Periodic Reporting for period 2 - BEYOND (A reference big data platform implementation and AI analytics toolkit toward innovative data sharing-driven energy service ecosystems for the building sector and beyond)
Reporting period: 2022-06-01 to 2023-11-30
The European energy sector is undergoing a major fundamental change with the increasing digitalisation of energy assets, due to the ongoing roll-out of smart meters and the shift away from traditional monitoring and control approaches that have been applied exclusively over energy assets, since the smart and sustainable energy era is pushing sensing, control and data collection at the edge of energy systems, which need to be further re-defined due to the wide penetration of Distributed Energy Resources (DERs), such as renewable energy sources (RES), smart home devices & appliances (IoT) and smart meters among others.
The increasing growth of DERs, is continuously expanding the “end” or the energy system “edge”, in terms of controllability, while increasing its operational complexity, since the amount of data (and controllable assets) is growing exponentially and “understanding” of the knowledge encapsulated in these big data streams will be critical for meeting operational requirements for high efficiency and for safeguarding business interests. The edge of the energy system is currently dominated by the building sector, not only in terms of quantity but also in terms of criticality for the envisaged energy transition, since buildings are the largest energy consumer worldwide (accounting for almost half of the world’s consumption). As technology advances and becomes more affordable, buildings are no longer perceived merely as depreciating assets, but are transforming themselves into smart buildings which are associated with the generation of vast amounts of data, spanning Building Energy Management Systems (BEMS), smart metering and sub-metering information (demand), IoT device information (sensing/control), distributed generation (RES), storage and electric vehicle data, altogether characterized by continuously increasing growth rate, multi-diverse spatio-temporal resolutions and huge volume.
The analytics opportunity for the building sector is there and benefits are significant, however, recent studies have pointed out that involved stakeholders are reluctant to make the move due to high upfront costs and sheer complexity of data . Taking data management and analytics away from their hands (in a trustful manner, thus reducing complexity and changing their mindsets) and offering to them easily digestible intelligence extracted from the advanced processing and analysis of highly diverse, variable and volatile data streams (through ready to use trained algorithms that can be easily utilized in different contexts and business cases), could be the first step forward, towards enabling the realization of data-driven optimization functions that can pave a ROI-positive path to effectively solving operational and business challenges and highlighting the value of the big distributed data generated at the wealth of data-points of smart buildings.
The increasing growth of DERs, is continuously expanding the “end” or the energy system “edge”, in terms of controllability, while increasing its operational complexity, since the amount of data (and controllable assets) is growing exponentially and “understanding” of the knowledge encapsulated in these big data streams will be critical for meeting operational requirements for high efficiency and for safeguarding business interests. The edge of the energy system is currently dominated by the building sector, not only in terms of quantity but also in terms of criticality for the envisaged energy transition, since buildings are the largest energy consumer worldwide (accounting for almost half of the world’s consumption). As technology advances and becomes more affordable, buildings are no longer perceived merely as depreciating assets, but are transforming themselves into smart buildings which are associated with the generation of vast amounts of data, spanning Building Energy Management Systems (BEMS), smart metering and sub-metering information (demand), IoT device information (sensing/control), distributed generation (RES), storage and electric vehicle data, altogether characterized by continuously increasing growth rate, multi-diverse spatio-temporal resolutions and huge volume.
The analytics opportunity for the building sector is there and benefits are significant, however, recent studies have pointed out that involved stakeholders are reluctant to make the move due to high upfront costs and sheer complexity of data . Taking data management and analytics away from their hands (in a trustful manner, thus reducing complexity and changing their mindsets) and offering to them easily digestible intelligence extracted from the advanced processing and analysis of highly diverse, variable and volatile data streams (through ready to use trained algorithms that can be easily utilized in different contexts and business cases), could be the first step forward, towards enabling the realization of data-driven optimization functions that can pave a ROI-positive path to effectively solving operational and business challenges and highlighting the value of the big distributed data generated at the wealth of data-points of smart buildings.
BEYOND has identified the market need for: (I) trusted and fair data sharing, (II) insightful data analytics and (III) data-driven applications for optimizing buildings’ performance while improving operations across the value chain. The achievements of the project can be summarized in the following:
1) The BEYOND big data platform and analytics toolkit as-a-Service through Open APIs to cope with the increasing requirements of big data and complexity involved in the operation of (smart) buildings, as well as, in required interactions between energy sector stakeholders.
2) BEYOND delivered the Common Information Model that effectively models the underlying knowledge, structure and semantics of the data made available to the BEYOND Big Data Platform. The final version of the BEYOND CIM contains 67 Information Entities and 2346 attributes
3) Development and deployment of t9 Innovative Services and Applications addressing the business needs of various stakeholders involved in the building data value chain (consumers, prosumers, building owners, District Heating and Electricity Network Operators, ESCOs, Aggregators, City Authorities). The various BEYOND applications have been integrated with the BEYOND Integrated Platform to retrieve the stakeholders’ data assets (e.g. raw data, derivative data as the outcome of an analytics workflow) and introduce them in further optimization functions
4) Delivery of a portfolio of 22 pre-trained analytics models spanning personal data analytics and industrial data analytics that can be effectively executed both in the cloud-based and private infrastructures of BEYOND
The BEYOND results have been validated in real-life conditions in 4 large-scale (in terms of data) demostrators for a period of 15 months, generating significant impact both in terms of technical advancements as well in energy, environmental and socio-economic terms.
Extensive disssemination has been performed in industrial and scientific events, while strong collaborations have been built with relevant EU initiatives, sister projects and other relevant EU-funded projects for knowledge transfer and experience sharing.
1) The BEYOND big data platform and analytics toolkit as-a-Service through Open APIs to cope with the increasing requirements of big data and complexity involved in the operation of (smart) buildings, as well as, in required interactions between energy sector stakeholders.
2) BEYOND delivered the Common Information Model that effectively models the underlying knowledge, structure and semantics of the data made available to the BEYOND Big Data Platform. The final version of the BEYOND CIM contains 67 Information Entities and 2346 attributes
3) Development and deployment of t9 Innovative Services and Applications addressing the business needs of various stakeholders involved in the building data value chain (consumers, prosumers, building owners, District Heating and Electricity Network Operators, ESCOs, Aggregators, City Authorities). The various BEYOND applications have been integrated with the BEYOND Integrated Platform to retrieve the stakeholders’ data assets (e.g. raw data, derivative data as the outcome of an analytics workflow) and introduce them in further optimization functions
4) Delivery of a portfolio of 22 pre-trained analytics models spanning personal data analytics and industrial data analytics that can be effectively executed both in the cloud-based and private infrastructures of BEYOND
The BEYOND results have been validated in real-life conditions in 4 large-scale (in terms of data) demostrators for a period of 15 months, generating significant impact both in terms of technical advancements as well in energy, environmental and socio-economic terms.
Extensive disssemination has been performed in industrial and scientific events, while strong collaborations have been built with relevant EU initiatives, sister projects and other relevant EU-funded projects for knowledge transfer and experience sharing.
BEYOND designed and developed the beta release of a unique big data and intelligence platform for the building (and energy) sector, taking into account the concrete stakeholders’ needs and requirements. Progress beyond the state-of-the art is substantiated along the following dimensions: (a) Effortless Data Management and Governance, enabling easy and workflow-instructed ingestion of data in the BEYOND platform, (b) Enhanced semantic interoperability by harmonizing a variety of available data models into a Common Information Model, while further extending existing standards, (c) Trusted Data Sharing enabling the digital and data-driven transformation of stakeholders involved in the BEYOND value chain through increased data outreach and advanced intelligence features, (d) Advanced AI analytics, enabling the introduction of data intelligence in building operations (and beyond) for optimizing energy-related aspects and operations without compromising human well-being (e) Novel approaches for Performance Measurement and Verification, utilizing actual data and accurate forecasts for baselining and verifying energy savings and flexibility events.
Moreover, the core interest of the stakeholders that will utilize the core services of BEYOND is the optimization and further expansion of their business operations with the introduction of new and innovative energy services and business models (for Energy Performance Optimization, Policy Planning, Infrastructure Sizing and Network Planning, EPC de-risking, Building Portfolio Management, Self-consumption and Predictive Maintenance, Human-Centric Building Control Optimization and Demand Side Management, Energy Performance Certification) in a data-driven and intelligence-enabled manner. Such novelty and added value of BEYOND has been acknowledged by both internal and external stakeholders involved in Living Lab activities (for validating concepts and solutions of the project). The impacts of the project for the different stakeholder categories have been successfully realized against the targets set out in the DoA.
Moreover, the core interest of the stakeholders that will utilize the core services of BEYOND is the optimization and further expansion of their business operations with the introduction of new and innovative energy services and business models (for Energy Performance Optimization, Policy Planning, Infrastructure Sizing and Network Planning, EPC de-risking, Building Portfolio Management, Self-consumption and Predictive Maintenance, Human-Centric Building Control Optimization and Demand Side Management, Energy Performance Certification) in a data-driven and intelligence-enabled manner. Such novelty and added value of BEYOND has been acknowledged by both internal and external stakeholders involved in Living Lab activities (for validating concepts and solutions of the project). The impacts of the project for the different stakeholder categories have been successfully realized against the targets set out in the DoA.