Smarter buildings – ICT-enabled

People can be wasteful, why not let a computer control your energy use?

Why should you use more energy than necessary. Flex Control keep the temperatures down when your workplace is empty (Photo: Istockphoto)

ICT can be used to optimize the use of energy in buildings by controlling heat and lighting. For example, the Danish company Lastas installed systems that automatically reduced the temperature of their buildings by 3-4 degrees Celsius outside working hours, and that automatically turned off lighting in these buildings.

The company has three industrial halls – a total of 12500 square meters of floor space. The savings amounted to 181.162 kWh per year, and the pay-back on the ICT-based system was 1 year 5 months. The system was installed by Danish company Flex Control, offering intelligent solutions for remote control, -access, -metering and surveillance for companies, private homes and holiday residences.

Your holiday destination can be someone elses workplace. A holiday resort can save large sums by automatically regulating the energy use of their rental cabins (Photo: Istockphoto)

Resorting to efficiency measures

The Sea West holiday resort in Denmark, utilized the ICT-based system to monitor all of their 500 holiday homes to control heat and unnecessary energy consumption. The Lalandia resort has connected their 761 holiday homes to Flex Control’s House Control system. The House Control system ensures that the indoor temperature in the holiday homes is around 13 degrees when they are empty. When a customer books a house, the system will set the temperature to 21 degrees a few hours prior to arrival, and when the customer checks out the system will automatically reset the temperature to 13 degrees.

Flex Control is the winner of the Danish Green It Prize 2009 (link in Danish).