Monitoring energy usage and environmental impact in Santander’s municipal buildings
About this good practice
This energy monitoring tool has been implemented following three steps:
• Energy data digitalization, several meetings with distribution and trading companies were set up to obtain energy data in electronic format.
• Energy data integration into a common repository where all data coming from different municipal services is being stored to carry out an integral management of the city, Santander Smart City Platform. A historical energy data of municipal buildings has been created and is periodically updated.
• Energy data visualization through dashboard defined in collaboration with municipal managers & technicians. Four dashboards are available, two for electricity and two for gas.
This new tool facilitates the long-term monitoring of the energy performance of buildings through different parameters such as energy consumption & costs, CO2 emissions; the benchmarking among public facilities and at different levels (all municipal buildings, group of buildings and individual building); more user-friendly invoice management (moving from paper to electronic bills); the assessment of savings achieved (consumption, costs & CO2 emissions) after the implementation of energy efficiency measures and improved decision making for future energy efficiency initiatives.
Finally, thanks to the increase of the frequency data a deeper analysis can be carried out, detecting, unwanted latent consumption, off-hour consumption, etc., contributing to a more sustainable use of municipal buildings.
Resources needed
• Support at the political (councillor) and at the municipal service level (chief of municipal service), is a key factor.
• Collaboration with local stakeholders (municipal staff, local enterprises, universities,..) and EMPOWER partners have enhanced the development of the energy monitoring system
Evidence of success
The energy monitoring tool has been successfully implemented, enabling the visualization of the energy performance and the creation of a historical energy data for municipal buildings.
The visualisation and the energy monitoring are available through four dashboards, two for electricity and two for gas.
Thanks to the historical energy data, the energy performance of a group of municipal buildings (46), including public schools, sport facilities and other municipal buildings, has been assessed
Potential for learning or transfer
Optimizing energy consumption is a common issue for administrations (at local/regional/national level), companies (small, medium and large) and even citizens.
Thus, it is very useful to share lessons learned, positive and negative experiences, with other cities so that they can import what they consider to be beneficial for the improvement of energy efficiency in their regions.
Digitisation of energy data sources, the integration into a common repository and the visualisation through dashboards, together with the close collaboration with local stakeholders are some of the lessons learnt from this energy monitoring tool. Furthermore, the sustainability of this tool and its long-term use have to be guaranteed by integrating it into the routine of municipal staff and using it as a basis for future decision-making.
Finally, this tool helpes to reduce COVID’s impact by being accessible through an URL from different places (home, offices), reducing in person contacts and eliminating paper
Further information
Images
Website
Good practice owner
You can contact the good practice owner below for more detailed information.