Case Study: Integrated ICT Solutions for Energy Efficiency: the E3SoHo Spanish pilot

Short Description

Main objective:
Deployment, test and evaluation of integrated solutions based on ICT to improve energy savings and energy awareness consumption in new development of Social housing..

The pilot will:
- allow an improvement of the follow-up and exploitation of the building (HVAC, lighting,…);
- exhibit interfaces that are “highly-communicating” (friendly) to the stakeholders;
- in fine provide with a kind of show-room in Spain for ICT support to EE in social housing.

The pilot should also give the opportunity to better define the way forward to developing consultancy services in innovation related to ICT-based EE in new built social housing and beyond.

Short description of the Building:
The Zaragoza pilot will be carried out in a Social Housing Building that is in process of construction. Currently, the building is at the design phase and the building is expected to be finished in 2011. The building will have 80 social housing dwellings for renting targeted to both young adult people and elder people. It has five floors with 20 dwellings in each one. In addition, in the lower floor, it has several facilities and leisure areas like a café, a computer room, a library and a meeting room.

Pre-existing products integrated:
- Heating System: a central unit composed by two natural gas condensing boilers (Power: 264 kW each boiler) will provide heating to the whole building through a collective heating circuit. Each dwelling as well as each facility will have its own thermostat control to regulate the temperature. The heating system will also have capacity to heat domestic hot water to support an envisaged solar thermal collector.
- Ventilation System: a central cooling unit (Cooling power: 130 kW), based on cold water production by means of an air-water cooling system, will cover the cooling demand of the whole building.
- Domestic Hot Water: a number of solar thermal collectors installed on the roof will provide the solar energy to heat the water. The hot water will be stored in two tanks with a capacity of 2,000 litres each one. In addition, the gas condensing boilers will support the Solar Thermal collectors by means of a heat exchanger of 100 kW that will heat a tank of 1,500 litres.
- Lighting: Energy Saving Light Bulbs (CFL’s), PL Type..

Service description:
- The boilers as well as the central cooling unit will be managed by an intelligent management system. This system will be integrated in a Central control unit which will control the lighting system.
- The sensors needed for the intelligent system performance (Light level, Presence detection, Temperature, Humidity, Air flow,...) will be installed within dwellings.
- The management of the Solar Thermal Collectors will be also provided from the central unit.
Smart meters will be installed in the dwellings with the solution implemented to monitor the energy consumption of the dwellings.
- Dwellings with the ICT solution implemented will be interconnected among them through a network that at the same time will be connected to internet.
- In addition, the monitoring will be also carried out in dwellings without the ICT solution installed by means of traditional electricity meters.

Key Elements

Work with Residents

Increased energy awareness, e.g. smart meters can provide users with direct feedback on costs and environmental effects of their consumption. Studies show that this leads to a reduction in electricity consumption of 5% to 15% and fosters the appreciation of electricity as a valuable good

Incentives

Opportunity for enhanced incentive schemes, with high resolution data on energy consumption enables novel energy pricing and bonus schemes. If designed properly, these incentive systems can unfold a positive effect on peak load and absolute consumption – and help to integrate the user in the overall strategy.

Main Results

Lessons learned

Please click HERE to find out more about the E3SoHo Project.

Additional Information

For further information, please contact:

Mr Juan Rubio del Val,
Head of Refurbishment and Innovative Residential Projects Area
Zaragoza Vivienda
E-mail: jrubio@zaragozavivienda.es