Cork Institute of Technology in partnership with United Technologies Research Centre Ireland Ltd. Have founded the “National Sustainable Building Energy Test-bed” located at the CIT NIMBUS building. The test-bed will enable research related to whole building energy and power management to capture retrofit opportunities that scale from a single building to multiple buildings at district level.

Kiernan Electrical was responsible particularly for the detailed installation design and co-ordination with other services and structures for the entire installation.

The test bed consists of the following items:

• 50kWe Sokratherm CHP unit & associated dry air cooler supplied by PSE.
• Bi-Directional inverter supplied by Triphase.
• 20kW Lithium Ion battery storage unit supplied by SAFT.
• In addition a 10kW Bergy Wind Turbine unit supplied and installed by SIAC Wind Energy as a turnkey package.
• A Complete Upgrade of the existing site BMS including Installation of
  1. Thermokon wireless temperature/rh/co2 system
  2. Occupancy detectors
  3. People counter system by IRISYS (IRC 3020)
  4. Window actuator system
  5. Vaisala WXT520 weather station
  6. Radiator zone control valves
• Supervisory PLC / SCADA based control system capable of interacting with all the plant that comprise the test bed.