Heat energy AMR system installed in Swansea

Date: 29.01.2009

Electro Technical Services(ETS) of Pyle in South Wales have recently accessed the knowledge and breadth of portfolio from Stream Measurement to install and commission a ground breaking metering project at Prince Wales dock in Swansea on behalf of two Housing Associations – Swansea and Gwalia.

Mariners Court was commissioned by Swansea Housing Association and is a development of 80 apartments fed by a central boiler house. The Court is in a regeneration plan for the Prince of Wales dock area, which in its heyday used to be a thriving hub for the metalworking industries. Mariners Court is a £10.5million investment that will provide affordable homes on Swansea’s prestigious SA1 development.

It will be Swansea Housing Association’s largest privately funded project to date and is geared towards the “empty nester” sector people, aged 55 and over, who are looking to downsize, trade in the family home and buy a two bedroom apartment. The inclusion of affordable homes on SA1 is believed to be an important part of the mix necessary to create a sustainable, integrated community.

Each apartment will have its hot water heating consumption measured using a compact heat meter. The heat meters are connected to a wireless device which transmits key data. This data is collected at the push of a button on a Psion Walkabout. Once the data has been retrieved, it can be downloaded into a billing software for despatch to the apartment resident. The tenants only pay for what they consume, eliminating the need for invasive meter readers or estimated/allocated bills and controlling the wasteful use of energy.

The meters deployed from Stream are the Sensus Pollucom C, a versatile compact heat meter that uses a mechanical flow sensor and onboard calculator that receives the temperature readings from the flow and return to generate the energy consumed by the tenant. The version is the split Pollucom C, enabling the installer to locate the display remote to the pipe-work providing a more accessible visual check if required. The meter is connected to the Sensus((S))cout walk-by AMR solution, the Sensus((S))cout product is widely being acknowledged as one of the most robust AMR wireless products on the market.

Sensus((S))cout has been specially developed to provide mobile and remote reading of meters in high density residential areas and in lower density commercial/industrial locations. The heat meters are directly wired to the radio transponder that sends consumption information to external data collectors. A handheld unit is then used to read meters simultaneously from the same point as part of a mobile ‘walk-by’ system. Sensus((S))cout is an 868MHz bidirectional flexible radio system developed specifically by Sensus for ‘horizontal’ and ‘vertical’ meter reading – in other words for the mobile and remote reading of meters (residential water meters, bulk water meters and heat meters) in areas of high building density (urban streets and high rise buildings).

Electro Technical Services (E.T.S) was established in 2004 to provide electrical & mechanical engineering solutions to a wide market sector from domestic, commercial through to industrial. Their innovative approach and partnering style has helped them to develop strong relationships with a large number of clients. Their inclusion within the Integrate consortium played a major factor in being chosen to supply not only the electrical but mechanical services for this project.

 Phil Vaulters Director of ETS said of the award

“ it took us two years to qualify to be a member of the Integrate consortium but it was a tremendous investment and played a major part of the contract award, but we still had to be competitive as with all public tenders – having both disciplines of electrical and mechanical services in house for sure helped...”

ETS worked closely with the housing association and consulting engineers in implementing the wishes of the association that all properties be metered, ETS researched the market and identified Stream as the preferred supplier of hard and software for the heat metering provision,

Phil Vaulters said of Stream

“they offered the best sourced bespoke package to suit our client’s needs offering not only product but support in sizing the meters and identifying the best hardware to deliver the remote reading capability....”

On the next plot to Mariners Court is another development of Social Housing managed by Gwalia called Lys Hafan, the same boiler house is used to feed this apartment block of a further 54 properties which will be a mixture of paid for and rented apartments. This development is also metered for hot water energy consumption in the same method as Mariners Court.

The deployment of a remote reading system coupled with heat meters is a very progressive stance taken by the housing associations in terms of energy management and the buildings performance. This stance was aided by the desire by ETS to provide a service in line with the directive and the wealth of knowledge Stream imparted in product selection and AMR solution. A win- win for all parties but more importantly the tenants and the environment.