The HOLISDER consortium met in Helsinki, Finland (18th – 19th April, 2018) to discuss project progress and priorities for the next six months.
The meeting was organized by Caverion which is a Finnish company involved in designing, building, operating and maintaining intelligent and energy-efficient solutions for buildings, industries and infrastructures in Northern, Central and Eastern Europe. Caverion has about 16,000 employees in 12 countries and its headquarter is located in Helsinki.
During the meeting Work Package leaders presented the most important results of their efforts taken since the beginning of the project. One of the most important aspects discussed during the General Assembly was the business potential of HOLISDER solutions and expected end-user acceptance for the proposed innovation. This is the reason why the consortium organized two workshops for its members in order to jointly consider the list of end-user requirements which are crucial for successful promotion of demand response schemes among building owners and occupants. All the basic information on the requirements are presented in deliverable prepared by BELIT and entitled “End-user & business requirements” which is available for all on our website.
The meeting was also good occasion to start internal discussion about business scenarios positioning the HOLISDER solution among other demand response technologies provided by our competitors. Thanks to that, the consortium members selected the most important market issues to be investigated and elaborated during the next months.
Another important issue discussed during the meeting was the planned role of four pilot sites located in Athens, Helsinki, Belgrade and London. The consortium elaborated the most important assumptions of the communication strategy aimed at promotion of HOLISDER among the pilot occupants. Moreover, the full list of HOLISDER target groups have been prepared, including not only the building owners and occupants playing the role of final consumers, but also utilities, energy saving companies, facility managers, aggregators, standardization stakeholders, regulators and policy makers. Also, the schedule of workshops with inhabitants was defined in order to start collaboration with them and involve people in co-creation of the final HOLISDER technology. In this context, different demand response schemes were presented as initial ideas intended for further evaluation. On this base, the consortium will select those ones which are perfectly tailored to the end-users expectations.
The HOLISDER consortium also visited the pilot site located next to Helsinki. Kauppakeskus Willa is a shopping center that hosts over 6.8 million visitors on an annual basis and is managed by Facility Manager CAVERION (partner in HOLISDER). It was built in 2012 and covers a total area of 39,300 sq.m. The shopping center is equipped with Enerkey smart metering for electricity, district heating and water consumption. Control of the building is performed through a commercial BEMS (HONEYWELL Tridium Niagara System operated by CAVERION) controlling heating, cooling, ventilation, lighting, electric heaters and connected to a variety of sensors for temperature, humidity and CO2 measurements. The building is owned by Varma mutual pension insurance company, which is involved in governmental energy saving agreement since 2011 (until 2025).
