3e HOUSES - “Energy Efficient e-HOUSES”

Project Description

The 3e-HOUSES project is partially funded by the Information and Communication Technologies Policy Support Programme within the European Union´s Competitiveness and Innovation Framework Programme.
The objective of the project is to integrate customers in the energy system using Information Technology (TIC), allowing them to develop and improve their relation not only with the utility company, but also with the power grid.
In the first phase, this will be done by testing in various public housing buildings the interaction between smart devices and users in order to initially increase awareness about energy consumption and then to change their energy usage habits.
The project includes a second phase to implement measures for action / regulation / control that are also based on IT in order to obtain consumption savings.
One of the project´s overall objectives is for technological transfer through replication as well as the distribution of results.

Collaborating Companies or Organisations

Indra's Role

Role: Indra is a technological partner of the Spanish sub-consortium (GNF+PROMUSA+Indra) that is responsible for the Spanish pilot technological solution, comprised by various types of components:

1. Hardware: measurement and IT equipment (remote units, servers, etc.).
2. Software: applications for:
   • configuring hardware devices
   • energy monitoring and management, and
   • viewing in devices (PC, tablet, etc.).
3. Communications networks.

Activities:

1. Leadership and global coordination of the first work package in the global project (not only Spain), related to developing methodologies for measuring energy efficiency and project impact analysis, as well as performing energy audits prior to establishing the base line against which to compare the savings obtained in the project according to the implementation of information technology.
2. Designing the global technological solution to be implemented in the Spanish pilot project for Monitoring, Viewing and Management (Phase I) and the subsequent optimisation (Phase II) of energy and water consumption, including the design of the network architecture, communications networks, software and integrating all of the above, etc.
3. Developing a mathematical model for simulating energy storage according to the charge/discharge of the electric vehicle, and integrating that model in the monitoring software.
4. Software Development:
   • for energy monitoring and management (including the VE simulation component);
   • for viewing with the various user profiles;
   • configuration software for hardware devices.

Integration: supervising the integration of the various component blocks in the global solution.

Technologies used

1. Smart Meters
2. Wireless Communication Technologies:

• Wi-Fi technology for the communication network between the remote units located in the buildings and Indra´s central server, as well as for Internet access for users participating in the project.
• Standard Zig-Bee technology for the data collection network from the ZigBee devices to the remote unit.

More information

Project corresponding to the Information and Communication Technologies Policy Support Programme (ICT-PSP: Information and Communication Technologies Policy Support Programme):

Project Number: 250491