To validate and evaluate the proposed solution, PHOENIX partners will provide 5 different real-world pilots, located in Thessaloniki (Greece), Dublin (Ireland), University of Murcia (Spain), Region of Murcia (Spain) and Skellefteå (Sweden).
The Irish Pilot Site
The Irish Pilot is based in the Ringsend Irishtown Sustainable Energy Co-operative (RISEC), a community led initiative to promote and deliver investment in sustainable energy located in the south east of Dublin City. It includes residential buildings and a commercial building to demonstrate the integration of smart controls as a retrofit solution in existing buildings.
The commercial pilot building is the National Centre for the Circular Economy in Ireland, the Rediscovery Centre. The building is a repurposed boiler house and includes solar PV, CHP, heat pump and solar thermal. It is an ideal demonstration site for optimisation in a building with a BEMS and a range of energy using and conversion technologies.
The domestic pilots are privately owned houses with a range of legacy systems including solar PV, EV chargers, electric water heaters and gas heating systems. The systems are isolated with minimal controls and communication protocols. These pilots will demonstrate the integration of various legacy systems into a single platform for optimized and co-ordinated control.
MIWenergia´s pilot site is located at Region de Murcia and includes two different types of building, one commercial and one residential.
The demonstration activities for commercial building will take place at CEEIC in Cartagena. This business incubator building focus on start-up and early-stage innovative companies. 20 spaces between company’s offices and lecture rooms will participate in PHOENIX project. The residential building selected it is located at the city centre of Murcia. Four apartments will be involved in the pilot site. Each apartment has approximately 125 square meters and they are equipped with common domestic appliances. Both buildings currently do not have smart sensors and devices to monitor energy consumption nor BEMS to control legacy equipment and will benefit largely in efficiency, flexibility and the possibility to participate in the energy market thanks to PHOENIX project.
The University of Murcia (UMU) is one of the largest Universities in Spain, located in the Region of Murcia where it is the largest. The Region of Murcia, with over 430,000 inhabitants, is in the south-east of Spain.
The first building included in the pilot hosts the Faculty of Chemistry of the University of Murcia and it has already been used for energy consumption prediction experiments and smart city scenarios Due to the nature of the faculty, the use of the building is very diverse. Among its uses one can find: lecturing, experimentation in labs, office use and storage.
The building is oriented to the South East. The construction is solid wall on a concrete structure. All windows are single glazing sliding windows with poor sealing. The total area of the building is 18,250.9 m2. This area is shared between five floors containing each one up to four different zones. The zones represent areas of the building containing several rooms.
The second building of the pilot has a plot area delimited for the construction of the building which is practically square and has an area of 10,982.77 m2. It consists of five floors in addition to the ground floor, spread over four blocks. Block one has five floors, block two has three floors and building three has three floors.
The fourth block is a library with two elevations. Horizontally the building is organized around a large corridor axis that separates the research areas of the Library area, whose extension would allow connecting in the future with extensions. The orientation of the building is 20º with respect to the North axis, having latitude of 38º.
This building has in its car park a PV installation which energy production is sent to the grid. This installation is being monitored in real time, and historical records are available.
In addition, for this pilot a fleet of electric vehicles are available in campus what allows to have a complete set of storage solutions. The vehicles are equipped with lead-acid batteries that can be used as storage of electrical energy to cover peaks. The chargers for these vehicles are monitored and actuation is possible over them to optimise the charging scheduling.
Relevant Equipment & Systems
Building energy consumption Smart Meter
Sub-circuit energy consumption Smart Meter
Monitored and controllable conditioning systems (VRF)
Monitored and controllable Air Handling Unit
Temperature, humidity and air quality sensors
Integrated BMS
Solar thermal DHW Installation
EV charging points for a fleet of electric vehicles used on-campus
Energy consumption of the buildings under study as well as total energy consumption of 3 other buildings is available. Also, energy consumption of specific areas or systems are available.
Outside Environmental Conditions
The weather station has been recording external environmental conditions or several years, this offers a detail picture of the weather conditions of the pilot.
Occupation via personal ID RFID cards
One of the pilot’s building has access to the building via RFID ID cards, this allows to have a proxy of the occupation of the building, the schedules of the users, and the patterns of behaviour.
Solar PV generation balance of yield
The possibility of measuring building energy consumption and PV solar generation allows to perform detailed balances of energy yield and consumption.
Energy flows to and from EV
The meters and actuators on the EVs allow to identify the flows to and from the EV making possible their consideration as electric accumulation of the pilot.
Users feedback via mobile apps
The pilots’ users are used to mobile apps to provide feedback about their energy preferences, but also to receive personalised feedback and advice on this regard.
The Greek Pilot Site
A residential two-story building belonging to the main body of the Greek Army and recently renovated, has been selected to comprise a pilot site for the PHOENIX project in order to evaluate the innovative and sustainable energy solutions developed here. The building is located in Thessaloniki, in Northern Greece and accommodates eight apartments of approximately 80 square meters each.
Front view of the Greek Pilot-site (residential building)
At the beginning of PHOENIX project, although the Greek Pilot-site had just been restored and modernized in terms of construction, no innovative or smart solutions were implemented by that point in terms of house appliances, building equipment and energy management systems. Since September 2020, when PHOENIX project started, several upgrades regarding energy generation, energy integration and building smartness have been incorporated, or are in the process of being incorporated, aiming at increasing the value of the facilities and the life quality of the inhabitants. These include
Photovoltaic panels for renewable energy production
Decentralized solar thermal system for domestic hot water
Battery storage system for supporting electricity black-outs
Smart meters for energy consumption & production measurements
Electric vehicle charging
Smart led lighting
Automatic shading systems
Smart controlling of home appliances
The Skellefteå Pilot Site (LTU, SKEBIT)
The Swedish Pilot site is based in Skellefteå, which is located in the north of Sweden. Climate conditions in the zone are characterized by a cold winter with snow, and a mild summer.
The pilot will include a building which is both residential and commercial. Being in the north of Sweden the building is has both district heating connection and electricity connection from the energy company. It has 12 apartments and a commercial space at the front facing the street on the ground floor. It has 3 floor levels and a basement. The total area including the commercial space is: 1920m2 heated area and 1278m2 living area.
The building has big apartments with of 4-5 rooms each. In addition to the apartments there is a community laundry room, a common room for socializing. There are 4 outdoor parking places on the street with electric points for heating the cars and 10 indoor car garages. The building is built in 1966 and is made of concrete with 3 pane glass windows. The building has an FX system for ventilation with two fans for supply and exhaust air with a rotating heat exchanger where 80% of the energy is sent back into the building. The occupants age group ranges between 20 years to 76 years with an average age of 50 years approximately. All apartments are equipped with appliances owned by the owners such as fridge, dishwasher and microwave, etc. Approximately 50% have their own washing machine but others use washing machines in the communal laundry room.
4-5 Rooms each apartment
Community laundry room
Socializing room
4 Outdoor parking places & 10 Indoor
80% energy efficient air ventilation system
This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement no. 893079
