Achieving Energy Savings at Rey Juan Carlos University

Energy management in universities with multiple campuses, buildings and users is a challenge without even mentioning the rising energy costs. Once your university’s spending plans are finalized, it is likely that energy bills won’t add up. Therefore, you may ask yourself how to use energy more efficiently and where you can save costs. These are regular and relevant questions that managers, deans, rectors, directors, principals, and in general any senior manager in university centers must consider. 

In this article you’ll see the example of the Rey Juan Carlos University (URJC) in Spain nd how they’ve tackled the energy management challenge.

The Energy Challenge: Energy Management Across 52 University Buildings

URJC serves nearly 45,000 students across 52 buildings on five campuses in Madrid. With such a broad and diverse portfolio, energy consumption was high, and not always efficient. 

The URJC has been dedicating efforts to energy efficiency and savings for years. In fact, in 2015 they decided to take over energy management directly, creating an in-house team, the Energy Efficiency Unit (UNEFE)., which was created to improve the University’s energy performance.  

Even with a defined energy strategy and the creation of UNEFE, the university lacked the digital tools to manage and monitor such a large estate. Besides the complexity of the portfolio, the University had the objective to obtain and maintain over time the ISO 50001 certification, which required a certified Energy Management System (EMS) to: 

• Monitor energy use continuously 
• Define and verify energy savings 
• Establish baselines 
• Centralize insights from multiple data sources 

To meet these technical and compliance needs, URJC looked for a flexible and robust energy management system and the chosen solution was Spacewell Energy. 

The Solution: A Phased Rollout of Spacewell Energy across University Buildings 

URJC selected Spacewell Energy to centralize and simplify energy data management. The rollout began with the Móstoles campus and expanded in phases. The platform quickly became an essential tool for the university’s energy managers. 

With the Energy Management System, the team could: 

• Monitor energy use across all campuses from a single interface 
• Detect inefficiencies and anomalies 
• Verify and track savings for every energy measure put in place
• Simulate energy bills using real-time tariff structures 
• Integrate external data from systems like BMS and SCADA via API 

This end-to-end solution allowed URJC to align its energy strategy with operational actions without needing to be energy experts. For example, on of the field actions include the replacement of all lighting across laboratories with a less-consuming option, which is already generating energy savings.

Key Spacewell Energy Features Used by URJC 

The energy team at UNEFE regularly uses the following Spacewell Energy capabilities: 

• Automated baseline calculations: Adjusted for occupancy, temperature, seasonality, and other factors. 
• Measurement and Verification (M&V): For tracking the actual performance of energy efficiency measures (MAEs). 
• Advanced analytics: To compare consumption over time, normalize based on weather and usage, and flag anomalies. 
• Tariff-based cost analysis: Enables simulations and real cost breakdowns at building or portfolio level. 
• API data integration: Seamlessly brings in data from third-party systems to build a complete energy picture. 

Results: 40% Energy Savings Achieved 

Since deploying Spacewell Energy, Universidad Rey Juan Carlos has cut its energy use by nearly 40%. 

The energy savings were driven by two key factors: 

1. Insight – understanding when, where, and why energy was being wasted
2. Action – implementing and tracking energy-saving measures based on real data

These achievements and the continuous improvement process also helped URJC become the first Spanish university to earn the ISO 50001 energy management certification. 

URJC continues to expand its use of Spacewell Energy to deepen analytics, increase automation, and support long-term sustainability goals. 

One key benefit, according to the university’s energy managers, is that the platform allows them to focus on what really matters: making strategic energy decisions without being buried in manual data work. 

“One of the key advantages of Spacewell Energy for the University is how it allows the energy managers to focus their efforts on the most important aspects with an agile tool, which is time-efficient and user-friendly”. Energy Manager at the URJC.

How to Manage University Campuses Efficiently?

You can gain efficiency at your campus by managing other aspects of facility management beyond energy, focusing on confort, user experience and efficient maintenance. These are some aspects you can consider and you can monitor with Spacewell’s support:

Occupancy and temporality for efficient climate control and facility management. Spaces are used differently through the day and season. During the week, spaces such as classrooms or cafeterias are likely to be occupied most of the day, while halls or libraries may experience periods of very low occupancy. If they are kept lighted and air-conditioned regardless of real occupation, energy will be used unnecessarily. Aligning building operations with real usage patterns allows facilities teams to reduce consumption without compromising user experience.

User Experience and Awareness. Although students and staff often feel connected to their campus, their temporary presence can limit their engagement with long-term efficiency goals. Yet user behaviur remains a critical factor. Sharing energy-saving initiatives and making users part of the process encourages more responsible use of spaces. Small actions, when multiplied across thousands of users, can significantly impact overall performance.

Asset Management to centralize maintenance tasks. Unify process and see all maintenance tasks from a central repository to gain efficiency in maintenance work. Plan in advance your recurrent and predictive maintenance plan and allow for fast responses for reactive maintenance when something fails. When cost management is necessary, the visibility that you can obtain from managing all your assets on the same platform gives you and your team better control over operations.

Although not exclusive, these elements are relevant from an energy management perspective, but also from a dedicated facility management view and for an ultimate confortable space for final users.

If you want to read other examples about efficiency and community engagement in University campuses, here is the example of the Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya, who monitors indoor air quality with Spacewell, where user health and data sharing is pivotal.