2020 – A Year in Review
2020 was a difficult year for the entire world – with the spread of Coronavirus (COVID-19) bearing down on people and businesses, we found ourselves suffering mass lockdowns, a shift to online learning for students, changes to our shopping habits, reduction in social and leisure activities and the permanent closure of many businesses.
For multiple-residency accommodations such as University halls, this resulted in a large surge in energy consumption as students were encouraged to stay indoors due to lectures moving online, localised and national lockdowns and self-isolation safety measures. For building owners, this meant an increase in expenditure that was unforecast and a heavy load on existing energy systems providing heating and light across the accommodation.
For Prefect Controls, 2020 served as a very interesting case study. Many of the features that our systems offer actually served to solve a variety of primary and secondary issues raised by the Coronavirus Pandemic – from reducing energy waste, to monitoring the number of isolating cases in any given block and remote management of energy systems to reduce the risk of infection.
Over the coming weeks, we’ll be tackling each scenario that the past year presented and how the Prefect Irus system could, and in many cases did, resolve many of these unexpected circumstances to create a safer and greener multiple-occupation accommodation for University Students and similar residencies.