How did the introduction of smart IT infrastructure help reduce carbon emissions and costs across 70 schools in Wrexham?

Guest blog by Chris Greenwood, Senior Account Director at CAE Technology Services #LocalDigitalIndex #StrongerTechEconomies

The journey with Wrexham Council began in 2020 as CAE supported them with their digital transformation project to level up IT across their 70 schools, core to this was to deploy a single unified and standardised network across all locations with a move away from a mixture of different vendors and technologies.

The magic happened after this project in 2022 as there was keen enthusiasm by both CAE and the Council on how to maximise the impact and investment by exploring different ways to show value return, not just for IT but also for other business lines of the organisation and for IT to be seen as the enabler. Core to this was the programmability of the Cisco Meraki cloud networking platform and our CAE Labs innovation and software development practice which focuses on productising different Cisco APIs and services.

The biggest area of focus was to find innovative ways to drive out energy waste across the 70 schools due to the school estate accounting for 56% of the total carbon emissions of the Council.

Through the use of our then newly developed IP and WiserWatts platform that optimises an network's power consumption, we embarked upon a 3-month PoC to power off Wi-Fi services each evening at one school, this then led quickly to a pilot of five schools for a further 3 months to prove out the value and any potential operational challenges.

The pilot was a resounding success and led to scaling out in October 2022 to all 70 schools with over 1,200 Wireless APs being powered off each evening at 7pm, and powered back on at 7.30am, heavily reducing the overall Power over Ethernet (PoE) consumption.

A first-of-its-kind impact analysis study last year demonstrated significant savings of 52%. After Year 1, October 2022 to September 2023, CAE quantified, along with the Council’s Climate Change and Carbon Reduction Officer Max Wheelock, that the initiative had driven out 55,275 kWh’s of energy waste, which led to saving £24,370.73 in run costs and removing 15 tCO2e (Defra based emission factors).

In Year 2, with new capabilities developed in collaboration with Cisco, we aim to triple these savings for Wrexham Council by powering off more IT. We have identified several other areas that will lead to a reduction of carbon emissions, three such areas are:

Monitoring overheating and overcooling of Comms Rooms: CAE, with the Council in the Spring of 2023, frictionlessly rolled out affordable environmental temperature sensors across 160 Comms Rooms to track the temperature they were operating in. In doing so, we identified over 30 locations where the temperature of the Air Conditioning (AC) can be increased from 17/18°C, with each 1°C raised, improving energy efficiency by 4-5% and reducing the maintenance burden.

Network Switch optimisation: Using data from our Network Intelligence platform, we have identified many underutilised network switches across the 70 schools that can be powered off or repurposed for the four new schools that Wrexham Council are currently building.

Powering off nonessential network Switches: by utilising WiserWatts and a smart inline power controller, the Council has identified fifty Switches across the school estate that can be powered off each day at 7pm, leading to significant energy savings, in the range of 50-100 Watts per hour per Switch.

More than 200+ organisations in the UK have benefited in the same way as Wrexham Council has with the rapid adoption of our free-of-charge WiserWatts and Network Intelligence solutions in the first 9 months of its generally available release in March 2023.

Evidence and supporting documentation from this customer project:

Taking this innovative journey to sustainability has led to CAE becoming one of the leading global Cisco Partners in the space of sustainable networking and led to the WiserWatts solution being recognised for multiple awards since its inception. Strong collaboration with Cisco has been key to building this capability for our customers.

“Sustainability cannot be advanced by one person or company alone. It requires passionate people working together and being the change they want to see. I am proud to collaborate with CAE on driving sustainability in the industry. They are pioneers who leverage their capabilities and innovative spirit to create positive impact together with us.

Their expertise, the tools they provide and how they integrate with our platforms make it simple for organizations to achieve sustainable outcomes today, such as energy savings and reducing travel requirements.” - Christian Zachriat, Global Sustainability Lead, Cisco Meraki

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