IOT Factory

08/02/2025

Monitor your water consumption. It can reveal serious problems… and often invisible ones!

In a 16,500 m² office building, we have set up detailed energy monitoring (consumption by energy, by use, and individual), as well as monitoring of water consumption...

Read the full case study 🔎👇
https://iotfactory.eu/smart-building-invisible-water-leak/

Invisible water leaks in buildings can lead to huge costs and material risks. Learn how smart consumption monitoring can identify these anomalies before they become disasters.

02/02/2025

🌍 Does your office have healthy air?

Do you think your ventilation is doing the job? 🤔

In a Brussels company, we measured the indoor air… and the results are alarming. 📉 CO2 soaring, productivity down, health risks!
Discover how a simple sensor revealed an invisible, but very real problem. 🔎👇

Discover edifying feedback on indoor air quality in an office building. Why does a ventilation system not always guarantee healthy air? Analysis, conclusions and solutions.

22/02/2024

Let's meet @ !

We will showcase on our booth, Hall 7 Stand 7G51, our latest features in Smart Construction:
✅ Energy Efficiency
✅ Personnel Safety
✅ Construction Site Theft protection
✅ Water Metering & Leaks Detection
✅ Equipment Tracking
Let's have a coffee (or a Belgian beer) together 😎

20/02/2024

Let's meet @ !
We will showcase on our booth, Hall 7 Stand 7G51, our latest features in Smart Building:
✅ Energy Efficiency
✅ Indoor Air Quality
✅ Occupancy Management (Desks, Meeting Rooms)
✅ Water Metering
✅ Safety
✅ Automation
Let's have a coffee (or a Belgian beer) together 😎

13/02/2024

One day, (electrical) equipment will be intelligent enough to decide for itself when it should stop consuming 🙏

Until that day, it is entirely possible, based on an analysis of energy consumption (and in particular electrical consumption ⚡) to identify unnecessary consumption, and to program the time slots during which these sources of consumption are active, or inactive.

In the services sector, the distribution of energy consumption is, (figures for the Brussels region):

✳Heating, Ventilation, hot water: 65%
✳Lighting: 18%
✳Electrical equipment: 15%
✳Others:2%

In all these categories of consumption, it is possible to manage dynamically, even automatically 🕤, when activating or deactivating them.

⚡As a reminder, studies have shown that smart metering applied to energy can reduce consumption by at least 15%, on average.

What are you doing to reduce your energy consumption?

01/02/2024

Management of water consumption ⛲ on construction sites.
Beyond economic (cost) and societal (reasoned consumption of a dwindling resource), measuring water consumption on a construction site brings numerous advantages.

Here are the different reasons given by our customers, justifying the measurement of water consumption on a construction site.

✅ Leak detection
✅ Detection of consumption outside of site activity hours. Oversight.
✅ Detection of consumption outside of site activity hours. Rupture of a pipe.
✅ Detection of consumption outside of site activity hours. Presence of suspicious activity on the construction site
✅ Consumption monitoring. Monitoring the construction budget.
✅ Environmental responsibility. And in particular the ESG reporting imposed on the largest companies by Europe

These detections obviously generate the sending of alerts ➽ to those responsible, which makes it possible to limit the consequences of these problems.

Leaks, forgetting to close taps/valves and burst pipes can have a major impact on the job site. On the one hand, productivity losses 🕙 and financial losses 📠 linked to the damage caused and the partial shutdown of the construction site. The impact on the neighborhood can also be catastrophic and involve insurance and long and complex management of responsibilities.

Measuring water consumption on site is easy to implement. The economic and productivity gains are rapid. 🎉

30/01/2024

Measurement of electrical consumption.
Energy efficiency involves measuring electricity consumption 👀.
In the services sector (tertiary), electricity represents at least 38% of the company's energy footprint (♨ excluding heating and domestic hot water). Far from being negligible, and a real lever in the fight against waste.

Last week, I coordinated the installation of electricity consumption monitoring in an office building. The opportunity to review the different methods available to us to measure electrical consumption.

📌Installation of a “classic” but communicating electric meter. The current passing through the meter requires a power cut and adapting the wiring of the electrical panel. And therefore, following local regulations, certification at the end of the course.
📌 Installation of an electric meter based on current clamps (current converters), non-invasive solution which does not require modification to the electrical panel, and no interruption of service
📌 In certain cases, it is also possible to read consumption data directly on the Network Operator's electricity meter

✅ For this installation, we opted for a mix of 2 methods. General consumption (three-phase) was carried out with current clamps, which made it possible not to disrupt activity in the offices.
🚗 For electric car charging stations, a “classic” electric meter was already present. We interfaced it in order to report this data. It is critical to be able to separate building consumption from that linked to car charging, otherwise the analysis of the data would be much more complex, given the relative impact of car charging.

25/01/2024

Do you know the EU Data Act which has just come into force on January 11, 2024?
🔓 The EU Data Act aims to regulate access and exchange of data generated by IOT sensors. The goal is to enable the development of a data economy around the Internet of Things, while respecting all stakeholders:
✅ Guarantee access to the data, by the users of these connected objects
✅ Give the right to access to data by third parties
✅ But protect suppliers of connected products and services from unfair competition linked to abusive access to collected data
✅ In certain cases, authorize public authorities to access certain data which would be of public interest
Unlike the GDPR, the Data Act aims to develop a data economy linked to IOT, but within a legal framework. It recognizes the positive impact that IOT can have in relation to the Green Deal objectives. Preventive maintenance in which increases the life cycle of a product, energy savings, reduction of greenhouse gases, optimization of agricultural management,
🎯 If the EU Data Act entered into force in January 2024, it will be applicable from September 2025.

23/01/2024

Water Metering in Offices: 30%-50% savings expected !
According to a report by the European Cluster Collaboration Platform, offices can cut their water use from 30-50% by monitoring 📈 their water consumption and adopting measures based on the diagnostics.

⛔ A dripping tap is equivalent to a loss of 5 liters of water per hour. 120 liters per day. Nearly 43m3 per year!
⛔ A leaking toilet flush means at least 15 liters of water per hour. 360 liters of water per day. 131m3 per year!

👓 On average, consumption per employee is around 45 liters per day. Leaks can therefore seriously impact water consumption...

While the price of water is only increasing, and companies will have to, in the years to come, explain their actions in the environmental, societal and governance fields (ESG reporting ☘), monitoring water consumption will become as important as monitoring energy consumption.

20/01/2024

Indoor Air Quality - Particulate Matter (PM)
We are often asked to place CO2 measurement sensors ☣ in buildings. This CO2 measurement has become popular since the COVID episode.
Measuring CO2 makes it possible to judge the quality of ventilation. CO2 is not, strictly speaking, a measure of the presence of pollutants in the ambient air. CO2 is produced by human activity (we all release CO2 by breathing). Maintaining a low CO2 level, regardless of the number of people present, demonstrates that ventilation is effective.
Common pollutants include 🔬 PM - Particulate Matter. Or micro particles. These are solid particles or droplets, coming from combustion, road traffic, construction, dust, etc.
Micro particle pollution is measured according to its presence rate, depending on the size of the micro particles:
⚠ PM 10: particles with diameters of 10 micrometer
⚠ PM 2.5: particles with a diameter of 2.5 micrometer

The fineness of these particles allows them to enter the lungs and blood. The European Commission estimates that PM 2.5 is the cause of the premature death ☠ of 253,000 people per year in Europe!

So, how to fight against micro particles?
✅Measure air quality and specifically micro particles.
✅Generate alerts if an acceptable threshold is exceeded
✅Ventilate
✅Place HEPA filters in your ventilation, and make sure to replace them regularly
✅Regularly clean the surfaces of your buildings and offices

Europe has set itself the objective of reducing the number of deaths linked to air pollution by 55%. It is time to act in our buildings, in our offices and workshops.

17/01/2024

It has been proven that smart metering👀, applied to energy consumption⚡, can reduce consumptions by an average of 15% ⏬. Measuring energy consumption in real time allows us to understand how we consume (and why). ⁉

But other studies somewhat contradict these studies, with reductions of around 2%? ☹
The reasons for this difference?
❗Lack of knowledge in the actions to take, based on measured consumption, to reduce them
❗The absence of a strategy in terms of energy efficiency. What do we want to achieve, by what horizon?
❗Lack of follow-up over time. Reducing consumption is often linked to changes in behavior and habits. We must be able to keep these commitments over time

We have achieved spectacular results 💪 with some clients. What we learned in these projects is that it is necessary
🎯 define the objectives that we want to achieve: what savings, by what deadline, with what budget
🎯 define KPIs (for example in kWh/m2/year, kWh/employee/year, etc.)
🎯 clearly communicate your ambitions in the company, because everyone will have to contribute
🎯 have a person in charge of this project, in the medium/long term
🎯 train this person, or call on external help for monitoring
🎯 monitor KPIs over time, because bad habits can return very quickly

Energy efficiency requires smart metering, and this is achieved over time. The financial gains can be very significant.🎉

04/01/2024

We wish you all the best for your projects in 2024.
Improve Energy Efficiency, Air Quality and Operations will remain our main goals for this new year.
PS: Visual created by AI