Migratory Bird School becoming smart
Issue 01-2020:
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The Migratory Bird School located at the Menred Oujiangkou Campus in the Chinese Zhejiang Province is not a school in a strict sense: Each year, primary students – like migratory birds – arrive here in July and August only. This school was built to allow employees of Menred to reunite with their children during summer vacation and teachers are hired for this period. To make sure the families have a great experience, many new applications including heating, ventilation, intelligent control and renewable energy have been integrated in the building.
Smart from the start
The building has four floors: one underground and three floors above the ground. The building fulfils the zero energy building standard. Several different HVAC systems are used for comparison experiments:
- The first floor is the teaching area and uses VRV + water floor heating.
- The second floor serves also as a teaching area and uses an integrated fresh air and cooling control system plus radiant cooling and heating.
- The third floor accomodates the living area and a fresh air dehumidifier plus radiant cooling and heating are used.
Intelligent control
Menred’s miBEE intelligent system collects all HVAC-related data through a SMARTHIVE gateway and uses it for additional scientific control. The system integrates a third-party intelligent circuit breaker device, which can also measure power consumption. Because the second and third floors use radiant cooling, all windows are equipped with EnOcean-based wireless window sensors. Once a window is opened and the cooling system is operating, the radiant cooling stops immediately and sends the information to the facility manager.
In order to achieve the best indoor environment, a five-in-one (temperature, humidity, CO2, PM2.5 and formaldehyde) air quality sensor is installed in each independent area of the room. Using the air quality data gathered, it controls the air conditioning, floor heating and fresh air supply accordingly.
EnOcean switches
EnOcean light switches are used as wall switches throughout the building. For the teaching area on the first and second floors, the more “traditional” looking, self-powered wireless switches are installed whereas, for the living area on the third floor, Menred’s clover switches with touch screen have been chosen for design reasons and to reduce the number of switches. The clover switch also contains EnOcean modules and the tenant can switch control menus with a simple swipe of a finger. It can be connected to the gateway via the built-in Modbus protocol, which perfectly combines wireless and wired technologies.