Owning and managing school buildings always involves unique challenges. Europe's various schools have diverse uses throughout the day – from classrooms and canteens to workshops and gymnasiums. They must provide a safe and healthy indoor environment while minimizing energy consumption and ensuring system reliability.
Many schools were also built before modern energy efficiency requirements, with mixed technical solutions, and are designed for different student numbers than today = fewer students overall, more students per class. For a property owner, this means managing a complexity with high demands for balanced energy optimization and a good indoor climate.
Common Challenges in Schools:
- High CO₂ Levels at Full Occupancy Affecting Student Performance.
Often, classrooms have more children than originally intended when the schools were built. A classroom designed for 18 students might realistically be used by 25-35 students. This leads to much higher CO₂ levels in classrooms than before. - Uneven Temperature and Air Quality Between Different Parts of the Building.
When schools were built, there was a plan for how different areas would be used. Today, they can be used in completely different ways, directly affecting indoor temperature and air quality. In many cases, systems are used all day long, regardless of need. - Limited Insight into Energy Consumption and Operational Data.
Optimizing ventilation and heating in classrooms requires the system to measure the right things and visualize energy consumption for analysis and follow-up. - Lack of Local Expertise, Lack of Time to Act Proactively.
Too few maintenance technicians and multiple systems that don't communicate with each other lead to both a lack of time to fully learn the systems and to gain an overview of emerging situations.
How Automation Makes a Difference:
With the help of building automation, property owners can:
- Demand-control ventilation and heating based on presence and system data.
Classrooms are used differently when students and teachers split into smaller groups. They move more mobilely throughout the premises, allowing ventilation and heating to be controlled more accurately, saving energy based on usage. Night and weekend modes can also be activated to lower temperature and ventilation. - Monitor and control buildings centrally or via cloud – regardless of geographical location.
With modern systems, technicians or property managers don't need to control and correct on-site. Instead, they can control the system remotely from their workplace, making their work time more efficient. - Integrate different technical systems into a unified solution.
Modern Building Management Systems allow multiple systems to be monitored from a single point. This allows different systems or occupancy zones to be compared to more easily find deviations or energy consumers. From there, ventilation and heating can be optimized, and maintenance technicians or property managers can streamline their work and gain a clear overview of the school's systems. - Receive alarms for operational disruptions and quickly address problems.
In the event of a sudden operational disruption, the Building Management System identifies the deviation and sends an alarm to maintenance technicians or property managers who can begin troubleshooting and identify the disruption.
The Benefits:
- Reduced energy consumption and lower operating costs.
- More even indoor climate that improves the working and studying environment.
- More efficient operation and optimized use of ventilation and heating systems.
- Better decision-making basis for investments, follow-up, and sustainability reporting.
Regin's Offer
We at Regin offer flexible and future-proof solutions suitable for schools, regardless of building age, indoor climate, and student numbers. Through our integrator network, we have extensive experience in school installations. Our systems are based on open standards and can be easily adapted to local needs, whether for new construction or modernization of older schools. We support our partners throughout the process – from analysis to operation.
Would you like to know more? Contact us for a free consultation.