Collective Intelligence for Energy Flexibility

Project Information

COLLECTiEF

Grant agreement ID: 101033683

DOI

10.3030/101033683

Project closed

EC signature date 6 May 2021

Start date 1 June 2021

End date 31 March 2026

Funded under

• SOCIETAL CHALLENGES - Secure, clean and efficient energy

Total cost

€ 4 588 167,50

EU contribution

€ 3 987 794,75

Coordinated by

NORGES TEKNISK-NATURVITENSKAPELIGE UNIVERSITET NTNU
Norway

Periodic Reporting for period 2 - COLLECTiEF (Collective Intelligence for Energy Flexibility)

Reporting period: 2022-12-01 to 2024-05-31

Summary of the context and overall objectives of the project

COLLECTiEF-Collective Intelligence for Energy Flexibility is a €4,5m H2020 innovation action. The project aims to enhance energy flexibility and climate resilience through a collective intelligence (CI) approach.
Buildings are responsible for approximately 40% of energy consumption, making them the largest single energy consumer in Europe. Almost 75% of the EU building stock is energy inefficient and at least 75% of today’s buildings will still exist by 2050 and considering the current annual renovation rate (0.4-1.2%). The available solutions to smart up the buildings are slow and not very practical to integrate the legacy equipment in the flexibility market. Moreover, large-scale mapping of buildings’ smartness to increase the energy flexibility in urban areas needs a seamless ‘crosstalk’ between grid and buildings, but none of the available approaches provide persistent and easy-to-implement solutions for this issue. Energy flexibility also needs to consider the occupants of a building and their needs and preferences to be socially accepted and hence result effective.
The COLLECTiEF project aims to enhance, implement, test, and evaluate an interoperable and saleable energy management system based on CI that allows easy and seamless integration of legacy equipment into a collaborative network within and between existing buildings and urban energy systems with reduced installation cost, data transfer and computational power while increasing data security, energy flexibility and climate resilience.

The specific objectives are;
- Enhancement and adaptation of algorithms for creating a CI-based energy flexible network
- Realization of CI-based cost-effective system components with easy deployment and maintenance
- Demonstration and testing of a CI-based energy network in the real environment
- Testing and implementing a scalable and customizable occupant-centric fusion sensor network for accurate and non-invasive environmental monitoring
- Designing and implementing a smart, user-centric, and user-friendly digital platform for interacting with users and controlling technical building systems
- The new business model for energy services including a clear model for commercialization of the COLLECTiEF system

Work performed from the beginning of the project to the end of the period covered by the report and main results achieved so far

The second period of the project showed a significant progress with the development of the COLLECTiEF project on the quality plan and quality assurance assessment procedure, data management plan, planning for small-scale demonstration including the development of the algorithm, Cluster-Edge architectural scheme development, fabrication/procurement of sensors, users/stakeholders’ engagement, sensor/device installation in the pilot buildings and monitoring phase were initiated. The data acquisition procedure was started by M15, and data storing/flow/analysis has begun. Furthermore, the consortium developed an application programming interface (API) to access the historical/stored data for automatic evaluation. We developed the dashboard for Cluster Node and Human-Building Interface for the Edge Node. COLLECTiEF started to perform the calculation of the Smart Readiness Indicator (SRI) in the COLLECTiEF pilots. The project several hardware and software solution were developed and tested for the demonstration phase. Moreover, there were several dissemination activities including Stakeholder workshops/user engagement workshops are organized and held at the pilots countries. ​Keep updating social media accounts; Keep going networking and synergies and promotion activities.

The main achievements obtained by M36 include:
-    Completited and fine-tuning of the CI-RL algorithm and control algorithms ​
-    Completited pilot building models with the real energy systems and edge node modelling​
-    Completed small-scale demostration of COLLECTiEF Edge and Cluster Node​
-    Completed dashboard for Cluster Node and Human-building interface for the Edge Node ​
-    Large scale demonstration: the COLLECTiEF solutions are deployed in several pilot buildings
-    System integration for large scale demonstration is under development​
-    Data analysis and Impact assessment is initiated
-    SRI evaluation is ongoing for the pilots country
-    Assessment of the exploitable results and business model development are almost finalized

Progress beyond the state of the art and expected potential impact (including the socio-economic impact and the wider societal implications of the project so far)

COLLECTiEF develops the system and processes based on collective intelligence (CI) and promotes distributed self-organization and collaboration throughout the energy system. We apply CI to a set of technology challenges with the focus of “smarting up” the existing European building stock for energy efficiency.
The implementation of the COLLECTiEF system in different buildings will upgrade existing buildings to a higher smartness level. COLLECTiEF system will increase the functionality level in all domains depending on the presence of services and their existing functionality level. The SRI procedure will provide one single score (from A to D) that classifies the building’s smart readiness.
Using measurement of energy consumption and environmental variables and calibrated models of the pilot sites which the project algorithms will be applied on, COLLECTiEF will reduce energy consumption and costs. Collective Access will create cost-efficient data access with solutions based on innovative hardware and embedded software.
Developing CI-based demand side management (CI-DMS), COLLECTiEF will provide primary energy savings. CI-DSM will effectively decrease the average and peak energy demand and increase the demand flexibility. It will also help to decrease the cooling demand in urban areas.
COLLECTiEF will invest in sustainable energy and enable optimal use of onsite renewable energy production by virtually equipping buildings with REN energy systems to demonstrate the potential impact.
With the thermal management of a building, COLLECTiEF will improve the users’ satisfaction. A self-trained algorithm will provide user-oriented adjustment to the building's thermal equipment and will minimize the occurrences of discomfort events.
Finally, COLLECTiEF will offer increased climate flexibility and resilience in urban areas, inducing larger integration of renewable generation. The CI-based software and hardware packages developed by COLLECTiEF will help to decrease the energy demand gradually and effectively during climate variations and extreme events.

The conceptual design of COLLECTiEF

COLLECTiEF Value Chain

COLLECTiEF Timeline by M36