Higher Education Estates May/June 2024

m&e

Green tech company finds 23% energy saving at University of Liverpool A NEW tool for optimising the operational performance of buildings has been used as part of

“Working with IES on this project has given us detailed insight into the impact of our refurbishment work and will enable us to continually monitor and update our operational systems to ensure that the building is operating efficiently. With building use, occupants and settings altering frequently, having access to this level of data means we can make informed decisions on improvements and ensure optimum performance doesn’t come at the expense of occupant comfort.”

live operational data from a building to a calibrated digital twin. Aimed at facilities managers, it equips teams with a single pane view of live operational performance metrics via the cloud. The university’s facilities management team is now using this operational performance digital twin to continually university plans to continue collaborating with IES to create digital twins for three more buildings in the next phase of work. “Tony Small, Head of Engineering Services at the University of Liverpool, said: monitor and improve the building. Replicable across the campus, the

a project at the University of Liverpool, resulting in operational cost savings of £25,000 and energy consumption reductions of 23%. Glasgow-based climate technology firm, IES, is working in partnership with the university by using IES Live to evaluate in real-time the impact of an ongoing HVAC refurbishment project for one of its campus buildings. The project is one of the first to utilise the first-of-its-kind tool which connects

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University of Lincoln improves data centre operations T HE University of Lincoln has been working with Schneider Electric to improve efficiencies at its centralised Schneider Electric APC Smart-UPS SRT units deployed across the university’s distributed edge facilities, which provide power protection and continuity in the event of disruptions or disturbances to the mains power supply.

its environmental impact,” said Mark Yeeles, Vice President, Secure Power Division, Schneider Electric, UK and Ireland. “The university now has a more operationally and energy efficient infrastructure system, which importantly, helps towards its target of becoming net zero, and provides a resilient learning environment for future generations of students to further their education.”

data centre which serves users on the campus, including the admin team, students, and educators, as well as its research and commercial partners. “We open a new building nearly every year,” said Darran Coy, Senior Infrastructure Analyst, ICT Services, University of Lincoln, “and each one needs its own comms room populated with IT racks including servers and networking equipment, together with all the necessary supporting infrastructure including cooling, structured cabling, power distribution (PDUs) and power protection. It is the epitome of edge computing.” Although the utility supply in Lincoln is generally reliable, the university's city-centre campus buildings are not equipped with any standby power generating capabilities. Consequently, ICT Services depend heavily on APC uninterruptible power supplies (UPS) to build resilience into the network. Currently, there are 110

The Schneider Electric software provides the University of Lincoln with full visibility of its distributed IT equipment across the campus, enabling ICT Services to centrally manage and monitor all elements of its data centre physical infrastructure - from the temperature within the edge server rooms to the health and condition of the UPSs, and their associated battery runtime. This not only enables the IT team to prioritise ongoing remedial tasks and respond more quickly to unforeseen events and outages, but has also allowed cooling in the data centres and edge facilities to be optimised for greater operational efficiency and lower power consumption. “The modernisation strategy chosen by the University of Lincoln demonstrates why improving the reliability of the IT network goes hand-in-hand with reducing

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32 higher education estates