At Maidstone Hospital, a leading hospital in the South East
of England, providing general hospital and specialist complex care services
to over 600,000 patients just wasn't enough. Armed with an additional initiative
to reduce its carbon footprint by 28% (by 2020 from a 2013 baseline) and
cognizant of the importance and cost-saving potential of energy conservation,
Maidstone set forth to drastically reduce its energy consumption.
The first step in controlling its consumption, involved measurement – a daunting
task as the hospital is a large site, spread over more than 2 million square feet.
Though meters were already installed around the facility, only a few were
connected to an automated data collection system and this had proven
unreliable. In addition, the vast majority of meters had to be manually read,
which introduced errors and didn't meet the needs of the on-site energy
team. In short, installing cable would be disruptive and expensive.
After exploring numerous options, including using metering which
transmits data using the cellular mobile phone network (which
ultimately would be too expensive and only offered data from the
past day) the hospital decided to incorporate a solution that leverages
the latest long range, low power wireless alternative, LoRaWAN
®
.
LoRa
®
, coined from "long range", is a proprietary spread-spectrum modulation
for low data rate, low power, and long-range wireless communication. It's an
alternative to other modulations, and is tailored for the unique requirements
needed by the Internet-of-Things. LoRaWAN is the wide area network
protocol specification for use with LoRa modulation and is designed for
secure bidirectional communication, mobility, and localization services.
In considering possible solutions, Maidstone ultimately opted to work with
Synetica Limited, providers of Long Range Wireless Monitoring Solutions
for energy, assets and the environment. Based in the UK, Synetica's EnLink,
specifically enLink Modbus, a LoRa wireless Modbus bridge; enLink Pulse,
a LoRa wireless Pulse counter and; enLink Zone, a LoRa wireless environmental
sensor measuring temperature, humidity, VOC's & CO2.
From Saving
Lives to Energy
Conservation, this
Hospital Does it All
Powered by MultiTech
Problem
Maidstone set forth to
drastically reduce its
energy consumption and
carbon footprint by 28%.
Solution
MultiTech Conduit
®
Benefits
• Ultra long wireless range
• Real time data
• Interoperable
• Comprehensive data
• Low cost of ownership
