In the UK, the 2008 Planning and Energy Act enabled local authorities to require developers of new commercial and residential projects, to generate at least 10% of their energy needs from on-site renewable energy sources. However, authorities soon realised that monitoring compliance with this legislation, known as the ‘Merton Rule’, was difficult.

In 2013, Ealing Borough Council, near London, added a legal condition, since called ‘The Ealing Condition’, that also required automatic remote monitoring of renewable energy production. This is where Energence, Future Focus Energy and HMS Networks come in.

Heat pumps have rapidly established themselves as the most efficient and environmentally friendly way of heating premises.

Steve Harris, Head of Technical and Policy at Energence, explains the data collection challenge involved: It’s very easy to meter a photovoltaic array, but it’s a bit more complicated to meter a heat pump, and really complicated—in this case—to meter an air-to-air heat pump. That’s why they have been excluded from many heat pump field trials. Although there is still no way to meter the output of air-to-air heat pumps to a certifiable quality, we needed a working monitoring solution that would enable developers to start making use of this developing and promising technology and satisfy the Ealing Condition, so we turned to HMS Networks & Future Focus Energy Ltd for help in making this possible.

HMS Networks & Future Focus Energy helped us develop a monitoring system to enable greater use of air-to-air heat pumps, something developers are very keen to do. Individual air to water pumps tend to be too powerful for modern apartments but smaller, individual air-to-air (tank top) heat pumps can be more appropriate. It can also be more cost-effective to install air to air systems than communal heating loops, and they are much easier to manage, says Steve Harris.

The key criteria was that the Netbiter gateway could be pre-configured and programmed before it went to site, easily installed by a competent electrician, explains Paul Friday, Managing Director at Future Focus Energy Limited. Upon power up, the data will start pushing to the cloud. We had to have a facility for a SIM-card without relying on any third-party network services.

Connecting the energy meters and sensors posed no technical problems. Davor Toncic, Business Development Manager at HMS Networks, explains: The difficulty lies mainly in understanding how to perform the Coefficient of Performance (COP) value based on the data collected that Steve required. Now, we’re only using a small fraction of the data available. If more data proves necessary in the future, we’ll be able to use it.

Also involved in this project was Nilan England & Wales, the heat pump distributor who also gained additional information of their heat pump performance.

Having founded Future Focus energy some four and a half years ago, I am proud to outline briefly below, how far we have come and what makes us that little bit unique, along with the impending launch of our new website, these are very exciting times for our team.

Future Focus Energy are an Energy Management company, who provide the latest energy metering and monitoring solutions supported by our own in-house intuitive software “Energy Effects”, to the Retail, Commercial, Industrial and Facilities Management sectors.
The metering and monitoring systems we provide allow tiered secure access so that your energy can be effectively monitored.

Remember The Golden rule though – Before you can save Energy – Your firstly need to understand when and where it is being consumed, that’s why by Humanising our software, and making it easily understandable to all, it allows our customers to engage fully with all of their colleagues and maximise energy reductions and savings.

We offer site surveys to determine most beneficial monitoring solution. Panel build and manufacture, Installation and commissioning services. The systems provided using some of the latest and most compact logging solutions, allows the user to view their energy consumption from any web enable device, from a PC to Tablet to Smart Phone our In-house software, “Energy Effects” Humanises energy monitoring, making it understandable an easy to use for all user levels.

To coincide with the launch of our new website in the next few weeks, we are very proud and excited to be releasing our latest software “Energy Effects” Developed in-house by our experienced energy monitoring team, we thought it was time for something new.

What’s different or unique you may ask – well quite simply we have “Humanised” it as we like to say. I believe it is one of the easiest packages to navigate and understand, because all said and done, if the system either appears to busy or complicated the user will not be engaged and will therefore only log in and use when they have to, rather than embracing it.

“Energy Effects” will offer several services from simple customer focused dashboards located in reception areas, to traditional analysis and reporting, tenant invoicing module, even instantaneous monitoring will be available, all of which can be accessed from any web enabled device. the big difference is how it engages users.

A primary school in Oswaldtwistle Lancashire, having recently undergone a new extension to expand its capacity, has taken the opportunity to monitor and display its energy consumption so all the pupils and staff can see how much energy it is saving.

Lancashire County Council commissioned Future Focus Energy and Eaton Electrical to provide new electrical switchgear system and a state of the art energy management and metering system for the new extension to the existing building, with the objective of having real time data available that could be viewed easily and be able to engage its users.

Eaton Electrical supplied new electrical switchboards for the site, installing meters in them that would record the energy being used in these circuits. Future Focus Energy supplied a monitoring panel that would collect all the information from the meters that have been installed and send this information off to a secure server which then uploads all the data to be viewed online and viewed in real time.