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Company Profile
Markus Berglund is chairman of one of Sweden's prominent housing associations. As a programmer, he uses his administrative expertise and technical knowledge s to benefit the other members.
Due to specific tax regulations, housing associations manage many residential properties and apartments rather than private owners maintaining their own homes. This makes efficient operation critical for financial and community success. We talked about how he saved the housing association money by effectively managing their heating system.
"Our number one priority was finding something that gives us a competitive price and comprehensive monitoring capabilities. MetricFire was the clear winner in that contest."
The technical problem
The housing association faced a complex set of challenges that threatened both its operational efficiency and tenant satisfaction. Rising energy costs were a significant concern, with central heating alone accounting for 20% of its operational expenses. The traditional approach of regulating temperature proved increasingly inefficient in maintaining comfortable living conditions while managing costs.
Another concern Markus had was the association's ongoing infrastructure modernization efforts. As they began installing LoRa-connected thermometers and upgrading to smart electricity meters throughout their properties, they lacked a unified system to monitor and manage these new technologies effectively. The addition of electric vehicle charging stations in their parking facilities further complicated matters, as they needed to carefully monitor power usage to prevent system overload while meeting the growing demand for charging services.
One of the reasons this was so important to fix was the impact on tenant experience. The association occasionally received complaints about inconsistent heating across apartments, but identifying and addressing these issues proved time-consuming and inefficient without proper monitoring systems in place. The lack of real-time visibility into system performance meant that problems often went undetected until tenant complaints were filed, leading to reactive rather than proactive maintenance approaches.
“...What I've looked for, is something that gives us a competitive price and what we need.”
The solution
Markus needed a more regulation-friendly system and installed updated smart thermometers in the apartments. He bought a LoRa solution because they were already using LoRa electric meters. With LoRa, they could use their gateways and their own data. However, they were not happy with the data visualization options LoRa offered. He realized they needed a better solution.
So, he found MetricFire. With help from MetricFire's onboarding tools and expert support, he was able to easily send his custom metrics to Hosted Graphite and visualize them in Grafana dashboards.
The result
By using MetricFire, they have more visibility into their heating and electricity usage. They found that most of the complaints about the apartment's temperature were because the thermometers were set up incorrectly, and their handyman was able to fix this issue. They save on heating and electricity costs, but more importantly, they have greater visibility that they need to know about what is happening in the building.
Implementing MetricFire's monitoring solution has substantially improved much of the association's operations. The apartment association has also been able to reduce its heating and energy costs significantly. The comprehensive data analytics capabilities have transformed its decision-making process, allowing for more efficient resource allocation based on actual usage patterns rather than assumptions.
Conclusion
With a complete monitoring solution, Markus Berglund gets the visibility he needs to save money and electricity for this housing association. By using MetricFire, he has easy-to-use customizable metrics, dashboards, and alerts at his fingertips. He also has an easy-to-use platform with a support team always ready to help him lower costs.
