BEE - Building Energy Efficiency
team size
5 People
Technologies
Control Optimization
Predictive Analytics
Deep Learning
Data Engineering
Maturity Level
Production Rollout
LESS EMISSIONS WITH ENERGY EFFICIENT BUILDINGS
Our goal is to help cities in their journey towards sustainability and carbon neutrality by connecting buildings to energy grid and weather data. Since the expansion of renewables in energy grids is steadily increasing, it becomes more and more important to use energy flexible and when it is available. Therefore, we have developed a solution, that not only helps to save emissions, but also uses buildings as a storage capability in the energy grid and helps to stabilize it. Every day, our system derives a forecast for the next day’s energy grid mix, weather conditions and the buildings utilization and capability to use energy flexible.
Based on that the system calculates an optimized control schedule for heating, ventilation, cooling, water heating, EV charging and other flexible appliances. The control schedule shifts energy usage towards renewables and minimizes the energy usage through a pro-active control.
Success Story
THE AI4CITIES PROJECT promotes the use of AI to make Europe's cities more sustainable. Helsinki, Amsterdam, Copenhagen, Greater Paris, Stavanger and Tallinn are going through a Pre-Commercial Procurement (PCP) to find solutions to make their mobility and energy domains more carbon neutral. Out of the 41 proposed solutions which have been selected by the AI4Cities Buyers Group, Unetiq is currently in the top 7 suppliers that proceeds to the last phase of this competition. Starting from a very simple prototype of our vision, we have worked our way to the top of the competition, being recognized for our excellent expertise in AI and vision for the future of the solution. We are now deploying our solution to two Nordic cities, and this is only the beginning of what we see as the future of our building energy forecasting and optimization product. We strive to decrease Europe’s dependency on fossil fuels and drastically decrease CO2 emissions.
KEY BENEFITS
- Energy consumption savings - Through our pro-active control the building acts on external changes, like weather or occupancy, before they occur.
- Increased capacity of renewable energy utilization - By shifting the buildings energy usage to renewables the system directly lowers the buildings emissions
- Utilization transparency - clear and easy visualization of the energy consumption and CO2 emissions through our dashboard
- Optimized building control - forecasted building control suggestions provide an easy way to schedule how building is operated in an automated fashion. User boundaries can be set for room conditions to maintain high user comfort.
- Building fleet integration & building model library - buildings are integrated with the help of our pre-defined profiles, to enable immediate control suggestions. Building clusters can be integrated together for a shared peak-shaving and emission decrease effect.
SHIFTING ENERGY USAGE TO RENEWABLES
Most building management systems today are reactive, meaning they only react to temperature changes once they have measured it - usually with sensors inside the building.
This delayed reaction causes a continuous need for balancing out temperature peaks and is therefore wasting energy. To minimize the building’s reaction time, BEE automatically learns the buildings reactivity and combines this information with the weather forecast to pre-actively set the controls buildings for heating and ventilation. This not only results in more user comfort by keeping the inside temperatures stable, but also reduces energy consumption by avoiding consumption peaks.
Reference Case: The Metropolia University in Finnland
Testing Setup:
- 55.000 m2
- 3000 smart sensors
- 27 ventilation machines
- District heating, Heat recovery system and Solar Panels
- 15 EV-charging stations
- Digital twin models
Achieved Yearly Savings
- 780 MWh of Energy
- 110 tones of CO2
- 60.700 €
Impact
With BEE's innovative approach achieves the following savings:
- 10-20% increase in use of renewables (based on city / country energy mix and data availability).
- 15-20% energy savings through optimized control (based on the overall “smart readiness” of the building).
- Combined 10-30% reduction in emissions, depending on energy production mix.
Next to optimizing the energy usage a day ahead, BEE also offers the possibility of short-term flexibility through our Virtual Power Plant capabilities in form of the Frequency Containment Reserve (FCR-N), where the building can be used to shave off peak loads from the energy grid. Building owners will be compensated for providing flexibility to the energy grid.
