October 2018

Second release of the enCOMPASS platform goes live!

Dear Colleagues,

welcome to the 4th newsletter of the European H2020 project enCOMPASS (Collaborative Recommendations and Adaptive Control for Personalized Energy Saving). As you are reading these lines, we are successfully releasing the 2nd version of the enCOMPASS platform and end-user applications for energy saving! So first, I would like to use this opportunity to give thanks to the entire team for their hard work and diligence in pushing the project forward so sucessfully!

The first results of the pilots are positive and show that the enCOMPASS app enables people to successfully save energy in a smart, easy and comfortable way. Release 2 comes with new features and improvements of user control over the energy consumption and comfort in their home. For example, the context-aware recommender service has now been extended to include personalised tips for energy saving based on the user’s context, consumption and saving conditions.

In the German household pilot, an advanced possibility to have these recommendations executed directly through the enCOMPASS app, by automatically adjusting the settings of a specific device (e.g. a thermostat) if the recommended action is accepted by the user, has also been implemented. This further lowers behavioural barriers to saving energy by making it easy to act upon the given advice. Other new features include the disaggregated visualisation of a household’s energy use, which makes it possible for users to understand how much energy was actually consumed by specific household devices, as well as the inclusion of the light settings (in addition to temperature) into the regulation of the user comfort and energy consumption. All these features enable users to save energy in an even more informed, targeted and convenient way.

enCOMPASS at the EUSEW 2018 in Brussels

As always, we’ve also been busy sharing our results and insights through papers at scientific conferences and presentations at scientific, industry and citizen events. Among others, this includes the European Conference on Behaviour and Energy Efficiency BEHAVE 2018 in Zurich and the International Conference on Information and Knowledge Management CIKM 2018 in Turin, as well as the EU Sustainable Energy Week EUSEW 2018, where we exhibited our tools and results to a broader public from 4-8th June in Brussels this year. The EUSEW is the annual Policy Conference featuring leading figures and a diverse programme of sessions and side-events aimed at discussing and shaping Europe’s energy future with an audience of more than 3,000 participants.

If you have missed us in Brussels, Zurich or Turin, don’t worry. On the 7th of November, we will also be present at the European Utility Week (EUW) in Vienna, so that’s another chance to meet, exchange and try out our tools and apps by yourself!

Of course, there is also always the possibility of connecting with us on our social media channels. Catch up with the latest news and publications on our website and follow us on Twitter and LinkedIn to keep in touch! Or simply read or newest tips on how to save energy in your bathroom below.

No matter which way you chose to engage with us, we hope you will enjoy this newest issue of our newsletter and keep up with the enCOMPASS news.

Sincerely,

Jasminko Novak

enCOMPASS Deputy Project Director

 

 

R2 enCOMPASS Release

By the end of October R2, the second release of the enCOMPASS platform is going live!

New features will be introduced to the participants of the enCOMPASS project. Users will now not only receive tips and recommendations but have the possibility to confirm to a semi-automatic execution of the recommendation.

In practice, the user receives notifications with personalised tips for energy saving. The recommendations are based on the user conditions to optimize energy savings.

In the German Pilot, users will have the opportunity to execute the recommendation directly from enCOMPASS. For example, the user might get the recommendation to reduce the heating temperature of the living room to 18 °C. By explicitly accepting the recommendation, the thermostat will be set to 18 °C.

The feature of knowing the comfortability of temperature in the living room has been expanded. The user will now receive information on the comfortability of illumination too.

Information on temperature and illumination in the living room (enCOMPASS App Release 2)

Another new feature is the disaggregation of the household’s energy use by different devices. The disaggregation service identifies the different devices from their consumption patterns and calculates the consumption share of each device in a time period. This is then visualised for the users, so that they can now not only see the total energy consumption (e.g. over the last month), but also the consumption share of each device. This makes it possible for the users to understand which household devices consumed most energy and where they might have the biggest energy saving potential.

Electricity Usage by device (enCOMPASS App Release 2)

Finally, the FUNERGY board game has been distributed. The boardgame can be played together with the digital FUNERGY app, that doubles the fun and learning. You will find more information on the app below!

Impact of behavioural change on energy consumption

Public buildings, schools, offices use lots of advanced devices. In schools not only computers, laptops and tablets are used, but also the smart boards and multimedia projectors. More and more often not only teachers and administrative staff but also students charge their mobile phones in school buildings. Lights, heating, cooling, etc. – all these devices are power users. We do already face the consequences of the pollution. Energy saving is unambiguously positive and closely related with energy consumption behaviour. An integrated socio-technical approach to behavioural change for energy saving, by developing innovative user-friendly digital tools to make energy consumption data available and understandable for different stakeholders is important issue in terms of societal, environmental and economic areas.

If we use less energy, we save natural resources, we save money, we care about our environment. It is possible to decrease amounts of energy used changing the behaviour. Instead of making big investments, it is easier to track the amount of energy consumed and money payed for that in household. Not every employee in the office or student in school can get this information. Review of recent studies has revealed that energy consumption in schools and public buildings may be reduced up to 15-20% due to behavioural change.

Attitude, motivation and knowledge as factors influence energy saving behaviour as well as the importance of feedback. enCOMPASS is precisely focusing on this by setting up three pilots in three different climate zones and three types of buildings: residential buildings, public buildings and schools. Persons involved in this project are encouraged to save energy taking part in competition game. Mobile application enables to analyse energy consumed and also provides tips for better energy saving performance.

The expected impact of innovations in the implementation of the project will be beneficial for the environmental, economic and social spheres.

AVAILABLE: FUNERGY Smartphone App!

In the last newsletter, we were announcing the first draft of the FUNERGY smartphone application. The enCOMPASS smartphone application for energy education is out now and available to everyone!

It can easily be downloaded in the app store for iOS and Android.

App opening screen and FUNERGY logo (FUNERGY Smartphone App)

The FUNERGY application is linked to the FUNERGY board game (more information in our last year’s newsletter). By scanning the QR code on the playing cards in the board game, questions on the smartphone will pop up and need to be answered.

But, no bummer for those who don’t possess the board game yet. The app works quite well on its own. In single player mode, a huge quantity of questions can be answered in three different difficulty levels (easy, medium, hard). New questions will continuously be added.

Here is one example: We waste more power turning lights on and off than just leaving them on!

Do you think it is true or false? For finding out, download the app and try it yourself!

Question and correct answer response (FUNERGY Smartphone App)

We also provide the FUNERGY users with a short explanation for tricky questions. Read the explanation below and guess, whether the statement was true or false.

Wrong answer response and explanation (FUNERGY Smartphone App)

Upcoming Events

enCOMPASS @ the:

EUW in Vienna in November, 7th.

Past Events

FTAL Conference on Industrial Applied Data Science in Lugano in October, 18th to 19th.

BEHAVE 2018 in Zurich in September, from 5th to 7th.

Energy Efficiency Conference in Athens in June, 27th.

SWEEM 2018 in Stanford CA, USA in June, 25th.

ESDEIC in Edinburgh in June, 25th to 27th.

Building Energy Efficiency in June, Athens 19th.

ICWE 2018 in Cáceres in June, from 5th to 8th.

European Sustainability Week 2018 in Brussels in June, from 4th to 8th.

Energy Saving Tips

in cooperation with Hausfrage.de