“MoLEnergy” improves management of energy consumption in the Museum of London
Overview
In the Co-Innovation Lab of the Munich University of Applied Sciences, a team of bachelor and master students of Munich University and Tampere University of Applied Sciences worked together with the Museum of London on a challenging project. The project outcome is an application for the facility managers of the museum, called “MoLEnergy”, which collects sensor data from the building and organizes it to get a better understanding of the overall energy consumed.
Museum of London on its journey of becoming carbon free by 2040
The Museum of London wants to be one of the front runners in developing a smart building management system especially designed for the needs of a museum. As buildings contribute a huge amount of greenhouse gasses to the environment, MoL wishes to act as a leading example of how to improve one's operations, and to inspire other museums to do the same. Other drives for MoL to make a change are their public responsibility, the chance to reduce costs and to achieve the net zero carbon targets set by the UK government. As the Museum of London is building a new museum, it offers a great chance to reinvent the way of operating and to improve their processes.
Great opportunity to save costs, time and energy
As of now, the museum’s energy consumption is too high, resulting in energy-waste and high operating costs. Furthermore, the facility managers only have access to scattered and historical data and need to rely on third-parties to build their reports on the different variables of energy consumption in the building. Their ultimate goal is to implement innovative technology to tackle these problems by the time the new Museum of London opens in 2025. Therefore, they need a scalable solution that is engaging the Facility Management staff and provides an integrated overview of all relevant information. This results in a great opportunity to save costs, time and energy by making data access easier and supporting decision making.
Co-Innovation Lab develops MoLEnergy - an application that helps MoL in managing their energy consumption
MoLEnergy is a mobile application that enables the facility managers of the Museum of London to see different information based on the building's smart sensors. The app collects data on overall and baseload energy consumption, provides a list of warnings in case of abnormal values, compares energy consumption to yesterday, last week and month and shows in parallel the related costs to create an incentive to save energy. With MoLEnergy the museum will be able to better connect to the building and enhance decision making to optimize the performance of the museum, making it more efficient and reducing the museum’s carbon footprint.
Amazon Web Services as support for the teams
Throughout the project the team was supported by partners from Amazon Web Services (AWS). Lars Schmitz coached the students on the methodology of “Amazon Working Backwards”, a modern way of analyzing the customer needs and supported them in applying it in their projects. In addition, AWS provided the team with technical support.
About the Co-Innovation Lab
This challenge was carried out as a joint project between the DTLab and the Co-Innovation Lab of the Munich University of Applied Sciences. The Co-Innovation Lab is a comprehensive concept for innovation projects between students and companies. Temporary innovation partnerships - in the form of projects - are created between companies, students and lecturers. Initiated by Prof. Holger Günzel and Prof. Lars Brehm (both Munich University of Applied Sciences), more than 25 innovation projects are currently carried out each year, often on an interdisciplinary basis. The Co-Innovation Lab is structured as an open community. Interested lecturers can use the concept of the Co-Innovation Lab in their courses and are welcome to actively participate in its further development.
Semester: Winter Semester 2021/22
Faculty: FK07 Computer Science & FK10 Business Administration
Lecturers: Prof. Lars Brehm; Prof. Dr.-Ing. Holger Günzel
Challenge Partner: Museum of London (MoL)
Supporting documents
During the challenge, the students created various documents:
More documents can be found on Github.