New services and energy saving pilot applications from enCOMPASS

The second newsletter charting the progress of the European project enCOMPASS, the objective of which is to create effective and user-friendly systems for making energy data consumption available and understandable for all users, and improving their consumption management of electrical energy, is now available. The project, in which the National Documentation Centre is participating, has already begun to construct information systems, which encourage targeted users- schools, buildings and utility suppliers- to save energy without compromising user comfort.

Users are involved from early on to identify their needs and requirements in order to jointly find solutions and services that have value for themselves. To this end, a series of outreach workshops were recently held with all the target groups in all countries of the enCOMPASS pilot projects (Greece, Germany, Switzerland). The aim was to present stories and models of the everyday use of the application so as to make the enCOMPASS platform as realistic as possible. 

Some of these early results have already been presented at conferences (eg the GIoTS 2017-the Global Internet of Things Summit, and the ECGBL 2017- the European Conference on Game-based learning) and are available here.

Of particular interest in the October newsletter is an update on the German pilot project which is studying three types of installations, the participation of enCOMPASS in European Utility Week 2017 and an energy-saving board game, FUNERGY.

WATT+VOLT is the first Greek electricity utility to take part in the annual landmark event of the European Energy Calendar, European Utility Week 2017, an event which brings together all major players in the Energy Market.

The enCOMPASS project is funded by Horizon 2020, the EU’s current funding framework for Research and Innovation, and aims to demonstrate how to achieve energy saving and the management of stakeholder needs in energy efficient, economical and easy ways, using an holistic approach, which integrates the visualisation of energy data, collected by smart sensors, information generated by users as well as the creation of proposals for energy saving, smart control and adaptive incentives through gamification techniques.

Those involved in the project include not only the Greek participants, National Documentation Centre (EKT), CERTH – The Centre for Research & Technology Hellas, Watt & Volt, but also Politecnico di Milano (PMI) as co-ordinator – Italy,European Institute for Participatory Media (EIPCM) – Germany, Stadtwerke Haβfurt GmbH (SHF) –Germany,  Naturschutzbund (NABU) - Γερμανία, Societa Elettrica Sopracenerina (SES) – Switzerland, Scuola Universitaria Profesionale della Svizzera Italiana (SUPSI) – Switzerland, Set Mobile S.R.L (SMOB) – Rumania, Kaleidos Games (KAL) – Italy, Kaunas Univeristy of Technology, Social Responsibility Research Centre (KTU) – Lithuania, Paradox AG (PDX) – Switzerland and Gravity R&D Zrt (GRA) – Hungary.

The National Documentation Centre (EKT) will support the development of enCOMPASS by being responsible for the pilot infrastructure in Athens. In addition, it will promote and extend the effects of the implementation of the pilot infrastructure within its domain and via academic visitors and the business community. It will increase the awareness of energy consumption within the general government sector in Greece, a sector which is strongly motivated to reduce energy costs of public buildings. EKT will provide SMEs and environmental services providers with further tools and information. EKT will also be instrumental in future expansion or local implementation of enCOMPASS within Greece.