Making sports facilities like swimming pools and ice rinks more sustainable is quite a challenge. Startup in Residence participant Sustainable Buildings already has a lot of experience doing just that for office buildings, and decided to take on this challenge too.
Sustainable Buildings developed a cloud based energy management system for buildings that monitors energy consumption, energy generation, as well as indoor climate in real-time. It also helps companies and organizations comply with EMS regulations, as well track their progress with saving actions. Sustainable Buildings energy management system also shows the measured data on different kinds of devices ranging from narrowcasting TVs to tablets and smartphones. Essentially, by better energy management and raising awareness, in many buildings energy consumption can be lowered by as much as 10% to 35%.
Track record
The startup, founded by Faris Nizamic and Tuan Anh Nguyen in 2016, already has an impressive track record, winning several awards and securing in total more than €650,000 in investments. The company is already offering its products and services to 95 buildings and scaling up fast. “We’ve already worked with the City and several other municipalities to make office buildings more sustainable and we wanted to reuse that experience and provide benefits for other types of buildings as well”, co-founder Faris Nizamic says. “For us, that was a next logical step.”
Their initial proposal was to make real-time energy consumption data relevant for consumers visiting the sports facilities. “Communicating the relevant data via real-time public dashboards is a great way to create give feedback to building users and raise more awareness”, Nizamic says. “We wanted to make it as relevant as possible and also give people an incentive to contribute their part in helping to reduce consumption.”
Startup in Residence
Guido Aris, account manager in charge of business development for Sustainable Buildings, enjoyed being part of the Startup in Residence program: “I think it’s a really cool concept and a great way to tackle and solve real problems, which is one of the reasons we signed up. And for me personally, it was also a great learning experience. The workshops on pitching were especially useful, because that was something I never really did before.”
Lessons learned
Sport050, the challenge owner, decided not to become a customer. “When we signed up for this challenge, it was pretty broadly defined”, Aris explains. “So in the process, you have to figure out what the real problem is, and what we can do to solve it. Sport050 decided our proposal wasn’t what they were actually looking for, and that’s fine, since that’s also what this program is about, and we also learned a lot because of it.”
“I think this is still a great showcase and hopefully we’ll get other potential customers who need an energy management system because of it.”, Aris says.