SIT4Energy

Sustainable energy is hands down one of the biggest challenges of our times. As the EU sets its focus to reach its 2020 goals, the role of private energy consumers becomes prevalent. The EU and member states are beginning to understand the need to complement supply-related measures (e.g. smart/efficient buildings, appliances and meters) with consumption-affecting initiatives (e.g. consumer empowerment, information and education, energy taxes and incentives) . However, researchers and practitioners alike have long realized that convincing consumers and prosumers (consumers who also produce parts of their own energy, e.g. through photo-voltaic installations) to change their behaviours can be notoriously evasive. At the same time, infrastructural difficulties in combination with the inherent technical nature of energy bills and the billing system in general further hamper our ability to deliver the much-necessary consumer empowerment.

The goal of the SIT4Energy project is to demonstrate how integrated energy management for prosumer scenarios can be realized through a smart IT solution that considers both efficiency potentials in the local energy production and consumption. To this end, the project implements an intelligent mobile recommendation service with context-aware attention triggering, and a Smart Energy Management dashboard that exploit smart analytics to analyse consumption data, behavioural patterns and external context information (e.g. pricing, weather) for providing personalized insights and recommendations for optimizing energy production-consumption patterns. This includes a consumer-centred, user-friendly presentation of evidence-based results on the costs and benefits of ICT-enabled energy efficiency techniques, together with clear and on time, engaging guidance and support on how to realize the energy savings available, so as to increase user adoption of such techniques and their effectiveness.

The developed prototype system and customer applications will be deployed and evaluated in real-world pilots in two different climatic regions, Greece and Germany. This will enable the transfer of developed solutions into new commercial offerings of the participating SMEs; a municipal utility company in Germany (SHF) and an innovative IT-service and software development company in Greece (ITML). The validation in pilots will thus serve as the preparation for the uptake of the developed solutions by the German utility (SHF) who will provide it as a service to their customers and as a marketing showcase for the commercial exploitation by the ITML. The research and university partners (CERTH, HOST) will exploit the results through scientific publications, development of new projects and transfer in teaching and consulting for the regional SMEs.

Consortium

Centre for Research and Technology Hellas (CERTH) – Greece
Information Technology for Market Leadership (ITML) – Greece
Hochschule Stralsund – University of Applied Sciences (HOST) – Germany
Stadtwerke Ha?furt GmbH (SHF) – Germany