About the National Galleries of Scotland

The National Galleries of Scotland is home to an extensive national and international art collection, including the very best Scottish art. It spans four galleries across three central Edinburgh buildings: National, Portrait and Modern.

Part of Scotland’s cultural heritage, the galleries date back to 1850, when Prince Albert laid the foundation stone of the original building. Today, the collection is made up of over 130,000 objects housed in an eclectic mix of buildings. Some of which herald back to the 18th and 19th centuries.

Saving energy in ‘critical spaces’

To preserve artwork and ensure buildings are comfortable for staff and visitors, the National Galleries for Scotland maintains specific indoor environments. We refer to buildings like this – that have sensitive energy requirements and need to run 24 hours a day – as ‘critical’ spaces.

Sometimes critical space customers question their ability to rack up big energy savings due to the fact they can’t give their plant any downtime. As a leading building energy management system (BEMS) specialist, it’s our job to demonstrate how extraordinary savings can still be made without having to switch anything off. We aim to show the National Galleries of Scotland that even simple improvements to the running of a plant can yield sizable results.

Energy management targets – and how we plan to hit them

In April 2023, we came onboard to help the National Galleries for Scotland:

• Modernise its systems.
• Get detailed insights into the environmental conditions of gallery spaces.
• Maximise energy efficiency.

Looking after four galleries and three storage facilities, our plan was to:

Import Sensor data (PROActiv Analytics) to report on environmental performance.

Import historical and live energy data (PROActiv Energy) to report on energy consumption.

Plan and execute environmental conditioning strategies in accordance with BS 4971: 2017 for the health and protection of the building, its contents, and artworks.

What we’re doing  – a brief overview

Before works began, our regional experts got to know the team and processes. Meanwhile, an onsite engineer familiarised themselves with the BEMS and network infrastructure. They noticed a few niggling issues with the BEMS, which were quickly addressed. For example, we improved temperature and relative humidity control in gallery spaces by introducing a control strategy on ventilation systems across the estate. We have also began upgrading the Trend IQVision graphics package to improve the end user interface with the BMS for the National Galleries of Scotland’s users.

After two years, improvements have been made to the running of the plant and we’re well on our way to helping the National Galleries for Scotland hit its energy management goals.

Working closely with the team at the galleries, all parties are absorbed in ongoing efforts to streamline plant efficiency. This includes a recent order of 1,100 PROActiv Analytics and PROActiv Energy points. All intended to get the plant running autonomously and at maximum efficiency.

What is PROActiv Analytics

With a bird’s eye view of your entire estate, this intelligent analytics software needs little to no human intervention. Paired with any system, it absorbs huge amounts of granular data. It then processes, interrogates and makes sense of this data, so it can:

• Spot energy use patterns and saving opportunities
• Offer effective solutions and advise new approaches
• Create tasks and assigns actions
• Track progress
• Generate actionable reports
• Create ‘smart service’ plans that flag issues and rank them based on business impact, using various criteria (e.g. cost or maintenance urgency).