Milesight Smart Building Solutions

Milesight Implements Smart Building Solution in Canada to Optimise Energy Efficiency and Indoor Air Quality

Smart buildings use technology to enable efficient and economical use of resources while creating a safe and comfortable environment for the occupants. Smart buildings may use a wide range of existing technologies and are designed or retrofitted in a way that allows for the integration of future technological developments.

Smart building solutions have grown at a rapid pace over the past few years, and it is projected to increase dramatically in the years to come. The driving forces behind the trend are numerous, interconnected systems can reduce energy consumption, help predictive maintenance, improve building efficiency, and increase productivity.
The COVID-19 pandemic brought hygiene and health concerns into sharp focus, inducing the need to adopt emerging and existing smart building technology to create a smarter and safer environment.

Challenges

Peak Power, a Canadian climate tech company, is dedicated to building the net-zero future of tomorrow. Initially, it adopted a smart building solution based on Zigbee technology during their projects. However, the big picture was far more complex. This solution highlighted various problems.

• High power consumption
  The sensors consumed too much power and had short battery life. Maintenance people needed to visit multiple sites every few months to change the batteries.
• Poor signal
  The ZigBee signal had narrow coverage, so extra gateways had to be deployed to extend the network coverage.
• Super High cost
  The temperature and CO2 sensors were costly and extra sim cards were needed inside, which generated large monthly fees.

 Project

Peak Power needed to fetch environmental data in Canadian commercial smart buildings with a sensor-based network in order to provide the highest quality data to support their AI-driven systems. After being tested and assessed, the Zigbee solution was unqualified for this task. Peak Power turned to Milesight for a smart building solution based on LoRaWAN^® technology.

Solution

The optimal choice for Peak Power to tackle the existing challenges was the Milesight smart building solution. Along with Peak Insight, the energy & indoor air quality platform developed by Peak Power, Milesight efficient wireless LoRaWAN^® sensors and gateways provided a pivotal role in monitoring, real-time reporting, and instant alerts in commercial buildings.

Topology

Featured Products

AM107 Ambience Monitoring Sensor

AM319 Ambience Monitoring Sensor

VS121 AI Workplace Sensor

WS52x Smart Portable Socket

EM300-TH Temperature & Humidity Sensor

EM500-CO2 Carbon Dioxide Sensor

UG67 Outdoor LoRaWAN® Gateway

Deployment

The Peak Insight platform contained three key components, data collection, data analysis, and data visualization portals, which work together to provide building owners, operators, and managers with energy-saving advice.

Milesight sensors are installed on each floor to monitor building data, including indoor ambience temperature, humidity, carbon dioxide concentration, people counting, etc., while AI-powered analytics integrate this information with additional data sources to forecast peaks in demand. A mobile app or desktop portal delivers data-driven recommendations for optimizing and reducing energy consumption at peak times.

The Milesight UG67 LoRaWAN^® gateway is installed approximately every 3-stories with PoE power input and has been tested to work at least 2km away. The 4G module in the gateway provides an easy Internet connection for data transmission.

Once the gateway receives the data from the Milesight LoRaWAN^® sensors, the embedded network server forwards data by MQTT to the Peak Insight platform via the cellular network. Peak Insight platform is hosted for building managers’ access via the web app and mobile apps.

With the Peak Insight app, the operations managers can remotely monitor Canada’s smart building conditions, equipment, and occupancy. Get automatic alerts when the indoor temperature leaves the range of 21℃-26℃, humidity falls below 40%, and the environmental condition makes occupants more vulnerable to viral respiratory infections, or when CO₂ levels exceed 800 ppm indicating that not enough fresh air for the number of people in the smart building.

Benefits

• Accurate environmental data
  Milesight sensors provide accurate indoor air quality insights each day to help the whole operation in the building.

• Stronger network coverage
  The signal strength of ZigBee is highly prone to external effects of the context in which the communication is taking place, while Milesight devices based on LoRaWAN^® technology provide wide and rock-solid single coverage. With just a few gateways they can cover the entire building.

• Low maintenance cost
  LoRaWAN^® technology extends Milesight sensors’ battery life to 10+ years. Reducing repetitive and maintenance work allows operators to focus more on deployment to new buildings instead of going back to maintain the finished work.

Contact the solutions team today to discuss your next Smart Building Solutions project sales@powertec.com.au