Delphis Group, a technical and commercial property technology company specialising in air-conditioning, refrigeration, maintenance, energy management, and automation services, uses the Wattsense IoT solution to communicate with HVACR systems and to improve their efficiency.

HVACR interoperability

Interoperability was a constant challenge for Delphis when deploying its services. How to get different types of equipment and brands to connect, communicate and exchange data seamlessly? The long hours of development required to create an interoperable connector for the deployment of Delphis products increased prices and distracted the company from its core business.

Wattsense, a connectivity IoT solution for small and medium buildings, allows Delphis to quickly connect and monitor buildings using the Box, an interoperable universal connector. This remotely managed IoT device collects data and controls equipment through the Cloud. It is compatible with ten communication protocols.

"When IoT technology was not very mature, we decided to build a whole building management stack on our own, as we couldn't find a trustworthy and affordable third party platform. We learnt that a building management technology stack involves at least three layers - equipment connectivity, semantics, and analytics. It is very hard to have the necessary expertise in all of them. Using the Wattsense solution for equipment connectivity lifted a big burden off our backs and helped us to accelerate the core features of our offering," explains Thanos Daskalopoulos, Chief Innovation Officer at Delphis.

IoT solutions for building connectivity

Building connectivity is essential for property technology companies such as Delphis, which focuses on making HVACR more efficient.

Delphis needs to connect directly to different types of equipment such as AHUs, rooftops, energy meters, elevators, escalators, or already installed BMS systems to collect data for analytics, take over control sequences for optimisation or grid flexibility.

Thanos adds: "Normally, our customers are responsible for installing the Box under our guidance, and on occasion we do the installation for them."

Delphis has installed 43 Wattsense Boxes in 14 airports, two shopping malls/retail stores, nine food retail stores, and one education campus. The airports need to report ‘equipment uptime’ to comply with comfort and operational standards required by the Greek government; in the retail examples, Delphis technology is used to regulate temperature for customer comfort and also to run analytics on energy meter data.

The Delphis team itself uses the Box to generate KPIs for equipment performance and to serve as a gateway for other control services.

Louis Vermorel, CEO of Wattsense, explains: "Delphis is a company that achieves climate comfort and energy efficiency in tertiary buildings. The building management sector needs more access to PropTechs like Delphis to improve operations. And this is where Wattsense comes in. Our goal is to enable the adoption of innovative Proptechs and their services by providing interoperability with HVACR systems and all types of building equipment.”
Game-changing results

Thanks to the plug-and-play installation of the Box, its lower costs, and intuitive user console, with fewer resources Delphis can handle more projects - for installation and commissioning with Wattsense, the Delphis team spends only two to three hours.

Thanos concludes: "A plug and play device for the BAS integration industry has been unimaginable for years. Wattsense is now unlocking the dream by combining an exceptional product-service approach with near to real-time customer service. The super-simple installation and configuration process make it our ‘look no further’ choice of one single integration gateway for multiple applications. At the same time, the growing libraries and other automation features being regularly released are convincing us every day that with Wattsense, this plug-and-play future is actually not that far away."