School and university
campus metering
A meter on every building and every major load across the campus, read remotely and compared by term, week and hour. Estates teams see which buildings use energy when nobody is in them.
THE PROBLEM
Campuses are dozens of buildings on one bill
A university or a large school estate is really a small town: lecture halls, labs, libraries, halls of residence, sports centres and kitchens, built over decades and often fed from a private high-voltage network. The utility bill arrives for the whole campus, and departments have little reason to care about it.
Usage follows the academic calendar, not the weather alone. Buildings that should be quiet in the holidays often are not, with ventilation and lighting running to term-time schedules. Labs and data rooms run continuously regardless.
Estates teams need building-level data to find those patterns, to set budgets per faculty and to show the effect of every retrofit. Manual reads of building meters once a month are too coarse to show any of it.
HOW WE SET IT UP
Building by building, load by load
A meter at each building intake
We meter each building supply first, which gives a campus-wide picture quickly. Major loads inside a building, such as a lab ventilation system or a pool plant, get their own sub-meters next.
Distance handled by the radio
Buildings are spread out and rarely share a network. Each meter reports over 4G or the campus Wi-Fi, so connectivity does not become a cabling project between buildings.
Occupancy and timetable alongside kWh
Energy only makes sense against occupancy. Timetable data, term dates or Sense-i presence sensors put consumption in context, so a busy exam hall and an empty one are not compared directly.
League tables for buildings
RIOD Live reports kWh by building and period, normalised by area or occupancy. Faculties see their own figures, and estates can export the full picture to PDF and Excel.
AT A GLANCE
Campus metering at a glance
- Measured
- kWh by building and period, interval power for out-of-hours analysis
- Hardware
- Smart energy sub-meters at building intakes and major loads; Sense-i presence nodes for occupancy
- Connectivity
- 4G or campus Wi-Fi per building; existing Modbus meters through our gateway
- Data goes to
- RIOD Live cloud, or the platform deployed on your own server
- Reports
- Audit trails on every report, PDF and Excel export, AI access to the data through MCP
- Interpretation note
- Comparisons are adjusted for occupancy and the academic calendar so buildings are judged fairly
FAQ
Questions buyers ask us
How do universities monitor energy use by building?
By fitting a connected meter at each building supply and reading it remotely at short intervals. Building-level data shows out-of-hours consumption, compares faculties and measures the result of each retrofit. Major loads inside buildings can be sub-metered later.
Why should campus energy data be adjusted for occupancy?
A building full of students uses more energy than an empty one for good reasons. Normalising by occupancy, timetable or floor area separates real waste from legitimate use, which keeps faculty comparisons fair and credible.
Do we need a campus network for the meters?
Meters can report over 4G, so each building works independently of the campus network. Where good Wi-Fi or Ethernet is available, they can use that instead.
Can schools use the data for student projects or dashboards?
Yes. Read-only dashboards can be shared, and data can be exported or reached through an API for teaching projects and public displays in reception areas.
Want building-level data across your campus?
Tell us how many buildings, how they are supplied and what meters exist today. We will propose a phased metering plan.