Virtual Privte Home - Privacy-by-design Home Energy Efficiency Platform

Project Information

Virtual Private Home

Grant agreement ID: 674510

DOI

10.3030/674510

Project closed

EC signature date 27 April 2015

Start date 1 May 2015

End date 31 August 2015

Funded under

• SOCIETAL CHALLENGES - Secure, clean and efficient energy

Total cost

€ 71 429,00

EU contribution

€ 50 000,00

Coordinated by

GRIDPOCKET SAS
France

Periodic Reporting for period 1 - Virtual Private Home (Virtual Privte Home - Privacy-by-design Home Energy Efficiency Platform)

Reporting period: 2015-05-01 to 2015-08-31

Summary of the context and overall objectives of the project

“Virtual Private Home – Privacy-Aware Home Energy Efficiency Platform” aims to deploy on the EU market a new, game changing energy efficiency tool for residential customers, that will be characterized by its superior energy saving performance, open architecture and above all by its “Privacy-by-design” data protection concept.
The Virtual Private Home will be released in a form of an online service. The service will be associated with third party smart meters and smart home devices. It will use behavioral efficiency (green nudge) tool to engage consumer in energy saving, and its modular structure will enable connecting an infinite range of additional applications. It has been demonstrated to allow over 10% of energy saving without any hardware investments. Each end-user will dispose of complete control of its private content, with a possibility to grant or revoke access, change hosting platform, destroy all data. The encrypted object storage approach will ensure access on ‘need-to-know’ bases.

Work performed from the beginning of the project to the end of the period covered by the report and main results achieved so far

During the feasibility phase, GridPocket benefited of SME Instrument Phase 1 support, including coaching sessions with a renowned industry expert. The team has made evaluation of the market demand, competition, intellectual property status and technological feasibility, including setting up demonstrators. The teams has obtained support from major electric and gas utilities, and put in place partnerships with large technology and scientific partners. The feasibility study validated initial market insights: growing demand for data privacy, fast deployment of smart home systems, and need of energy utilities to propose innovative consumer services.

Progress beyond the state of the art and expected potential impact (including the socio-economic impact and the wider societal implications of the project so far)

EU directives recommends 80% of smart meters by 2020, while the upcoming EU General Data Protection Regulation imposes very strict privacy by design rules. Lack of privacy is becoming major barrier for deployment of home energy efficiency solutions.
GridPocket, start-up based in France and Poland, coordinates the project. The company will pursue the Virtual Private Home project based on private and public financing. The project shall create almost 100 highly qualified jobs within 3 years.

Virtual Private Home project team together with the Coach