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Implementation of the energy monitoring system of a nursery complex

The client company is an important Italian company in the production of plants and flowers for sale throughout the country and for export mainly in the Netherlands, with over 180,000 square meters of greenhouses in Civitavecchia. The area is rich in geothermal sources that are used for heating greenhouses and satisfy most of the site's energy needs.
The choice to adopt an energy supervision system such as the VEP stems from two needs:
- being able to correctly determine the costs to be attributed to the various stages of production, through the separate measurement of energy flows;
- have access to forms of incentive provided for the exploitation of the geothermal resource as a substitute for the use of fossil fuels, which cannot be separated from the correct measurement of the energy extracted from the subsoil and used for heating the greenhouses.

Suggested solution
The monitoring system adopted consists of a total of 8 White Boxes, of which:
- nr. 3 dedicated to the accounting of the thermal energy contained in the underground water extracted from the wells and sent to the greenhouses;
- nr. 4 dedicated to the accounting of the electricity used by the pumps for the extraction of water from the underground;
- nr. 1 dedicated to the accounting of electricity used by pumps for the distribution of thermal energy in greenhouses.

The White Boxes communicate in real time with the central hub and the data can be viewed from the VEP via widget with real-time update. The system aggregates data on thermal and electrical energy in a total, partial, hourly, daily, weekly and monthly manner, facilitating its reading.

You can set up customized reports by selecting the information you want to know, such as total production costs, accrued incentives, or the amount of electricity and thermal energy consumed.

Thanks to this system, the client company has acquired a greater awareness of its energy consumption and of the correct allocation of electricity and heat to the various phases of production and to the main machinery, has activated actions aimed at energy efficiency and cut the electricity bill by 30%, in less than a year.

Proposed solution and post-intervention situation
The intervention identified consists in the construction of a trigeneration plant. Following the intervention, the client company benefits from a substantial reduction in the cost of electricity, which is self-produced, as well as a reduction in consumption since the cooling energy is supplied by the absorber using the heat of the cogenerator. The TEEs provided following the intervention are around 3000 each year for ten years.