A single electronic brain capable of controlling the energy consumption of all branches, reducing emissions and costs at the same time increasing workplace safety standards. By relying on this latest-generation technology, UBI Banca revolutionizes all branches throughout the country with a view to increasing energy efficiency and reducing the environmental impact of each branch.
It is the first bank in Italy that prepares an intervention of this kind, thus meeting the challenge launched to the entire banking sector by 'ABI lab', the Research and Innovation Center for the Bank, which in 2014 suggested to credit institutions monitor the energy impact of buildings and evaluate an investment aimed at sustainability.
The project, developed in team with the operating partner Job Service Srl, a service company dedicated to plant maintenance in the industrial and financial world and with the technological partner Over Spa (spin-off of the Sapienza University of Rome active since 2012 in the intelligent electrical systems) has the dual objective of increasing awareness of energy consumption and reducing it through intelligent shutdowns.
Home automation is particularly innovative because it is not limited to just monitoring the power lines, but uses its own intelligence that stores everything that happens and signals anomalies in real time, so that immediate action can be taken.
By the first months of 2018, all 1900 branches of the banking group will be automated, connected to one of the largest systems ever built in the 'cloud', i.e. with the possibility of remote control. There are currently 772 UBI Banca branches connected to the central computer, but the entire network will be fully adapted to the new system in a short time. The intervention on the single branch takes about two days and does not involve complex structural adjustments.
According to the calculations carried out following the intervention on already operational branches, the investment will be repaid in a short time, already starting from the first half of 2019. Thanks to the monitoring carried out so far on the 'home-automated' agencies, savings have been found
15% energy. The advantages deriving from the use of this innovative system are also indirect, such as an increase in workplace safety standards. The control units are capable of automatically recognizing simple faults or detecting anomalies on the lines during closing hours, to the advantage of safety and efficiency.
The planning of the interventions will also involve the branches of the 'good banks', the three banks recently acquired by the UBI group. The next step, once the connection of all agencies to the control center is completed, will be an analysis of the control centers, not included in this phase of the project.
“The basis of the investment – explains Andrea Raffone, head of UBI Banca Real Estate – is the awareness of intervening to change behavior associated with energy consumption and eliminate waste through intelligent shutdowns in order to obtain a lower environmental impact. Small tricks such as turning off the LED of a device, a computer not used during closing hours or a printer left on allow a significant reduction in consumption and this also has a significant impact on the bank's social balance".
“What we have done at UBI Banca – specifies Adriano Cerocchi, CEO of Over Spa – is not simply to put remotely controlled clocks: Over is not a 'blind' technology that acts according to static rules but a real intelligence installed in each branch that learns every day and performs shutdown actions on the basis of contingent situations with the aim of reducing energy costs to the minimum possible".
