Edf Reveals London 2012 Monitoring System
EDF, the official electricity supplier of the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games, has installed new real-time energy monitoring technology at sports venues across the Olympic Park as well as the Tower Bridge and the EDF Energy London Eye.
The Visi product will provide energy consumption updates of the 2012 Games through EDF’s dedicated Power the Games Live website and also via a new mobile-friendly version of the site for smartphones.
The technology has been designed to present energy in a visually appealing way, helping people to understand what drives changes in demand by allowing them to see how external factors, such as weather, can influence energy consumption.
In particular, the public will be able to see how sustainability aspects of venue design – from intelligent low energy lighting at the Olympic Stadium to natural ventilation at the Velodrome – play an important role in optimising energy use.
It will also allow energy managers on the Olympic Park to manage venues’ energy use, reducing their carbon footprint helping to deliver a more sustainable Games.
Visi will remain at the venues as a legacy to enable future energy managers to understand and reduce electricity consumption at the Olympic Stadium, Aquatics Centre and Velodrome post-Games.
Sid Cox, EDF energy director of B2B, said: ‘Visi brings new energy saving opportunities to businesses by providing the detailed insight about energy use and automated control of equipment that energy managers need, alongside a new visually appealing way to display energy information so that it’s meaningful for all employees.’
‘Visi provides a new way to help the energy manager successfully engage their colleagues in their business’ energy story. It allows staff to see, almost instantly, how their actions affect the company’s energy use in way that makes sense to them. We believe it will be very motivating for energy managers and employees alike.’
Joe Sharpe, creative director at Applied Works (the digital creative agency that helped EDF to conceptualise, design and build the online applications for Visi), added: ‘When approaching this project, we needed to ensure that energy trends made sense to people – most notably providing relevant context specific to a building’s use, such as temperature, rainfall, daylight and opening hours. We also placed great emphasis on making the dashboard exploratory and intuitive, providing quick and easy access to the data energy managers need, whilst also being an effective way to engage staff.’
Meanwhile, the mood of the British tweeting public during the Olympics and Paralympics is set to dictate what colour the London Eye turns every evening at 9pm, in the world’s first social media driven light show.
Between 20,000 and 60,000 such tweets have been posted a day since the beginning of the Olympic torch relay in May, and more than 100,000 are expected every day of the Games.
From tonight onwards at 9pm there will be a 30 minute light show projected onto the London Eye. It will happen at the same time every single evening leading up to and during the Olympics and Paralympics. The colours of the lights will be dictated in real time by the mood of the people tweeting about the Olympics.
If the overall sentiment is negative – the London Eye will glow purple. If it’s positive it will shine yellow and if the Twitter reaction to the Games is neutral, the wheel will emit green rays.
