Periodic Reporting for period 2 - domOS (Operating System for Smart Services in Buildings)
Berichtszeitraum: 2022-03-01 bis 2024-02-29
In its climate and energy policy towards 2030, the European Union has set ambitious goals for its energy system. The building sector accounts for over 40% of the total final energy consumed in the EU. As a major actor of the EU energy system, it must contribute significantly to the achievement of the EU 2030 goals: buildings must become more efficient and more flexible, and host more renewable generation.
Improving the energy efficiency of existing buildings can and should be achieved through deep renovation. However, smart technologies can increase the efficiency and flexibility of buildings in the shorter term and with much less investment. Smart services can improve the energy performance of buildings through two processes: 1) thanks to smart services, facility operators and occupants get a better understanding of their buildings as an energy system, and, consequently, change their behaviour or decide to invest in a more efficient energy infrastructure, and 2) closed-loop control improves efficiency and flexibility.
Digitisation of buildings in Europe is progressing: nearly all new appliances ranging from light bulbs to heat pumps feature a data interface and an app. However, digitisation progresses in an uncoordinated way: services are offered as silo solutions usually operated by appliance / device manufacturers. This approach has two drawbacks. First, the multiplication of services degrades the user experience, as multiple systems, each with their own presentation logic and access control, must be delt with. Secondly, silo solutions are not appropriate for energy management, which requires the coordination of multiple processes like photovoltaic generation, space and domestic hot water heating, the heat pump, electrical vehicle charging, energy grids, and energy markets.
In this context, the domOS project elaborates an ecosystem enabling 1) the integration of multiple energy devices and appliances of multiple vendors within a building into an coherent information system, and 2) the decoupling of the smart service layer and of the infrastructure layer in buildings. domOS considers the heterogeneity of communication interfaces of digital appliances as a fact. Integration requires only that the communication interfaces are described in a machine-readable document. The domOS ecosystem is a specification based on established and emerging IoT standards. It has been designed so that stakeholders (smart service developers, IoT platforms operators, system integrators) can implement it with a limited effort. A broad adoption of the domOS ecosystem would lead to an “industrialisation” of the smart building scene in Europe, with the advent of more specialised actors offering complementary products and services. This will promote the uptake of digital energy services in buildings first by lowering prices, and secondly by allowing a phased investment.
Improving the energy efficiency of existing buildings can and should be achieved through deep renovation. However, smart technologies can increase the efficiency and flexibility of buildings in the shorter term and with much less investment. Smart services can improve the energy performance of buildings through two processes: 1) thanks to smart services, facility operators and occupants get a better understanding of their buildings as an energy system, and, consequently, change their behaviour or decide to invest in a more efficient energy infrastructure, and 2) closed-loop control improves efficiency and flexibility.
Digitisation of buildings in Europe is progressing: nearly all new appliances ranging from light bulbs to heat pumps feature a data interface and an app. However, digitisation progresses in an uncoordinated way: services are offered as silo solutions usually operated by appliance / device manufacturers. This approach has two drawbacks. First, the multiplication of services degrades the user experience, as multiple systems, each with their own presentation logic and access control, must be delt with. Secondly, silo solutions are not appropriate for energy management, which requires the coordination of multiple processes like photovoltaic generation, space and domestic hot water heating, the heat pump, electrical vehicle charging, energy grids, and energy markets.
In this context, the domOS project elaborates an ecosystem enabling 1) the integration of multiple energy devices and appliances of multiple vendors within a building into an coherent information system, and 2) the decoupling of the smart service layer and of the infrastructure layer in buildings. domOS considers the heterogeneity of communication interfaces of digital appliances as a fact. Integration requires only that the communication interfaces are described in a machine-readable document. The domOS ecosystem is a specification based on established and emerging IoT standards. It has been designed so that stakeholders (smart service developers, IoT platforms operators, system integrators) can implement it with a limited effort. A broad adoption of the domOS ecosystem would lead to an “industrialisation” of the smart building scene in Europe, with the advent of more specialised actors offering complementary products and services. This will promote the uptake of digital energy services in buildings first by lowering prices, and secondly by allowing a phased investment.
The domOS project has achieved significant results in the following domains: technology, energy, and demonstration.
In the technology domain, requirements for smart buildings have been gathered, mainly from demonstration scenarios, and led to the specification of the domOS ecosystem acting as mediation layer between the smart services and the digital infrastructure in buildings. The ecosystem specification has two components: an IoT architecture and an ad hoc ontology named domOS Common Ontology (dCO). The IoT architecture is based on the WoT (Web of Things) (https://www.w3.org/WoT/) concept designed by the W3C. Thanks to it, appliances are modelled as a set of so-called interaction affordances (concretely properties, actions, and events), independently of the specificities of their data interface. Uniform access to appliances is made possible thanks to a mapping of interaction affordances to concrete messages exchanged with appliances. The mapping is specified by documents compliant with the WoT TD (Thing Description) specification.
Each domOS ecosystem compliant building features a semantic digital online nameplate (semantic “index.html”) called Building Description (BD). BDs are elaborated using the dCO (https://w3id.org/dco/) vocabulary. A BD describes the energy topology of the building and associates to that topology semantic references (“hyperlinks”) to interaction affordances in TDs. Through the BD, smart services learn the features of the building as an energy system as well as the available measurement and control points.
The domOS ecosystem is a lean specification based on existing and emerging IoT standards. Three IoT platforms have been upgraded to the specification in the frame of the project.
The domOS consortium members have deployed and operated five demonstration sites related to electrical energy (Paris (F), Sion (CH)), district heating (Aalborg (DK)), and smart heating (Skive (DK), Neuchâtel (CH)). Demonstrators are powered by one of the domOS ecosystem compliant IoT platforms.
In the energy domain, a wide panel of services for prosumer empowerment, energy efficiency and energy flexibility, in the context of electricity and of district heating, have been further developed and demonstrated. Flagship results have been obtained in Aalborg (adaptative district heating control: 10% energy savings, NEOGRID) and in Neuchâtel (need-base heat generation control (4% - 8 %energy savings, CSEM).
In the technology domain, requirements for smart buildings have been gathered, mainly from demonstration scenarios, and led to the specification of the domOS ecosystem acting as mediation layer between the smart services and the digital infrastructure in buildings. The ecosystem specification has two components: an IoT architecture and an ad hoc ontology named domOS Common Ontology (dCO). The IoT architecture is based on the WoT (Web of Things) (https://www.w3.org/WoT/) concept designed by the W3C. Thanks to it, appliances are modelled as a set of so-called interaction affordances (concretely properties, actions, and events), independently of the specificities of their data interface. Uniform access to appliances is made possible thanks to a mapping of interaction affordances to concrete messages exchanged with appliances. The mapping is specified by documents compliant with the WoT TD (Thing Description) specification.
Each domOS ecosystem compliant building features a semantic digital online nameplate (semantic “index.html”) called Building Description (BD). BDs are elaborated using the dCO (https://w3id.org/dco/) vocabulary. A BD describes the energy topology of the building and associates to that topology semantic references (“hyperlinks”) to interaction affordances in TDs. Through the BD, smart services learn the features of the building as an energy system as well as the available measurement and control points.
The domOS ecosystem is a lean specification based on existing and emerging IoT standards. Three IoT platforms have been upgraded to the specification in the frame of the project.
The domOS consortium members have deployed and operated five demonstration sites related to electrical energy (Paris (F), Sion (CH)), district heating (Aalborg (DK)), and smart heating (Skive (DK), Neuchâtel (CH)). Demonstrators are powered by one of the domOS ecosystem compliant IoT platforms.
In the energy domain, a wide panel of services for prosumer empowerment, energy efficiency and energy flexibility, in the context of electricity and of district heating, have been further developed and demonstrated. Flagship results have been obtained in Aalborg (adaptative district heating control: 10% energy savings, NEOGRID) and in Neuchâtel (need-base heat generation control (4% - 8 %energy savings, CSEM).
The domOS ecosystem decouples from a technical standpoint the digital infrastructure in buildings, the platforms, and the smart services. This is a basis for a new definition of roles and a specialisation of actors leading to an “industrial” era for smart services in buildings. As of today, smart services are deployed as parallel and insulated silos centred on an appliance (e.g. heat pump, solar inverter, electrical vehicle charging station). With its approach like an operating system, the domOS ecosystem provides a technical framework enabling a radically different organisation of smart services in buildings. Smart building operators manage platforms enabling system integrators to install “drivers” as part of a building commissioning process. Energy processes in buildings are monitored and controlled in context-independent way. Building metadata required for smart services are made available in semantic documents. This approach enables the development and operation of smart services by “software only” players. It releases one of the main obstacles for a large-scale rollout of smart services in buildings: (too) many resources are required to cope with the heterogeneity of the technical infrastructure. domOS paves the way to a major reorganisation of the smart service for building scene. A new role of “smart building operator” managing a mediating platform between the in-building infrastructure and services could appear. The vision is that the business for service developers, service operators, system integrators, smart building operators, and gateway, device and appliance manufacturers develops in complementary ways, with standard interfaces between the involved parties.
To make this vision happen in practice, domOS consortium members team up with smart building players to implement smart building platforms, which would be admittedly proprietary but with open APIs to integrate any digital system in buildings and any smart service.
To make this vision happen in practice, domOS consortium members team up with smart building players to implement smart building platforms, which would be admittedly proprietary but with open APIs to integrate any digital system in buildings and any smart service.