iTouch Smart Technology has secured a contract with Belfast Health and Social Care Trust, through its installation partner, Atlas World, to install smart metering technology across all of the Trust’s physical locations.
The deal will modernise the energy management systems in the Royal Victoria Hospital Group, Belfast City Hospital, Mater Hospital, Muckamore Abbey, Knockbracken Healthcare Park and Musgrave Park. In addition to the main hospitals, the Trust manages North and West Community, which has 40 sites, and Southeast Belfast, which has 37 sites.
In total, more than 2,100 energy meters have been revolutionised through this deal. The installations are being completed now.
iTouch Smart Tech’s mesh network and smart metering solutions will help the Trust analyse its energy usage – including electrical, gas, water, heat, solar/thermal and photovoltaic systems installed on rooftops – across all of the resources a building uses. The real-time data analysis aims to make Belfast Trust’s buildings more energy efficient, making real progress towards the government’s Net Zero goals.
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Once installed, the mesh network, based on LoRaWan (long range, low power) technology, can also monitor and analyse nearly all other electrical sensors in a hospital – such as fire safety doors, or nurse call systems.
Speaking about what this technology implementation hopes to achieve, Victoria McKee, Divisional Estates Manager of Energy and Environment at BHSC Trust, said: “We require better continuity of data – with less gaps in transmission from our smart meters. We also need to ensure the quality of that data – so we’re assured that the data on our dashboard screens is an accurate picture of the energy usage that’s happening, in real-time.”
The new system is replacing an outdated energy monitoring technology, providing a much clearer picture of usage, and enabling more interrogations of the data.
“This enables us to pull a lot more data and reporting from the system than before, going further back in historical records, as well,” McKee continued.
Currently, the Belfast Trust is embarking on a wide-scale modernisation of its eco-friendly technologies. There are further plans to increase solar panels, electric chargers for staff cars, LED lighting, insulation and other initiatives. The Smart Metering technology is one piece of the puzzle that will pull all the relevant data from these resources into one clear picture.
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“Without having oversight of our energy usage, then it’s impossible for us to see whether all these Net Zero actions are having an impact. We needed this system to inform us with a single point of truth about all our resources,” said McKee. “We’re hopeful that once we get everything up and running, we’ll have concrete evidence of a reduction in energy usage, as a result of becoming more efficient.”
CEO KianPeng Yong from iTouch commented, “We’re delighted to be helping organisations navigate towards Net Zero while giving them the utmost confidence in their data. This deal represents a huge step forwards for iTouch and the business is growing more quickly than ever. We look forward to helping more organisations meet their energy goals.”
Source: Written from press release
