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Arnaud, trainee at Mundo-Lab: "let's use home automation to save energy"

If you are at Mundo-madou or Mundo-b, you may have seen him passing by in the corridors... it's Arnaud, our home automation trainee. 

In his spare time, Arnaud likes hiking in the middle of nowhere, but the rest of the time, he is a student in technical management of buildings and home automation at the Haute Ecole Louvain en Hainaut in Charleroi. He is currently doing his third year internship at Mundo-Lab. He has been interested in home automation for a while now: "When I was a child, my father used to watch TV programmes about houses, architecture... so I heard a lot about all that. Now, I attach a lot of importance to energy saving and this training, and this internship, will allow me to really work for that." In his studies, he learns about different areas of building management: "we see the work of design offices, special techniques, what is part of HVAC, i.e. ventilation, heating and air-conditioning... actually everything related to the building." 

Since the beginning of his internship in February, Arnaud has been working with Julien, project manager, and Lionel, technical director. As soon as he arrived, he was able to take charge of Mundo-madou's building automation. He managed the automation of the external blinds: more technically, he set up a security system so that the blinds are automatically raised in case of strong winds. He also installed a system so that the blinds are automatically controlled if they are not manually operated. 

How does it work? "The external blinds are managed automatically, i.e. if no tenant presses a button to raise or lower them, they are managed automatically. However, as soon as a tenant wants to change the position himself, the blinds go into manual mode. Then, every evening, when it is deemed that there is no one in the office, the blinds go back into automatic mode. "In practice, let's imagine that an office is busy on Monday and empty on Tuesday: to avoid overheating the office in case of strong sunlight, the blinds will be set to automatic mode on Monday evening and will close themselves as soon as there is too much sunlight.  The blinds are managed by an application: to find out more and to benefit from this system, write to Arnaud

At Mundo-b, he also took care of the blinds installed last autumn, setting up a system that automates the operation of the blinds according to heat and light. These installations will make it possible to save energy, on heating in winter and on the cold batteries in summer

Arnaud is now working mainly on the future centre in Louvain-la-Neuve. He has drawn up plans for the blinds in order to know how to manage them and benefit from energy savings there too. He is also working on heating and ventilation, and finally on the lighting, which will all be automated. These assignments he got during his internship at Mundo-Lab will be the subject of his final thesis because it is an area that particularly interests him: "Many people leave the lights or the heating on when they are not at home all day, or here, not at their office. Saving money is becoming almost compulsory and the automation of installations thanks to home automation makes it possible."