Periodic Reporting for period 2 - eTEACHER (end-users Tools to Empower and raise Awareness of Behavioural CHange towards EneRgy efficiency)
Periodo di rendicontazione: 2019-04-01 al 2021-06-30
Buildings are responsible for approximately 40% of energy consumption and 36% of CO2 emissions in Europe. Building users have the potential to reduce energy consumption about 6-10% and improve indoor environmental conditions and comfort through behavioural changes. However, motivating behavioural change requires specific methods and strategies to convince people and be effective over the time. It is demonstrated that solutions to address this issue must be appealing, pedagogic and user-friendly, otherwise, rebound effects could provoke even higher energy consumption levels than before the application of these methods. In addition, people are energy users of multiple buildings that they usually visit, live or work on it and thus, the energy behaviour change should be motivated in different contexts (building users and facilities) and roles or profiles (occupants, facility managers, owner, student, teachers…). These issues make the challenge more complex and require solutions that must be focused on social, technical and commercial aspects. Other issues related and addressed by eTEACHER project are:
-People are not connected or aware about building facilities and energy issues are not visible.
-There are not comprehensive solutions that connect BEMS and building occupants (interoperability).
-Buildings has in general low automation and monitoring level.
-There are not prediction tools and tools focused on comfort and users’ feedback.
Overall, initiatives to reduce buildings energy consumption entails less CO2 emissions, what has a positive effect on the climate change and reduce the European dependence of fossil fuels. In addition, the application of energy behaviour change methods allows increasing the energy visibility and energy literacy to extend the positive effects of trained users to any building in different circumstances. Such changes aim to improve the building occupants’ wellbeing, productivity, health and comfort, what turns into better satisfaction of end-users. But not only end-users (building occupants) are benefited of the energy behavioural change, since the economic sectors related to ICT building solutions, building automation, SW developers, facility management and SME can take advantage of new and advanced solutions in energy efficiency.
The overall goal of eTEACHER is to empower energy end-users to achieve energy savings and improve the buildings comfort and health conditions through enabling behavioural change, considering different roles/profiles (occupants, facility managers, householders…) depending on the building they usually visit, live or work respectively.
-People are not connected or aware about building facilities and energy issues are not visible.
-There are not comprehensive solutions that connect BEMS and building occupants (interoperability).
-Buildings has in general low automation and monitoring level.
-There are not prediction tools and tools focused on comfort and users’ feedback.
Overall, initiatives to reduce buildings energy consumption entails less CO2 emissions, what has a positive effect on the climate change and reduce the European dependence of fossil fuels. In addition, the application of energy behaviour change methods allows increasing the energy visibility and energy literacy to extend the positive effects of trained users to any building in different circumstances. Such changes aim to improve the building occupants’ wellbeing, productivity, health and comfort, what turns into better satisfaction of end-users. But not only end-users (building occupants) are benefited of the energy behavioural change, since the economic sectors related to ICT building solutions, building automation, SW developers, facility management and SME can take advantage of new and advanced solutions in energy efficiency.
The overall goal of eTEACHER is to empower energy end-users to achieve energy savings and improve the buildings comfort and health conditions through enabling behavioural change, considering different roles/profiles (occupants, facility managers, householders…) depending on the building they usually visit, live or work respectively.
Design of the Energy Behaviour Change Framework. Definition of the enabling change framework for eTEACHER. Design and organisation of feedback forums in pilot buildings to guide the development of ICT solutions (user-oriented design). This know-how has allowed to encourage behavioural change on the end user of energy achieving an average monthly saving of 12.2% with a 58% of users stating that they changed their energy related behaviour and an 88% of users stating that eTEACHER has increase their awareness of energy use.
Development of cost-effective interoperable BACS add-ons. (1) What-if analysis web service (WiA) based on expert systems and using indoor/outdoor environmental data to generate energy conservation recommendations; (2) Pulse/Metrix web service to evaluate comfort and well-being conditions; (3) UBCI database allowing the interoperability between heterogeneous databases and the project web services; (4) Mobile app that integrates all these tools with user friendly interfaces and engagement techniques like notifications, missions, and users ranking. The mobile app shows building energy and comfort information and collect user's feedback to identify behavioural change effect in energy conservation measures.
Three KER has been generated during the project duration and its business models and exploitation strategies defined. (KER1) Energy Behaviour Change Framework. (KER2) The eTEACHER toolbox is a collection of ICT services to motivate energy behavioural change of energy end-users in different building types providing tailored interventions that result in energy savings and enhanced IEQ. (KER3) The Integration Methodology focuses on estimating energy savings and increasing the energy efficiency of buildings that are equipped with existing BACS, while considering the typology and geometry of buildings and users’ energy behaviour, considering many types of buildings, contexts and users’ profiles.
Both the eTEACHER app, tools and services and KER described have been widely disseminated via online tools, conferences, webinars and dedicated workshops.
Development of cost-effective interoperable BACS add-ons. (1) What-if analysis web service (WiA) based on expert systems and using indoor/outdoor environmental data to generate energy conservation recommendations; (2) Pulse/Metrix web service to evaluate comfort and well-being conditions; (3) UBCI database allowing the interoperability between heterogeneous databases and the project web services; (4) Mobile app that integrates all these tools with user friendly interfaces and engagement techniques like notifications, missions, and users ranking. The mobile app shows building energy and comfort information and collect user's feedback to identify behavioural change effect in energy conservation measures.
Three KER has been generated during the project duration and its business models and exploitation strategies defined. (KER1) Energy Behaviour Change Framework. (KER2) The eTEACHER toolbox is a collection of ICT services to motivate energy behavioural change of energy end-users in different building types providing tailored interventions that result in energy savings and enhanced IEQ. (KER3) The Integration Methodology focuses on estimating energy savings and increasing the energy efficiency of buildings that are equipped with existing BACS, while considering the typology and geometry of buildings and users’ energy behaviour, considering many types of buildings, contexts and users’ profiles.
Both the eTEACHER app, tools and services and KER described have been widely disseminated via online tools, conferences, webinars and dedicated workshops.
- ICT-based behavioural change interventions: This project will ensure that development of behaviour change interventions benefits from stakeholder input by using “Enabling Change” approach (see Robinson 2013), and by drawing on DMU’s knowledge of effective engagement for sustainable development. The proposed framework has been used in academic literature, but it has not been really applied by practitioners. This project therefore presents an opportunity to test and develop theories of project design and behaviour change and build a bridge between practitioner-oriented and academic literature.
- What-if analysis: The main innovation will be to provide users with information on how their possible behavioural changes affect energy consumption (“Energy Predictor”) and to give advices which energy decisions to make (“Energy Advisor”). This is the basis for a significant increase in users’ energy awareness resulting in behavioural changes that lead to reduced energy consumption. For this purpose, eTEACHER will develop a library of expert knowledge, including tables, characteristics in order to ease the set-up of a WiA for energy prediction and advice for any type of building and housing.
- Indoor environmental quality (IEQ) and system performance modules: Building automation data is transformed into performance metric by comparing actual measurements with predetermined target and the tool will be enhanced with IEQ and system performance. The IEQ parameters include air quality, thermal conditions, daylight and acoustics. The system performance includes actual airflow rate per room unit, occupancy, zonal energy consumption and central system. The parameters are compared with predetermined targets and provide an overall score for energy efficiency, indoor environmental quality and functioning performance.
- BACS Universal Communication Interface: Through the universal BACS interface the eTEACHER platform, including BACS add-on services and end-user friendly solutions, can be connected to any existing BACS solution, to single device solutions, heterogeneous system solutions or standard business solutions. The project aims to have a BACS interface with an universal character by guarantee the technological compatibility with most commercial BACS and with all relevant communication standards, that solves the following issues by means of a virtualization concept of BACS components:
1) No universal standardized available that fulfils all requirements
2) Heterogeneous use of BACS communication protocols in buildings (ZWave, Modbus...)
3) No interoperability between BACS, Smart grid, smart appliances
4) No standardized description of data points, each HVAC/BACS planner uses its own data point description
- What-if analysis: The main innovation will be to provide users with information on how their possible behavioural changes affect energy consumption (“Energy Predictor”) and to give advices which energy decisions to make (“Energy Advisor”). This is the basis for a significant increase in users’ energy awareness resulting in behavioural changes that lead to reduced energy consumption. For this purpose, eTEACHER will develop a library of expert knowledge, including tables, characteristics in order to ease the set-up of a WiA for energy prediction and advice for any type of building and housing.
- Indoor environmental quality (IEQ) and system performance modules: Building automation data is transformed into performance metric by comparing actual measurements with predetermined target and the tool will be enhanced with IEQ and system performance. The IEQ parameters include air quality, thermal conditions, daylight and acoustics. The system performance includes actual airflow rate per room unit, occupancy, zonal energy consumption and central system. The parameters are compared with predetermined targets and provide an overall score for energy efficiency, indoor environmental quality and functioning performance.
- BACS Universal Communication Interface: Through the universal BACS interface the eTEACHER platform, including BACS add-on services and end-user friendly solutions, can be connected to any existing BACS solution, to single device solutions, heterogeneous system solutions or standard business solutions. The project aims to have a BACS interface with an universal character by guarantee the technological compatibility with most commercial BACS and with all relevant communication standards, that solves the following issues by means of a virtualization concept of BACS components:
1) No universal standardized available that fulfils all requirements
2) Heterogeneous use of BACS communication protocols in buildings (ZWave, Modbus...)
3) No interoperability between BACS, Smart grid, smart appliances
4) No standardized description of data points, each HVAC/BACS planner uses its own data point description