Project Description

General objectives

InBetween  project  aims to create more energy efficient lifestyles towards a global process that foreseen assisting Users to IDENTIFY energy wastes, LEARN how they can conserve energy and MOTIVATE them to act.

A User-centric approach is applied throughout the project including aspects from the ‘theory of social practice’ .Apart from detecting energy saving opportunities and offering various incentives for Users’ behaviour change, a significant part of the motivation aspect will also be associated with the provided ability and means to act through the InBetween solution.

InBetween aims to a deliver cost-effective solution that brings added value, without significant disruption of everyday activities, through the collaborative InBetween cloud based platform offering advanced energy services. It allows Users to integrate their building’s connected devices and systems with advanced energy analytics and optimisation services to create a comprehensive recommendation and feed-back solution which will facilitate further the behaviour change towards more energy and cost efficient daily routines. A significant demonstration activity in a range of real life pilot locations in the EU with diverse public set-ups, which differ in terms of size, type, climate and patterns of use, will offer the necessary technological validation.

Overall concept

The overall concept and methodology of InBetween is driven by two aspects:

• Deliver an affordable solution that brings added value (i.e. helps Users to identify energy wastes, learn how they can conserve energy and motivate them to act) without significant disruption of everyday activities.
• Respect the requirement of the topic under which the project has been funded “…integrate and validate different technological elements, each element with at least TRL 6”

 

InBetween will be focused on reuse of existing technological solutions and methodologies (≥TRL6)  spending efforts on the integration and adaptation activities to support the InBetween specific objectives.

InBetween will look for performance deviation by seeking to gain a better understanding of each User’s real energy demand reduction potential profile.

Thanks to the comparison of performances specific User-tailored Energy Conservation Measures will be suggested.

 

To retrieve consumption data, InBetween will leverage upon a comprehensive monitoring platform but will also provide energy consumption analytics to estimate appliance-level electricity consumption from a single metering point – consumption disaggregation. InBetween will also contribute with User profiling and prediction functionalities to anticipate wasteful practices, both in terms of energy and costs, based on User-centric energy consumption modelling and consumption prediction combined with pricing/load/stability information received from ESCOs .

From the technological perspective, InBetween aims at integration of comprehensive energy consumption monitoring (electricity and gas meters, calorimeters, smart plugs, smart meters etc.) and environment sensing (occupancy, temperature, illuminance, humidity, CO/CO₂ etc.) with the described advanced energy services through a  highly flexible cloud-based IoT platform.

Moreover, devised ECMs and recommendations will be translated into applicable control/management actions and implemented via flexible a Home Automation platform capable of seamless integration of a wide range of home appliances and actuators. The Home Automation platform will be also used to communicate events of performance deviation and raise corresponding alarms and notifications through intuitive and user-friendly GUIs of Mobile/Desktop clients (Smart Apps).

Easy and clear recommendations will be delivered to user., such as: “Illuminance sensor shows presence of daylight and lighting is ON” / “Occupancy sensor shows absence of occupants and lighting is ON” / “HVAC is running and window is open – prompt for change in HVAC set point” / “Reduce or turn OFF heating/cooling when leaving the house.” / “Current consumption exceeds contracted power peak.” / “Electricity tariff will change in X minutes.” etc. It is, however, important to highlight that InBETWEEN will limit its developments to customization and adaption of available GUIs.

The flexibility of the undertaken technological approach will allow for integration of legacy systems and pre-existing equipment. This will have a direct impact on the cost-effectiveness of InBetween approach and, even more, it will allow for adoption of a flexible business approach accounting for different levels of equipment and service deployment.