Electrical Engineering Solutions

Silverberg Terrace, the Westlake, Cape Town, office block that houses Electrical Engineering Solutions (EES)’ offices, will be a case study in using Software As A Service (SAAS) technology to monitor and manage utility usage.

EES has been appointed by the body corporate to implement a system to monitor usage, check whether utility billing is accurate, advise on power-saving strategies and give the tenants and the facilities managers information on which to manage utility consumption.

Meters to monitor the energy consumed by 18 tenants in the building will be  installedduring February 2009 and the information they gather will establish a base against which tenants can manage the current energy consumption.

The service will be managed by remote servers in a data centre using internet technology. EES managing director Bradley Hemphill says that from March 2009 tenants will have an accurate picture of their consumption patterns and can check that against the bills they receive.

From this base information tenants can measure whether the energy-saving policies they put in place are effective and saving them money.

Down the line the service will monitor the building’s other utility usage as well.

Late last year EES embarked on a SAAS proof-of-concept project with Aspivia, a company that offers remote billing of telephony and data usage. Aspivia hosts the monitoring applications on its servers and is responsible for software upgrades, monitoring utility tariffs, remotely checking tenants call records and managing the billing process.