“We help the owners and users of commercial real estate to save energy”, says Xander van Baarsen, Business Manager at Rhino Energy. “Although savings vary per building type, our customers quickly see a 10% to 30% reduction in their utility consumption (on average) after implementing our platform.”

Energy savings of up to approximately 30%

“To be able to optimize your energy consumption and reduce your CO2 emissions, you will need to understand your current situation. For example, before doing anything at all, it will be important to identify what your biggest energy consumers are and the times when your consumption is highest. The process always starts with the collection and analysis of data.”

The data you collect provide an insight into standby power consumption (by the air-conditioning system, for example). Figures from the Netherlands Enterprise Agency (Rijksdienst voor Ondernemend Nederland (RVO)) show that energy consumption can be reduced by some 25% to 30% by fine-tuning your settings based on the data collected.

Van Baarsen gives an example: “A customer of ours from the logistics sector has a heated driveway, which it uses to make sure trucks don’t slip on cold winter days. But this driveway had been left on all year for years on end and no-one knew the reason or where the ‘off’ button was. Our system soon uncovered this unnecessary consumption and the customer in question took steps to rectify the situation immediately. Often, the data are all you need to be able to do something about a situation.”

Sustainability reports are the new norm

Real-time data monitoring is enabling the owners and users of commercial real estate to optimize their energy management and minimize their ecological impact. The data that Rhino Energy generates also play an important role in the preparation of the ESG reports that form part of the CSRD. They shed light on how companies are performing in respect of and contributing to the environment, society and governance.

“The CSRD is a real hot topic at the moment”, Rhino Energy’s Business Manager points out. “The first customers - mainly big, listed companies - will be expected to submit their first CSRD reports by this summer. Rhino Energy is helping them. We don’t prepare the entire report but do make an important contribution to it: readily available data about the company’s energy consumption.”

IoT-chain entirely in-house

A Rhino Energy IoT gateway reads customers’ meters to collect the required data. A sim card in the IoT gateway ensures that the latest data are always immediately available. The ‘Rhino IoT Cloud’ then saves the data, after which dashboards make them accessible for analysis and decision making. An API can be used to share the data too - e.g. with dashboards or a tenant’s platform.

“You don’t want your connectivity to rely on a local network, like WiFi or an ethernet cable”, Van Baarsen says. “We serve buildings throughout the world, so you don’t want to have to call on local operators if your WiFi goes down. We use KPN IoT M2M sim cards to keep data and connection management entirely in-house. This enables us to install our gateways faster wherever they are in the world and gives us a real-time insight into the status of all our connections.”

The importance of global connectivity

Rhino Energy has a strong presence in Western and Eastern Europe and is expanding its activities to the United States and the Middle East. This global expansion was an important reason for Rhino Energy’s decision to work with KPN IoT in the field of connectivity. “Thanks to roaming agreements, KPN IoT offers good global coverage at a good price” Van Baarsen explains on why the company had chosen KPN IoT. “My previous positive experiences with KPN in a different role confirmed it as the ideal partner for our connectivity needs.”