01 Feb
How to reduce energy and costs, provide fresh air, and without much effort? The answer: with the “fresh air manager”. But what does it do exactly?
There is hardly a business in Switzerland or elsewhere that does not have to ask itself how to reconcile all these problems: save energy and costs, ensure Corona-ready conditions, be more sustainable, and take advantage of the opportunities offered by digital innovation.
The “Mobiliar Arena” in Gümligen near Bern with space for 2350 spectators including 1450 seats as well as several side rooms also for business events is operated by the Foundation for the Promotion of Youth Sport for Kids. Fresh, healthy air is a key issue for the arena’s operation. During the construction of the hall in 2018, a ventilation system was also installed, and appropriate set points were defined. But this classic, static approach has two disadvantages: First, you don’t know exactly what the air quality is like, and certainly not in real time. You might feel it, you can also measure the temperature or the carbon dioxide level, but who wants to constantly turn the knobs so that you don’t filter too little during maximum occupancy and too much during rest periods?
In addition, there are usually fixed intervals for changing consumables, especially air filters. There is great potential for optimization here in terms of energy costs and air quality. Because if you change the filters too often, it costs a lot of money and does not protect the environment. If you change too little, the ventilation system has to turn up the power and use more energy to create the set air turnover when the filters become increasingly clogged, similar to vacuum cleaners. Using networked sensors to measure, visualize and alert in real time The solution to this complex profile of requirements in terms of air quality, energy and cost reduction is the use of digital, innovative sensors in conjunction with a control system that continuously measures countless air quality values, displays them graphically in real time and, if necessary, immediately indicates necessary measures – “making the invisible visible”, so to speak.
The managers of Mobiliar Arena were immediately ready to support the tests when the company actoVent in Grossaffoltern in the Bernese Seeland presented the project to them. For its part, actoVent combines the advantages of digital transformation for the benefit of its clientele with those for its own company. actoVent Managing Director Franz Penka: “The idea was not simply to continue to function as a large B2B trading portal for a wide range of products, but to offer ‘fresh air as a service’, so to speak. In other words, to integrate all suppliers on one platform and provide our customers not only with individual products, but with an overall system that makes the entire ventilation operation more efficient and takes a lot of work off their shoulders.” The idea did not come out of nowhere: The sister company penka GmbH Luft – Klimatechnik in Weinstadt near Stuttgart in Germany already has 30 years of experience in ventilation and air conditioning technology.
In concrete terms, this happens via actoVent’s Fresh Air Manager, a digital platform that brings together all the companies involved in the process, displays the measured values in a dashboard, and optimizes the processes surrounding clean air on the basis of data. Roman Bühler, hall manager of the Mobiliar Arena, is more than satisfied with the actoVent project so far: “We have only saved a good 20 percent of energy so far – per month we only consume 5500 instead of 7000 kilowatt hours during the summer months.” The return on investment of the hall with actoVent is “amazing”, a further expansion is likely. According to Bühler, actoVent has probably found a gap in the market here.
“The idea was not simply to continue to function as a large B2B trading portal for a wide variety of products, but to offer ‘fresh air as a service’, so to speak. In other words, to integrate all suppliers on one platform and provide our customers not just with individual products, but with an overall system that makes the entire ventilation operation more efficient and takes a lot of work off their shoulders.”
– Franz Penka, actoVent AG Managing Director
Building Insurance Bern: "It's worth it!"
Another actoVent customer is the Bern building insurance company based in Ittigen. There, the first step was to equip one floor with eight sensors, and employees can always call up the current values in their working environment using a QR code on the sensor. Corinne Fleury, Head of Innovation and an architect by training: “We are always interested in trying out new things and optimizing our building in terms of energy. By cleverly balancing heat and ventilation generation, we can not only create a healthy and comfortable working environment, but also save energy.” For example, it quickly becomes clear when a room is getting too warm, and the heat no longer simply goes out the proverbial window.
How fast customer data processing works actoVent has the task of organizing the most suitable products for customers from almost a million products from over a thousand partner companies, and it does this using a single platform. In addition, all customer data must be processed and, if necessary, the products and service technicians must be brought to the customers immediately. Franz Penka: “Of course, you could also do this with conventional IT. But that would simply not be manageable in terms of effort. Since we already use SAP in our company, it was obvious to work with the SAP Business Technology Platform (BTP) and the HANA database in order to be able to build our platform in a few months. And we didn’t want to wait forever for the ‘perfect’ solution, but go live quickly and gradually.” Thanks to SAP BTP, the actoVent platform did not require any extra complex programming.
The platform business model of the future - also for SMEs
actoVent, which won the Bronze Award in the category “Digital Commerce: Innovation & Creative Commerce” at the German Digital Awards in Berlin in May of this year, is working with AGILITA. This SAP system house in Zurich helps SMEs not only to implement SAP solutions quickly and efficiently, but also to create enthusiasm for what is possible with SAP. Managing Director Sandra Völler, for example, contradicts the prejudice that SAP is only something for the big players: “We are the partner of our SME customers in their digital transformation. We bring ideas, processes and technologies to them that lead to innovations on the market.” With the Fresh Air Manager service platform, AGILITA and actoVent have thus made a truly sustainable solution marketable. (AGILITA/mc)
