“The impact has been a significant reduction in excessive energy waste reducing energy consumption per bed. It also ensures our residents are comfortable in their homes and gives them peace of mind that we take our environmental responsibilities seriously.”James McGrath – Business Development Director & Co-Owner at Mezzino
Our Client.
Mezzino have built a reputation for offering the highest standard of student living, and for treating every student as an individual. No surprises then that resident comfort and environmental responsibility are front and centre for their operations. Now based in 14 major cities across the UK & Ireland, Mezzino beds are in high demand, so when the 2024 heating season kicked off and they wanted to reduce their energy consumption and understand why boost buttons weren’t making an impact; Utopi were the people to call.
The Challenge.
Mezzino had a PBSA asset in the midlands with over 350 rooms and a strong history of overheating. With a high percentage of senior students and double occupancy, this asset was seeing significant utility costs because in-room occupancy rates were so high. An added challenge was they already had boost buttons installed, but they didn’t appear to be controlling the overheating.
With Utopi Multisensors already installed in the asset, we had a huge amount of resident behavioural data in The Utopi Platform that allowed us to understand the overheating wasn’t from solar heating, insulation, or other property-based variables. So, with increased energy controls, Utopi could drive a reduction in utility costs and a reduction in energy consumption.
“Our previous smart panel heater solution was installed with a boost feature allowing residents to warm their homes to 30 degrees. The solution had no centralised control meaning the site team had to manually reconfigure every device. Each time a resident interacted with the heater, it sent a command over the Wifi network, during heating season this overloaded the network causing connectivity and performance issues for our residents. The Utopi Multisensor allowed us to identify the high percentage of residents that were using the window to regulate temperature due to panel heater settings which contributed to unwanted energy waste. With resident experience and comfort in mind we were open to the smart panel solution Utopi designed that integrates with the Multisensor sensor. The solution allows us to not only centrally control the site setting, we can create exceptions for residents that aren't used to the cold winters here in the UK. The impact has been a significant reduction in excessive energy waste reducing energy consumption per bed. It also ensures our residents are comfortable in their homes and gives them peace of mind that we take our environmental responsibilities seriously”James McGrath – Business Development Director & Co-Owner at Mezzino
The Utopi Solution.
Having completed a highly successful proof of concept of our Smart Panel Heater solutions (see the data here), it was established that electrically heated multi-tenant assets with an overheating problem were our sweet spot.
Specific to Mezzino, the Smart Panel Heaters would remove the ability for residents to turn their heating to above 24°C (some rooms historically going as high as 26°C), plus via The Utopi Platform site teams could set maximum and minimum temperatures for the asset and even set exceptions for spaces that had special heating needs. With remote control via The Utopi Platform, it would be simple to measure impact and monitor the ongoing energy reductions, alongside managing outliers in the data where needed. And even more importantly, the already busy Mezzino team could optimise efficiency.
We agreed our metrics for this asset would cover three key comparisons across an 8-week period and correlated with the phased heating upgrade on site to demonstrate the benefit of Utopi controls over a panel heater with boost button.
The results say it all.
The Impact.
Total Annual Savings: Up to £327 per bed when upgrading from standard panel heaters to smart panel heaters. Versus £73 per bed savings upgrading from boost buttons to smart panel heaters.
Boost Buttons Trial: Utopi Smart Panel Heaters generated a decrease in spaces above 24°C 79% greater than boost buttons.
