BuildON

PROJECT SUMMARY

The 2021 EPBD recast highlights buildings' central role in the energy transition towards an integrated and renewable energy-based EU energy system. Smarter buildings will support the digitalisation and decarbonisation transition to the benefit of building occupants, owners and the energy system. Improving energy performance and reducing energy demands are even more relevant in the context of the REPowerEU Plan to rapidly reduce dependence on Russian fossil fuels and accelerate the green transition. BuildON seeks to develop a highly replicable, generic solution to deliver intelligent building services, facilitate the integration of heterogeneous systems and technologies, and help Build the next generatiON of Smart buildings. The main objective of BuildON is to develop and demonstrate a Smart Transformer Toolbox at TRL8 to plan and achieve improved energy performance applicable to the broadest range of building typologies and smart readiness levels via a comprehensive demonstration campaign involving five representative real-life use cases. This toolbox will offer affordable, adaptative, close-to-market and easy-to-install SRI-aligned services to continuously Monitor, Assess, Predict and Optimise (MAPO services) a building’s performance. A unified representation of the building, exposed through a Universal Building API, will abstract all field-level communication complexity, allowing the energy devices’ homogeneous real-time monitoring and control. Moreover, the generation of (Maturity Level 3 and 4) Digital Twins will allow simulation and control of a building and its systems. User-friendly decision support and user empowerment tools for facility managers and occupants will be part of the toolbox to explore, understand and expand their buildings' smart capabilities. By providing a unified approach to interacting with buildings, the floor is offered to develop a building app store that significantly accelerates the Smart Transformation of existing and new buildings.

PROJECT OBJECTIVES

BuildON aims to develop and demonstrate a Smart Transformer Toolbox (STT) at TRL8 to plan and achieve improved energy performance applicable to the broadest range of building typologies and smart readiness levels via a comprehensive demonstration campaign involving five representative real-life pilots. This toolbox will offer affordable, adaptative, close-to-market and easy-to-install SRI-aligned services to continuously Monitor, Assess, Predict and Optimize (MAPO services) a building’s performance. A unified representation of the building, exposed through a Universal Building API, will abstract all field-level communication complexity, allowing the energy devices’ homogeneous real-time monitoring and control. Moreover, the generation of (Maturity Level 3 and 4) Digital Twins will allow simulation and control of a building and its systems. Finally, part of the BuildON STT will be user-friendly decision support and user empowerment tools for facility managers and occupants to explore, understand and expand their buildings' smart capabilities.

Scientific and Technological Objectives

• To deliver user-friendly tools to inform, engage and empower users in support of more rational decision making to improve energy use
• To deliver an interoperability framework facilitating the integration of energy systems, IT systems and other building assets
• Implement reusable, configurable and interoperable Digital Twins (DTs) at the system level for better informed planning, energy-efficient building operation, and performance optimization
• To implement and deploy scalable and business attractive AI-based Monitoring, Assessment and Prediction (MAP) services for monitoring, benchmarking and fault detection and diagnosis
• To develop and deploy adaptable and business attractive, smart automation and control services for building performance optimisation (O services), including distributed energy generation, and demand response interaction between buildings and thermal/electrical grids
• To perform five pilot projects that are representative of smartness upgrade of the EU building stock and validate the impact of the upgraded smartness of existing buildings and existing energy systems

Non-Technological Objectives

• To develop, demonstrate and launch data-driven business models and exploitation strategies to facilitate smart building transformation
• To communicate, disseminate and standardise the BuildON results and best practices to enable and accelerate upscaling, exploitation and standardisation of the smart transformation

NTUA ROLE

NTUA plays a significant role in the BuildON project.

• Work Package 4 – “Digital Twins and AI-based analytics for smart energy management” Leader
• Task 4.1 – “BuildON engine for smart service operation” Leader
• Task 4.2 – “Data-driven services for Building Energy Assets Monitor & Benchmark” Leader
• Task 3.5 – “Building API and Data Access and Control Component” Leader
• Task 2.3 – “Strategies and supporting tools for affordable smartness upgrade” Leader