The presentations these EU-funded projects took place in two sessions:

• Part 1: “Upgrading smartness of existing buildings through innovations for legacy equipment”
• Part 2: Smart operation and building dynamic optimization

This article gives an overview on the projects presented, the innovations and lessons learnt / next steps in the project Part 1: “Upgrading smartness of existing buildings through innovations for legacy equipment”

Part 1: “Upgrading smartness of existing buildings through innovations for legacy equipment”

DOMOS aims to make buildings smarter and more efficient by exploring ways to enforce privacy rules through defining guidelines for an open, secure, privacy enabled, multi-service IoT (Internet of Things) ecosystem for smart buildings. The project duration is 3 years and is coordinated by the University of Applied Sciences and Arts Western Switzerland (HES-SO).

The project’s innovations & unique selling point

• IoT platforms and applications operated by different parties can be integrated seamlessly thanks to interoperability standards (e.g. W3C) and to common nomenclatures (e.g. SAREF).
• The applications can access “Things” in a syntactically coherent manner and can “understand” the building’s topology and associate things’ properties, actions and events with it.

The project’s lessons learnt

• Industrialization of energy services requires interoperability
• Interoperability requires standards

PHOENIX aims to design a portfolio of ICT (Information Communications and Technology) solutions to increase the smartness of legacy systems and appliances in existing buildings which will increase the SRI[1] and energy efficiency. The project will design the necessary hardware and software upgrades and make use of artificial intelligence technologies as well as edge/cloud computing methods to transform existing buildings into smart buildings. The project coordinated by the University of Murcia was launched in September 2020 and will be completed in August 2023.

The project’s innovations & unique selling point

• New service offerings for real-time management and control of buildings towards ensuring that the level of building smartness is increased.
• Increase of building smartness on the basis of SRI by taking into account the actual (and in real time) measurements from the building environment further combined with advanced analytics in order to extract the accurate knowledge for the optimal decision making (data-driven approach).
• A suite of different energy and non-energy services made available to different stakeholders enabling the promotion of different business use cases.
• Provision of a customized web-based platform that combines descriptive and advanced predictive energy analytics and charts according to the chosen "smart area" that the user wishes to navigate.

The project’s lessons learnt

• There is room for improvement in the automated calculation of SRI instead of just using the traditional xlsx file provided by the EU.
• Smart energy and non-energy services can be treated as a bundle of services that target the building occupants and help them improve their energy behavior through a constant human-building interaction.
• Visualization dashboards that can be customized by users provide a friendly and intuitive way to increase user engagement and adoption of smart building technologies.

SMART2B project’s main objective is to develop non-intrusive Internet of Things sensors and actuators to control equipment, while improving indoor comfort and energy efficiency. Thus, it will allow for a coordinated control of legacy equipment (refers to a computing device or equipment that is outdated, obsolete or no longer in production) and smart appliances and integrate two existing cloud-based platforms into a single building management platform.

The project’s innovations & unique selling point

• Devices and building interfaces that allows seamless connection of complex and heterogeneous building energy systems.
• Platform & API that enable seamless integration, knowledge extraction and control.
• Management & transversal services through AI (Artificial Intelligence) and machine learning algorithms are used to analyze and prepare the building and user data collected from the Smart2B devices.
• User interaction, client engagement & social innovation that focuses on involving and engaging the multiple stakeholders (occupants, building managers, communities, system operators) through mobile apps and web-based applications as well as gamification.

The project’s next steps

• The project ‘s first year is ongoing; the pilot phase will begin 3 months from now. The demonstrators’ objective is to showcase the seamless integration of the developed Smart2B solutions in diverse building typologies.

COLLECTiEF’s consortium implements, tests, and qualifies an interoperability and scalable energy management system based on Collective intelligence (CI) that allows easy and seamless integration of legacy equipment into a collaborative network within and between existing buildings and urban energy systems. The project was launched in 2021 and is coordinated by the Norwegian University for Science and Technology (NTNU).  

The project’s innovations & unique selling point

• The project upgrades the smartness of existing buildings to a higher level and creates a collaborative network of a large number of buildings providing grid flexibility while still ensuring the quality of service to the end customer.
• COLLECTiEF methodology connects buildings, household appliances, and energy systems with a minimum need for data transfer and storage.
• COLLECTiEF uses low-cost and open-source components with cost-effective equipment available on the market such as smart plugs and smart thermostats.
•  COLLECTiEF enables our homes to adapt their operation to our needs and to be part of a collective effort for energy saving by larger numbers of buildings.

The project’s lessons learnt

• The project recommends simplicity in communication (internal and external), in the solutions (when it comes to architecture, algorithms and control logics) and in the installation (concerning monitoring and integration).