

SHOPPING CENTRES
AND RETAIL


The Acutrace EMS Platform measures all utilities in a building providing building owners with full visualisation of where and when their energy is being used allowing them to pinpoint wasted energy and make changes.
We have completed many projects in Retail Shopping Centres and we are preparing case studies to highlight these projects and the savings and other benefits achieved.
Here are a few examples of buildings we have worked in.

The ILAC Shopping Centre
Testimonial
“We have a plan to achieve ISO50001:2018 certification by year-end 2020 and to do this we need to measure our energy costs for electricity, water and gas. Acutrace installed their Energy Measurement Platform in the shopping centre in 2019 and connected to our existing mains and rainwater harvesting water meters. This gave us full visualisation of all water usage in the shopping centre and allowed us to identify the significant water users and take corrective action. We will now expand the system to include electricity, gas and waste management measurements. The Acutrace Platform gives me all my monthly reports in one place customised to my needs and in a format that will ensure we have the correct reporting for ISO50001 certification.”
Richard Corry
Operations Manager, ILAC Shopping Centre
The Case
The ILAC Shopping Centre had a basic water metering infrastructure that required monthly physical meter readings. They also had rainwater harvesting tanks but they never knew how effective the system was as they lacked actual data.
In early 2019, ILAC was ready to make an investment into monitoring water consumption as a long-term goal was to achieve ISO50001:2018. With such a large scale project, the first phase was drafted to cover 9 meters in total 1 x main water incomer; 3 x freshwater top-ups for the rainwater harvesting tanks; 2 x rainwater harvesting tanks outgoing to the toilets and outdoor cleaning supply; 2 x water storage tanks; and 1 tenant that was identified as a significant water user.
The ILAC wish list included the following:
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Achieve significant water consumption reduction
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Data to be collected through an Energy Monitoring System (EMS) and displayed in a user-friendly dashboard that the maintenance/property team can manage
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Generate internal energy reports
The Problem
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Monthly meter readings were being manually recorded which is time-consuming and prone to human error
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They wanted to be able to automatically generate reports that could be provided to the property management
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It wasn’t possible to pinpoint when and where water was being consumed
The Solution
The ILAC Shopping Centre required a solution that would help them to visualise all water consumption as per outlined above and quickly identify and alert them of periods of excessive usage, unplanned water spikes as well as other areas of operational waste – to reduce water expenditure and improve overall efficiency. Acutrace supplied an energy node to capture pulses from 6 meters that were in the surrounding area. For the meters in a remote location, Acutrace supplied 3 x wireless Sigfox devices to capture pulses. All these 9 meters were then incorporated into one dashboard.

The dashboard above shows water consumption, greywater (collected rainwater) and overall costs with the ability to drill down to individual meters and run group or individual reports.
The Results
Improve facility performance and water savings:
Real-time data allowed the ILAC Shopping Centre’s Maintenance Team to identify potential issues instantaneously, implement corrective actions and manage usage before they affect the entire system. The ILAC Operations Team was able to set alarms for consumption on individual meters. Also, they could identify significant energy users that represent the highest percentage of total energy use.

Reporting:
Having the option to export all data in customisable reports means internal and external reports were generated efficiently which was another box ticked for their future ISO50001:2018 accreditation.
Sub-billing made possible:
As they collected data, they were now in the position to sub-bill water to the units which were not efficient with water consumption.
All utilities on one dashboard:

Waste management dashboard:
