Challenge
The building sector is accountable for 40% of the energy consumed and 36% of carbon emissions in the EU. Approximately one-third of the buildings currently in use are more than 50 years old, having little or no renewable energy sources (RES) installed.
At the same time, EU has set ambitious energy targets for staying at the forefront of the clean energy domain, aiming at the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions by 40% by 2030 and reaching a 20% share of renewables by 2020 increasing to at least 27% share by 2030.
In this context, a technological, as well as a policy-driven push, is required for decarbonising the existing highly inefficient European building stock to re-establish cost-effectiveness and facilitate new investments for integration of Renewable Energy Technologies into buildings.
Project ambition
RE-COGNITION aims to pave the way for large-scale deployment of building-level Renewable Energy Sources and increase their share in the energy mix of EU in a safe and secure way for the grid.
The main ambition of the RE-COGNITION is to develop a future and technology-proof integrated solution aiming to maximise the utilisation of the energy that is locally produced by building-level renewable energy technologies and to reduce implicitly and explicitly induced costs, towards Zero Energy Building’s realisation.
The RE-COGNITION Solution
Combined applications of different Renewable Energy Technologies resulting in carbon-neutral buildings.
The project’s idea settles on two axes:
The main focus will be on the development of the non-intrusive and scalable Cross-Functional RES Integration Platform. In its heart, the Automated Cognitive Energy Management Engine (ACEME) along with an intelligent Gateway (iGateway) will be deployed, for optimally harnessing the energy generated from each of the available energy resources, taking into account real-time consumption, operation of storage units, and grid conditions.
RE-COGNITION will progress beyond the current State of the Art in the field of less mature renewable technologies (Building Integrated Photovoltaic, Vertical-Axis Variable Geometry Wind Turbine) and more established constant-source ones (micro-CHP based on biogas) for the building environment, along with optimally designed system peripherals (i.e. latent-heat thermal storage and hybrid system, driven from solar-thermal power for cooling purposes).
The proposed solution will leverage energy production from multiple Renewable Energy Technologies (RETs) and enable their optimal pairing with storage technologies to meet the buildings’ electricity, heating, cooling, and hot water demand efficiently and exactly when it is needed.