Report

Teaser, summary, work performed and final results

Periodic Reporting for period 1 - BENEFFICE (Energy Behaviour Change driven by plug-and-play-and-forget ICT and Business Models focusing on complementary currency for Energy Efficiency for the Wider Population)

Teaser

Free riding, rebound effect and other barriers critically undermine EC policies that aim to reduce energy consumption. Although, several economic approaches and business models have been implemented to date, the objective to reach the goal of energy reduction is not achieved...

Summary

Free riding, rebound effect and other barriers critically undermine EC policies that aim to reduce energy consumption. Although, several economic approaches and business models have been implemented to date, the objective to reach the goal of energy reduction is not achieved.
BENEFFICE’s strategic objective is to reduce wasted energy by developing a novel ecosystem which enables and incentivises long-term energy consumption savings to various consumer types. BENEFFICE ecosystem leverages novel IoT enabled, low-cost, “plug-and-play-and-forget” devices, energy disaggregation and an innovative empowerment and rewards approach based on an alternative monetary currency so as to change consumers’ energy consumption behaviour. An energy behaviour model is used to correlate the identified consumption patterns with optimal, personalised comfort levels and characteristics in order to determine optimal energy use behaviour to reduce wastage of energy and to increase the use of renewable resources. More specifically, BENEFFICE designs personalized, real-time motivational paths to deliver sustained reductions in energy consumption.
Customers are incentivized to follow these paths voluntarily, through the application of novel business models that provide monetary rewards in return for progress. These business models are based on an innovative digital CO2 currency that offers a revolutionary approach to incentivize an energy efficient behavior through monetary rewards.

Work performed

During the first 18 months of the project the following achievements can be reported:
• Addressed the ethical issues and requirements of the project and outlined the project approach on the procedures to be implemented for data collection, storage, protection, retention and destruction and confirmation that they comply with national and EU legislation.
• Performed a Data Privacy Impact Assessment (DPIA)
• Prepared all necessary contractual agreements (i.e. Informed consent, Joint Data Controllers Agreement).
• Identified and analysed the end user requirements and their translation into functional and technical requirements, defined the target groups, described the early and final use cases for the system, designed the general BENEFFICE reference architecture.
• Delivered first and second version of the personalised multifactorial model
• Completed the following individually functional components:
o Sensing components and gateway testing, configuration and deployment preparation
o BENEFFICE Platform backend and frontend (interfaces for Pilot Admins)
o BENEFFICE mobile application
o Data Analytics module,
o Trained Energy disaggregation algorithm
o Green Energy Scheduling module
o Recommendation Engine
o CO2 credit management system
• Developed an early integration plan for the initial version of the integrated system
• Installed and configured equipment in order to obtain energy measurements from 15 users in Greece, Austria, France to be used for the training of the disaggregation algorithm
• Planned a specific methodology for executing the evaluation in order to capture the feedback of the residential users in a unified and consistent manner in all deployment sites as well as the recruitment methodology for residential users
• Analysed existing business models and drawbacks based on economic theory
• Defined Policy recommendations for EU energy policy makers
• Designed different business models generating CO2 credits
• Designed business models for the pilots based on the BASE/X approach
• Identified business strategies and provided services per partner based on the BASE/X approach
• Prepared and/or participated in communication and awareness raising activities promoting the project and its results in web, social and physical means:
o The project logo, flyer, poster, general presentation, website and social networking sites on LinkedIn, Twitter and Instagram, all of which are continuously updated with progress and achievements.
o Project presence in partners’ websites.
o One scientific publication
o Participation to events at national and European level (conferences, events and workshops)
o Co-organisation of two workshops along with other EU funded projects
• Identified target markets and customers and exploitable results both as a whole service and as discrete exploitable outcomes.
• Timely and appropriate trouble-shooting, immediate reaction to problems and misunderstandings and adequate use of all project resources by the project and technical management.

Final results

The BENEFFICE project aims to achieve improved energy efficiency by leveraging diverse approaches that have each been proven to have achieved energy efficiency. By applying these approaches together, the project will achieve much higher performance in terms of both qualitative and quantitative energy use. In summary:
a. The hardware device, that is easy to install and directly interconnected with multipurpose ICT analytics, is very affordable and can allow wide-scale adoption without additional costs for installation and is expected to attract the interest of consumers who want simple and effective solutions.
b. The multifactorial factorial model captures accurately the user profile and correlates it with existing patterns thus improving the ability of the recommendation engine to provide more appropriate, personalised and easy to understand and execute advice.
c. The disaggregation approach allows consumers to identify the most energy consuming devices and activities and thus will be able to target them with specific actions.
d. The BENEFFICE mobile application enables the direct communication with the consumers providing useful information about their energy consumption and relative recommendations.
The key differentiating factor of BENEFFICE is the CCO2 credits business modelling approach. BENEFFICE integrates a revolutionary perspective to the stimulation of reduced energy use, based on CCO2 digital currency. Monetary innovation is known to be a powerful tool for behavioural change and an incentive for individuals to voluntary reduce their energy consumption.
In addition, green activity scheduling mechanisms are adopted to promote renewable energy solutions.
BENEFFICE engages with a wide range of consumer types and under a wide range of cases, conditions, profiles, etc. while the use of a modular and reconfigurable architecture ensures the wide deployment and applicability of BENEFFICE. BENEFFICE sets important cornerstones as far as social innovation and collaboration is concerned. The creation and support of the BENEFFICE community will leverage the framework’s attributes to achieve higher levels of interaction at a constant mode and change in people’s attitude towards greater energy efficiency through comparison to their fellows’ behaviour.

Website & more info

More info: http://www.beneffice.eu/.