Estonian researchers developed a platform for real-time energy efficiency and indoor climate assessment
Researchers from the FinEst Centre for Smart Cities and TalTech developed a platform that enables real-time monitoring and analysis of energy use in buildings and indicators of indoor climate. In cooperation with the Estonian IoT startup Thinnect, the solution will reach a wider market and will be distributed worldwide.
Comparative overview of the energy consumption and indoor climate quality of large real estate portfolios
The European Union has set a goal by 2050 that all buildings must be zero-emission. However, there is no reliable data on the energy consumption of too many buildings, so there is no possibility to monitor the situation of those. In the DigiAudit pilot project the goal was to create a platform for automatic diagnostics of buildings, with data to improve the energy efficiency and indoor climate of buildings during their use.
The created platform provides property owners with information on the total energy use, energy costs and carbon footprint of their real-estate portfolio. The energy labels and indoor climate classes of all buildings connected to the platform are also presented, which enables efficient comparison with other similar buildings.
According to DigiAudit's project lead, Professor Jarek Kurnitski, the uniqueness of the solution lies in the real-time energy labelling of the entire real estate portfolio. Improving the energy efficiency of buildings is crucial from the point of view of the Estonia 2035 strategy, as buildings already account for 53% of the final energy consumption. The platform gives building owners and managers a simple, comparable overview of the actual energy consumption of the various buildings in the entire portfolio, as well as the quality of the indoor climate.
In the project, a method was developed to compare the energy efficiency of an individual building with other buildings of the same type. A data set containing energy efficiency indicators of 35,000 Estonian buildings was analyzed. Based on this, a model was developed that approximately shows the energy efficiency of a single building position. As a result of the study, the project team saw that energy efficiency measures to date have improved the performance of buildings, and if progress continues, 73 percent of new or renovated buildings could achieve carbon neutrality.
Uniqueness of DigiAudit platform lies in the real-time energy labelling of the entire real estate portfolio
Digiaudit platform solutions are based on data, and in order to achieve meaningful analysis results, it is crucial to assess the quality of the data. Building ventilation performance and air quality are assessed based on the carbon dioxide level measured in the premises. It turned out that the raw data collected by the installed building automation systems are sometimes unreliable. To solve the problem, a method was developed that corrects the data in such a way that they can be compared with the limit values of the carbon dioxide level specified in the indoor climate standards.
A new method has also been developed to automatically determine if a room is currently in use. This approach has significant implications for evaluating indoor climate conditions, particularly in assessing the period of occupancy. It is crucial to consider non-operational hours such as nights and weekends when analyzing air quality in educational institutions as it can paint a more optimistic picture than the reality.
The platform separates capacity monitoring functions from maintenance-related automatic diagnostics. The user interface consists of three views, in which the detail of the information presented depends on the user. Dashboard views were created for the city government, city property board and those responsible for administration/maintenance according to their information needs.
We can only reach zero-emission buildings when we have reliable data
The European Union has set a goal by 2050 that all buildings must be zero-emission. However, there is no reliable data on the energy consumption of many buildings, so there is no possibility to monitor the situation of the buildings. In the pilot project of DigiAudit, the goal was to create a platform for automatic diagnostics of buildings, with data to improve the energy efficiency and indoor climate of buildings during their use.
In the pilot project, 25 educational buildings in Tallinn and Tartu were connected to the IoT platform. Continuous monitoring of energy, ventilation and air quality in hundreds of buildings generated big data, which analytics were developed to handle. It enables the monitoring and comparison of the condition of the buildings, as well as diagnostics and detection of errors in the technical systems of the buildings and the use of the buildings.
Researchers have the ability to tackle complex challenges and create necessary solutions
The goal of all pilot projects of FinEst Centre for Smart Cities is to create a functioning product or service that is usable and scalable to various cities. DigiAudit is one of the first examples where the goal has been successfully achieved. Cooperation with Estonian IoT start-up Thinnect has been going on for some time and now the solution has been transferred with a licensing agreement and the first working product has been created.
Jürgo Preden, Head of Thinnect, explained: "This is a scientific achievement that has no competitor on the market today. Today, no building manager knows exactly where the energy is spent, because buildings are so complex and their operation changes over time. Here, the DigiAudit solution plays an important role - it helps to understand where energy is spent and how to spend it."
FinEst Centre for Smart Cities, located at Tallinn University of Technology, has six pilot projects in progress where Estonian and Finnish cities develop and test innovative smart city solutions.