Public Buildings

All the countries in Europe have made similar commitments at the level of the European community or at the national level. These obligations impose a gradual reduction in energy consumption in buildings for tertiary use in order to combat climate change. These objectives aim to reduce final energy consumption by 40% in 2030, 50% in 2040 and 60% in 2050.
Communities with a duty of example and excellence also have an urgent obligation to meet these objectives and demonstrate the savings achieved.
In addition, the plan shares the ten sobriety actions proposed by the Association of French Mayors (AMF) and Intermunicipalities of France, in partnership with the Banque des Territoires and Amorce. These ten actions are:
– Targeting of inefficient buildings (based on invoices or estimates);
– The mobilization of agents by informing them, training them and appointing a “sobriety” referent per department;
– Verification of heating regulation systems and their proper use;
– Compliance with the energy code and regulation at 19°C for occupied buildings;
– Verification of the extinction of public lighting from 11 p.m. to 5:30 a.m., except on the main axes;
– Training agents in eco-driving and limiting the maximum driving speed;
– The cut off of hot water in all buildings, excluding schools and health establishments;
– The reduction in the heating season for buildings from All Saints’ holidays to Easter;
– Prohibition of electrical equipment (auxiliary heating/hand dryers);
– Switching off the lighting of monuments, facades, signs and lit windows.
A similar action plan is recommended in the Swiss Confederation as well, and apart perhaps from the point relating to eco-driving, SILENO e3m is your data collection, verification and management solution. However, the problem is the measurement of performance indices to measure the effectiveness of the various actions and the optimization of the means implemented. The use of an EMS (Energy Management Solution) platform is then essential to collect all the data automatically over the short, medium and long term so as not to increase the workload even more and to ensure the reliability and regularity of the measures. SILENO e3m is thus used by more than a hundred local authorities and as many social landlords and other housing managers.

According to the association of small towns in France (APVF), the energy expenditure of certain municipalities has already jumped by 50% since the beginning of 2022. For the association of mayors of France (AMF) and the National Federation of licensing and governed communities (FNCCR), these increases would vary between 30 and 300%. For its part, Intermunicipalities of France considers that the energy bill of three-quarters of intermunicipalities has doubled, even tripled or quadrupled. And yet these are only estimates likely to evolve upwards over the coming months.
The same is true, and often even more pronounced, in all other countries in Europe.
Changing your energy model is of course possible, but this requires heavy investment with already very poor budgets and also long lead times with works, development times, etc. The only short-term solution that is much easier to implement is to set up virtuous energy systems and limit unnecessary consumption as much as possible. For this it is necessary to measure again and again and collect all possible information to detect immediate savings points and make immediate savings, for example:
– Air conditioning and heating represent the largest energy consumers: controlling its operation to the presence in the premises and for example to the detection of the position of the openings allows savings of up to 20%
– Lighting is the second item of expenditure, whether exterior, interior or advertising. Controlling the lighting to activate it only when necessary (presence detection, opening hours, etc.) allows substantial savings of up to 30% on this item alone
– Water and its distribution allows immediate savings by identifying both water leaks but also an immediate gain by detecting unbilled consumption: a simple analysis of flow data consolidated with SILENO tools will identify these points

Multiple buildings from listed historical monuments to the most modern constructions, multiple technologies, multiple energy sources, multiple suppliers, multiple customers: the needs of local authorities, landlords and housing managers are much more complex than simply carrying out measurements energy: it is a question of having the capacity to centralize all this information, to format it in a single measurement system: to pass from BIG DATA which can often be a gigantic mass of unusable data, to SMART DATA by allowing an easy and fast analysis of this information to draw useful lessons and effective and immediate decision-making.
Less than 10% of buildings are currently controlled by technical management systems (source XERFI) even if this will become a legal obligation in 2025, but the implementation of such a system often requires large investments.
The different solutions must be differentiated by level of hierarchy:
– BMS: centralized technical management, often limited to one type of installation in a building, the HVAC system or electrical distribution for example.
– BMS: higher hierarchical level, technical management of the building or supervision, takes into account several types of installations (possibly controlled by BMS) but often confined to installation supervision
– Hypervisors: in charge of supervising any type of GTC, BMS, surveillance camera, access control application, etc. these systems are more oriented towards simplifying data presentation by offering a single human/machine interface (HMI) for monitoring global installations.
– EMS such as SILENO’s e3m solution have a very different target: collect data from all the systems mentioned, other data sources such as sensors, IOT meters, environmental data on external sites (weather, level rivers, cost of energy for example) and other IT systems such as user management, user or supplier invoicing.
e3m is independent, much easier to install because they do not require any particular installation and will draw data from existing management and control systems, existing meters and any available data source.
An EMS such as SILENO’s e3m also makes it possible to capture information upstream of installations such as data from other IT systems (management, invoicing, subscription, contracts, etc.) but also data from the web (weather data, public data on the water…) which no system from BMS to hypervisors is able to do.
This simplicity is the guarantee of a quick and easy return on investment generally in a few months.