Paris, September 2023 – Kardham Digital, the first Digital Services Company (DSC) dedicated to the property industry and a subsidiary of the Kardham professional property group, and Wise-NRJ, a consultancy specialising in renewable energies, have announced the launch of a collective self-consumption offering. The aim is to enable commercial property owners and operators to respond to major environmental, regulatory and economic challenges by leveraging the self-production and self-consumption of solar photovoltaic electricity. An initial pilot project involving 5 beneficiaries has already been rolled out in Sassenage, Isère.
Short circuit energy production and consumption
Impacted by the energy crisis, the commercial property sector has gradually begun to see the benefits of better managing the energy consumption of its buildings according to how they are used by their occupants, in order to limit waste and massively reduce its ecological footprint. As evidence of this dynamic, we are witnessing the rise of connected infrastructures capable of converging usage and building data, which in particular contribute to more rational operation of these buildings, now referred to as “intelligent” and therefore a source of energy savings. It is estimated that, to date, controlling the energy consumption of buildings according to usage can reduce their energy consumption by around 30%.
Today, Kardham Digital and Wise-NRJ are proposing to take the fight against rising energy costs a step further by acting on energy production through self-consumption, a concept that aims to produce and consume one’s own energy using photovoltaic solar electricity in particular. While the principle is well known in the residential world at the level of a single household – in which case it is referred to as individual self-consumption – it is less well known at neighbourhood level, where it is referred to as collective self-consumption (CSC). In this case, production is shared between several buildings located within a 2 km radius. CCA has a number of benefits for commercial property, which is known to be very energy-intensive. First and foremost, it is good for the environment, because by relying on the production and consumption of energy from renewable and local sources, local authorities, developers and property managers can help to reduce the energy footprint of their buildings. CCA also offers a regulatory advantage, with the Tertiary Sector Decree setting a target of a 40% reduction in energy consumption by 2030 for tertiary sector buildings over 1,000 m². Above all, the inflationary context has led to the emergence of a new benefit of the CCA: the promise of a huge pool of savings. By working together on a common project, the various beneficiaries of a CCA project can pool part of their production to reduce their energy bills. CCA also acts as a price shield for these stakeholders: by reducing their dependence on their energy supplier, they are less subject to price increases and fluctuations.
50% independence from the electricity grid
In concrete terms, this ACC offer deployed by Kardham Digital and Wise-NRJ aims to reduce energy consumption by 10 to 20%. In other words, an overall reduction of 40-50% if we add the 30% made possible by managing the building’s energy consumption according to usage. In Sassenage, an initial project involving 5 beneficiaries, including a hotel-restaurant, has been rolled out. Heating, ventilation and air-conditioning can be controlled according to occupancy and vacancy. The project will also enable production and consumption to be better balanced: by shifting consumption periods to align them with production periods and adjusting consumption to the most attractive tariff periods, and vice versa. The hotel’s surplus energy will be offered to the community, which in turn will be able to offer energy when the hotel runs out.
An integrated offering to make ACC more attractive
This collaboration between Kardham Digital and Wise-NRJ will enable companies to benefit from a comprehensive turnkey offer from ACC. Interested companies can rely on a single point of contact from the earliest stages of the project, in this case the identification of needs, technical and economic studies of return on investment, as well as the administrative and legal aspects, in particular linked to the creation of the organising legal entity, which is essential for launching any ACC operation. The offer also includes installation and break-in, followed by balancing and monitoring of consumption and production. Finally, the package also includes management of billing for energy exchanges between members. This offer, which covers the project, studies, hardware, software and engineering, should make a concept that is still complex to set up more attractive, given the number of people involved and the technical, regulatory and development expertise required. It is primarily targeting the region’s SMEs, an economic fabric that is still new to the use of smart building technologies and which, because of its profile, cannot access the tariff shield.
“We are delighted to be working with Kardham Digital. Wise-NRJ has been working for a long time on the idea of developing the use of ACC, as we are convinced that it is a way of accelerating the energy transition of companies and therefore their decarbonisation. What we didn’t have was the right digital partner to take us to scale, and it seemed obvious to us to turn to a specialist in intelligent buildings such as Kardham Digital,” comments Eric Jouseau, CEO of Wise-NRJ.
“ACC is yet another illustration of the benefits of intelligent buildings. Like energy management, it is based on the deployment of service platforms that give operators greater control over and finer measurement of the energy they produce, consume and eventually sell. This is a fantastic opportunity for many companies to get a foothold in smart building, which is a source of many benefits,” continues Alexandre Fund, Smart Building Director at Kardham Digital.
“Everywhere in the world, companies are faced with the same problem of having to reduce their energy bills. This offer, designed with Wise-NRJ, is a great opportunity for the Kardham Digital teams to add an upstream component to their recognised expertise in building energy management. This will enable us to provide holistic support to these organisations, which must now respond appropriately to a wide range of economic, environmental and societal contingencies,” concludes Pascal Zératès, CEO of Kardham Digital.
