make buildings smarter and more efficient view our latest case studies and news item on the recent billing project at Jewish Care’s Wohl Court Independent living site.

If you would like a demonstration or more information about our solutions please call us on 01444 246 128 or email enquiries@synapsys-solutions.com

With businesses under increasing pressure to reduce their energy consumption and provide environments which maximise efficiency, it is critical that we adapt and improve on existing technology to ensure the buildings we live and work in achieve optimum performance.

In our last blog we touched on how SIPinsight Energy Building Information Software (EBIS), from Synapsys Solutions can go beyond the capabilities of a traditional Energy Management System (EMS) and improve the performance of your building.

The term ‘building performance’ can mean different things depending on what it is you are after from your building. For some, it could relate to the building’s energy efficiency, for others, it could be running costs, functionality or comfort levels (for the people who regularly occupy the building or just occasional visitors). Achieving peak results in all these fields might be considered difficult, but finding an ideal balance is made a lot easier if a) You have the right information, and b) You know what to do with it.

EBIS provides users with all the basic information you would expect from an EMS, including energy consumption, carbon footprint and plant status. It displays BMS points and maps these points against associated energy data points collected from meters. This extra functionality enables users to display meter values and consumption with the option to display related BMS values and status at the same time or overlay on an energy graph. Efficiency issues can be highlighted by identifying energy consumption and occupancy trends and mapping them against the status and run time hours of the building’s plant.

The flexibility of EBIS means it can be scaled up or down as required, so comparisons can be made over different date ranges and displayed in daily, weekly or monthly profiles on screen. Its flexibility also enables users to monitor one part of a building, a whole building, an entire campus or multiple sites across a country for example, without being tied to one building or specific location.

For the building manager the visibility and flexibility offered by SIPinsight EBIS is vitally important in the 21^st century, particularly with environmental commitments in place, such as the 2050 net zero carbon emissions target. By identifying how, when and where buildings use energy, EBIS allows the user to develop an effective control strategy and make changes and adjustments that can be tested and implemented to maximise savings, operational performance and ROI.

Perhaps it’s time you discovered how the flexibility of SIPinsight EBIS can improve the performance of your building.

Imagine being able to view the performance of everything in your building just by looking at one screen. Better still, what if this one screen could display up to date accurate information about how well your building is performing, enabling you to make the necessary changes to benefit the building and its users in both the short and long term??

Step inside any modern building and in addition to your usual internal doors, partitions, ceilings and floors, you’ll see lightbulbs, power sockets and light switches, and probably some heating controls, ventilation ducts and radiators as well. Most of these things will be conveniently positioned so that things such as light and temperature can be adjusted with the flick of a switch. It also means we can usually tell with a naked eye whether they are all in good working order. If you flick a lightswitch and the light doesn’t come one, it probably means the bulb has expired. If there is no heat coming from the radiator when you think there should be, there could be a fault with it.

A problem here, however, is that if you are relying only on looking at the individual component itself to tell if it is working or not, then that could become arduous and time consuming if you are in a large commercial building with hundreds of lights, switches, power sources, heaters and security cameras. Not only that, in a large building full of occupants it is inevitable that a combination of forgetfulness, laziness and system faults will result in things being left on when they don’t need to be. With no way of knowing where and how often these incidents occur, it is very difficult to maintain and manage the building to its full potential, after all, it is difficult to monitor something you cannot see.

For many building managers the adoption of a Building Management System (BMS) is considered a way of ensuring that their building services are integrated to operate in the most efficient manner possible. A professionally installed BMS will provide excellent 24/7 control of a building, but it can only really offer real time control of the building’s plant. A BMS is not built for dealing with historical data or for the reporting that data, which means there is a lot of valuable data going to waste that could be used to great effect in optimising the energy usage in buildings. Building managers have access to a lot of data, from metering systems and BMSs, but analysing data from two independently run systems can be complicated and ineffective.

An Energy Management System (EMS) can collect data from the building using an energy monitoring system, and EMS functionality has been added to many BMSs, which allows the collected data to be displayed on charts of the user’s preference so that consumption trends can be spotted easily and acted upon. By identifying how, when and where a building uses the most energy, the manager can develop an effective control strategy that can be implemented and tracked to maximise savings.

But what comes after an EMS? Energy Building Information Software (EBIS), from Synapsys Solutions, goes beyond what you would expect from a traditional EMS, providing a single source of comprehensive data which can be properly viewed and analysed by the building manager to help improve the performance of the building.

Perhaps it’s time you discovered why SIPinsight EBIS is the future of building energy management and performance.