ALCHEMAI Advanced Low Carbon Heat and Energy Modelling Accelerating Investment

About the project

ALCHEMAI addresses at scale the barriers which exist for non-domestic estate owners to decarbonise their buildings. The project will: Address market demand by providing building owners with data-based digital twin solutions which maximise the impact of any intervention to their building. Removing barriers by enabling non-domestic retrofit at scale through a reduction in risk, which will enable greater levels of retrofit across the sector, with positive impacts for building owners, building users, contractors/ designers and the supply chain.

There are13 real world site trials, testing and monitoring environmental conditions and building performance. Scenarios are visualised in immersive 3D to provide non-technical people with an intuitive and dynamic understanding of building performance alongside data reports and retrofit options.

What has the project successfully delivered?

The project consortium members have the knowledge to be able to tackle decarbonisation of the whole system as well as looking at specific retrofit requirements for the building. The project will explore methods of reducing the cost and speed up building upgrades, both in terms of recommended solutions and avoiding the cost of failed retrofits.

What has the project achieved?

• Deployment of monitoring equipment.
• All 13 buildings surveyed.
• Development of platform architecture.
• Refinement of Digital Twin (DT) techno-economic model.
• Audit of site energy data.
• Sites photographed in preparation for generating 3D site models (some also using thermal capture).
• Analysed key site data/characteristics, site plans and elevations on each of the buildings.

Key lessons learned

Lead time required for commissioning and procurement of equipment and contractors. Gaining permissions with building owners and realigning project timelines for user engagement sessions.

Next steps

• Complete install of sensors throughout all test bed sites and commencement of monitoring for live data.
• Undertake analysis of retrofit options providing recommendations and potential impact report.
• Synthesise indicative hourly heat load from site usage and billing data.
• Start implementing concept designs and captured site models into interactive prototypes for user testing.

Project partners and subcontractors

• Atamate Ltd
• Bassetlaw District Council
• Beattie Consult & Build
• Built Environment-Smarter Transformation (BE-ST)
• Holosphere Ltd
• RE24 Ltd