Climate change and global warming drive a rapid increase for air-conditioning worldwide. Buildings account for 37% of CO2 emissions. The Energy Performance of Buildings Directive (EPBD) sets low carbon building design standards. The F-Gas Directive is deploying lower GWP refrigerants, with average GWP 900 in 2022\. These are flammable, with building design complexities, and release long-term environmental compounds bringing serious health concerns. Commercial buildings need to decrease energy usage, carbon footprint and indoor refrigerants. Cool-phase Hybrid 2 with PCM technology is a single unit natural cooling/heating and heat recovery ventilation system solely designed by Monodraught. Developed from the award-winning Cool-phase Hybrid, the new market-ready development offers faster return-on-investment (ROI), lower building CO2, and lower cooling/heating running costs verses traditional VRF/MVHR. It is designed for office applications across wider geographical export markets. Latest generation PCM chemistry and panel design optimised for office applications offers improved thermal performance. Encompasses a heat recovery fresh air ventilation core to reduce energy losses. A purpose-built mono-block ASHP is uniquely integrated, providing optimal room temperature control and eliminating risks associated with flammable low-GWP refrigerants. A remote cloud control system delivers real-time optimisation. The product footprint is smaller, and product efficiency is increased by reducing air flow paths. Encompassing all key HVAC equipment, the single unit allows new integrated controls to manage cooling/heating/ventilation modes. Indoor air quality, thermal comfort, running costs and CO2 savings are optimised. Discomfort issues that are associated with separate cooling and heat recovery systems that are common in non-domestic applications in UK are avoided. The new Cool-phase Hybrid 2 is specifically designed for office applications and offers a sustainable alternative to VRF/MVHR systems without refrigerants inside the building. Common in offices today, VRF air-conditioning technology uses large quantities of high GWP refrigerants (R410a, GWP 2088) with negative impact on the environment. Approximately 10,000 VRF systems are installed in UK offices every year, leaving a long-term environmental legacy. Monodraught's building engineers design HVAC systems using simulation software, e.g. IES. Our experts will analyse weather files from across key European markets to optimise the PCM panels for export markets. Almost 90% of global Building Automatic Control Systems (BACS) software uses local servers and BACS is adopted in our current products. With the growing interest in Cloud services, we will develop new solutions enabling engineers to remotely monitor installations, check, optimise and provide real-time operating reports -- a first for a PCM HVAC product.

The aim of this project is to develop an innovative easy to install, flexible, low cost building monitoring and management system infrastructure and interface. The system will harness the benefits of the power line carrier (PLC) technology currently used by TerOpta in its lighting control system in avoiding the need for additional wiring whilst not being subject to the constraints and drawbacks of wireless technologies. This in turn will make the product well suited to both new build and refurbishment applications. It will be well suited to smaller and simpler commercial buildings which would not traditionally have BMS installed. The product will comprise a basic energy metering and monitoring layer which is then expandable through the addition of supplementary modules offering the ability to incorporate control and management functions of varying levels of sophistication depending on the building context and targets. Particular emphasis is to be placed on innovation in simplification i.e. creation of a BMS system that is as low cost, robust and as simple to install and commission as possible.

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