Building Automation:
Building Intelligence with IoT & AI

Leveraging AI and IoT technology to enhance building automation

Meliox is a Swedish software company working in the property sector, with a focus on streamlining property management and operations, as well as reducing energy consumption and carbon footprint. The company offers intelligent building and energy management in the cloud, giving you the control you want over your properties. Using technology, they are able to measure everything from temperature to ventilation flow and pressure.

There are three key areas where Meliox leverages technology-driven building automation:

  • Energy savings. A lot of energy is wasted in buildings, and energy usage can be reduced by a minimum of 20% without anyone even noticing. You also don’t want people driving from building to building ‘just to check on things’ – that is also wasted energy and can be minimized by having a clear, data-driven view into what is happening in your building.
  • Preventive maintenance is what helps you avoid those late-night calls and the headaches associated with them.Instead of someone out on a pre-defined and arbitrary schedule to check on systems. You now have data that tells you what needs to be addressed, saving you time, money, and manpower.
  • We all know that getting service or parts during the weekend or at night can be difficult, so knowing what is going on in a building and getting early warnings can be crucial.
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What makes Meliox stand out from their competitors is not just their use of AI and IoT to enhance building automation, but also their unique platform that is tailored to the needs of the industry.

Mattias Netz, founder and CTO at Meliox, worked in building automation in the 1990s and when the company took on their first customer, he was surprised at how little had changed since then.

“We were contacted by a large company working with water, ventilation, and sanitary solutions. They weren’t getting the information they needed from the buildings because the systems, if they could even get access to them, were too complex,” says Mattias Netz. “They had water-based heating systems, and they wanted their service technicians to be able to get information on what was going on in the buildings and what needed to be done to address any problems.

“Essentially, they wanted to control things from the office, rather than going out into the field on an arbitrary schedule. We said of course, let’s give you an interface to control and steer things and do what you want to do remotely, and only visit those places where you need to do something physical, such as change a pump or fix a pipe. It was just a simple of matter of knowing what to do and when to do it – being more effective, rather than working harder. And of course, they wanted to increase revenue, so we tweaked our existing platform to make it suitable to building automation needs.”

The company knew they could increase revenue per service person from 1.2 to 1.8 million a year if they could get the right building automation structure in place.

Our solution allows us to automatically control the building through AI – we can see it being powerful and decrease energy consumption, as well as prolong system lifetimes.

Daniel Lind Founder & CEO, Meliox

“There are a lot of buildings using water-based heating systems, and it’s difficult to make them last forever, so you want to have control over them, meaning not do a lot of fluctuation of high or low temperatures or too high or too low pressure, because the systems will decrease lifetime expectancy and that is difficult to address.”

Building automation isn’t new, of course, and Meliox isn’t the first to utilize technology to address and improve a property’s performance. But often, building automation companies start with what is in the building and what kind of ‘cool’ stuff can be done. Meliox doesn’t take that approach – their starting point is enabling the people who work with the building or a portfolio of buildings.

“Overall, we try to not over-complicate things,” says Mattias Netz. “Many systems out there are made for automation engineers, or other very technical persons. We want to add intelligence into the work done by plumbers or people who work with ventilation – anyone who would be working on the building’s systems. We add information to help them make better decisions – data driven decisions – in an easy way.

“What that means is our solution and platform is complex in the backend, but for users it’s easy. Users could be anyone from a portfolio manager who only looks at reports once a month to a technician who deep dives into what is going on with, for example, a valve. Not everyone has a PhD in engineering, and we keep that in mind when making sure the interface is easy to use.”

We have an advanced platform in the cloud, but it should be really easy to use – we let our customers do what they do best, and we do what we do best.

Mattias Netz Founder & CTO, Meliox

The Meliox solution is compatible with most use cases, meaning it doesn’t matter what kind of systems, sensors, meters, or brands are in the building – Meliox can work with nearly all of them because their goal is to support better building management while also decreasing energy consumption.

When it comes to new builds vs existing building stock, Meliox says that while some technical systems remain a bit too locked, new buildings are not difficult to automate because architects are already thinking about building automation when they draw up their plans.

For older buildings, with older systems, they’re not always compatible with modern technology. When integration is not possible, Meliox sometimes needs to replace  existing systems with new ones and install new hardware to measure data and have reference points. The investment isn’t huge, though – they use partners who do this in a cost-effective way.

Energy consumption & technology

It takes a lot of energy to run heating in a building. The old way of managing energy consumption in buildings was to just adjust the temperature of the water to the radiator based on the outdoor temperature using a standard “heating curve”. This is done without thinking about what was actually going on with the people using the building or how other factors, such as quickly (future) varying outside temperatures will have an impact. Meliox has a lot of data coming in, which allows them to look at how the building is performing overall and then use that data to understand and address patterns in both the short and long term. This is crucial when it comes to energy consumption and the temperature inside a building, which optimally should be 21 degrees.

“The way managing energy consumption used to be done, and still often is done, was to adjust the system using the preset ‘heating curve’,” says Daniel Lind. “This is basically a diagram hard coded into the hardware of the building. It will say ‘if it’s minus ten degrees outside, what will be the temperature of the water in the radiator, which will be maybe 50 degrees. Regardless of whether it’s going to be warmer or cooler later on the day, it will always do the same thing, never taking in other factors.”

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Basically, the old systems don’t learn. What our system does is learn and allow you to be more precise. So, maybe you need to decrease the heat before the outside temperature gets warmer or colder. Using AI and machine learning allows you to perform these intelligent actions.

Daniel Lind

Additionally, there are a lot of new regulations to adhere to when it comes to energy consumption. In the EU, many have already come in effect and there are many more to come – and every property owner needs to document and report. Meliox helps with reporting and ensuring you are compliant – and able to show you are compliant – with regulations.

“Reporting on energy and sustainability is no more difficult than reporting on temperature or pressure,” says Daniel Lind. “it’s just a data point, and since we have connected all the different systems, we have that data, so in the end it’s just a matter or analyzing that data so we can generate reports that can be acted on. Those reports need to be verified and expressed in a way that can be understood – and if you don’t report or stay compliant, it’s going to cost you. We help you address these challenges.”

The future

As far as the Meliox offering, the company has defined their core business, but also knows there is a lot more that can be done in a building in terms of measuring for improvement or streamlining. This could be everything from air quality and visitor flow to room occupancy.

“The list of things we want to do is a never-ending story, but often it’s a case of what not to do, rather than what to do,” says Daniel Lind. “We like to develop new functionality for all potential customer cases, but we know we can’t do it all, so by having an open API we can supply other companies with data to use and for them to develop new functions, products and ideas that we might not even have thought of.”

Technical development is one ongoing area where the company will be bringing even more improvements.

“We need to be on top of all technical developments to get maximum results – and you get maximum results if you control all systems in the building and we have already dipped our toes into that sea,” says Mattias Netz. “Everything is just another system that produces data, so new system, new data – we don’t care. As long as we know what it is, we can make sense of it. Protocols are becoming more standardized, which helps a lot. With the help of AI to help make sense of the huge amounts of data being generated by IoT devices, we can connect, automate, and optimize most anything.”

“Reporting on energy and sustainability is no more difficult than reporting on temperature or pressure,” says Daniel Lind. “it’s just a data point, and since we have connected all the different systems, we have that data, so in the end it’s just a matter or analyzing that data so we can generate reports that can be acted on. Those reports need to be verified and expressed in a way that can be understood – and if you don’t report or stay compliant, it’s going to cost you. We help you address these challenges.”

The future

As far as the Meliox offering, the company has defined their core business, but also knows there is a lot more that can be done in a building in terms of measuring for improvement or streamlining. This could be everything from air quality and visitor flow to room occupancy.

 “The list of things we want to do is a never-ending story, but often it’s a case of what not to do, rather than what to do,” says Daniel Lind. “We like to develop new functionality for all potential customer cases, but we know we can’t do it all, so by having an open API we can supply other companies with data to use and for them to develop new functions, products and ideas that we might not even have thought of.”

Technical development is one ongoing area where the company will be bringing even more improvements.

“We need to be on top of all technical developments to get maximum results – and you get maximum results if you control all systems in the building and we have already dipped our toes into that sea,” says Mattias Netz. “Everything is just another system that produces data, so new system, new data – we don’t care. As long as we know what it is, we can make sense of it. Protocols are becoming more standardized, which helps a lot. With the help of AI to help make sense of the huge amounts of data being generated by IoT devices, we can connect, automate, and optimize most anything.”

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