Smart Operation of Proactive Residential Buildings (IA)

Topic description

Specific Challenge:

Rising energy costs and an increasing focus on environmental performance create challenges in building energy management and a demand for new solutions for residential buildings. Smart operation of proactive buildings needs to be based on innovative components, accurate energy performance predictions, control technologies, predictive maintenance and data supply for the customer. Future energy management and contracting will include operating and maintaining a building in a smarter way, i.e. turning it from reactivity into proactivity. Such a building should be able to control a situation rather than just responding to it, enabling maximum utilisation of renewable energy systems and storage of excess energy. It should act in advance and ensure interoperability between grid components and Building Energy Management Systems to enable integration with smart devices and district-wide systems. At the same time, it is necessary to consider the creation of customer experiences that are simple, smooth and delightful.

Proposals should cover the following activities:

• Develop, test and promote the necessary technologies, devices and systems for a smart approach of energy management in line with the latest reforms of the Energy Performance and Building Directive and beyond this framework.
• Develop solutions for proactive buildings, which should be safe, healthy (strengthening of the indoor environment quality requirements) and energy-efficient, e.g. by cognitive, intelligent and adaptive systems, forecast based systems, including the cooperation with user communities.
• Develop solutions to provide the pivotal parameters to be measured and controlled for integrated and demand-based control of the building service system. Self-management, self-monitoring, self-healing and self-optimisation will be required.
• Utilise a systematic, standardised approach to process the data generated by the sensors, forecasting services and end-users.
• Tackle utilisation of big data by advanced data visualisation to optimise the operation of the building.
• Ensure that fully integrated systems have the capacity to be compact, exchangeable, easy to commission and to operate, and easy to interact with the grid thus adapting energy consumption to the real needs of the occupants.
• Implement and demonstrate new business models providing services that enable buildings to be proactive.

Proposals submitted under this topic should include a business case and exploitation strategy, as outlined in the Introduction to the LEIT part of this Work Programme.

Activities should start at TRL 5 and achieve TRL 7 at the end of the project.

The Commission considers that proposals requesting a contribution from the EU between EUR 6 and 8 million would allow this specific challenge to be addressed appropriately. Nonetheless, this does not preclude submission and selection of proposals requesting other amounts.

• Maintenance cost reductions of at least 20%;
• Significant decrease of energy use in buildings through application of technologies such as dynamic models, big data analytics, predictive analytics and ultimately artificial intelligence;
• Improved indoor environment quality and user satisfaction;
• High replication potential;
• Optimise the use of renewable energy resources used in buildings;
• Contribution to standards, namely the establishment of a Smart Readiness Indicator.

Replication potential should be assessed, together with the possible environmental gains in absolute figures, weighted against EU and global environmental footprints.

Relevant indicators and metrics, with baseline values, should be clearly stated in the proposal.

Socio-economic science and humanities
Open Innovation
Contractual Public-Private Partnerships (cPPPs)
EeB