Manresa

The pilot site Manresa (Spain) includes three buildings in the capital of the Bages comarca. The three blocks have a total surface of about 20,000 m² with 130 dwellings, commercial areas and parking spaces. The dwellings vary in size from 32 m² to 75 m².

Tenants at the pilot site are young to middle-aged with a high representation of migrants. The number of persons living in the dwellings varies from 1 to 8. It is likely that internet access is low. The tenants perceive “economic savings”, “consumption control” and “good use of supplies” as potential benefits of BECA.

The three buildings were built between 2007 and 2011. All building blocks have incorporated energy efficiency building designs like increased insulation, natural ventilation and glazed galleries. Each building has a centralized heating installation with a centralized solar thermal system and low temperature condensing boilers back up support systems. This centralized installation provides space heating and domestic hot water to each individual dwelling. Metering and control equipment are installed within distribution closets placed at the block stairs and inside the apartments. Individual thermostats providing indoor temperatures and instantaneous energy consumption are installed at each individual dwelling in the first and second building.

There are three levels of energy monitoring defined in the pilot site:

The basic level for establishing the base line consumption and the control group for the evaluation of the energy savings.
First and second levels of monitoring for providing Resource Usage Awareness Service (RUAS) and Resource Management Services (RMS) to the tenants and to the housing company.

The following table summarises the measurements:

	Basic level	First level	Second level
Dwellings	130	38	6
Gas	x	x	x
Recycled water	x	x	x
Cold water	x	x	x
Electricity	x	x	x
Electric sub metering			x
Indoor temperature			x
Indoor relative humidity			x

Pilot Site Video

Key Facts

Partners	International Center for Numerical Methods in Engineering (CIMNE)
	Foment de la Rehabilitació Urbana de Manresa (FORUM)
	Pich-Aguilera Architects (PICH)
The awareness raising service for tenants (RUAS) measures the following parameter(s)	Total electricity, space heating, DHW, cold water, solar fraction (first level) additionally sub-metering of 3 electric lines, internal temperature and relative humidity (second level)
The management service used by professionals (RMS) measures the following parameter(s)	The same parameters on RUAS, plus gas consumption of the central heating system, hot water produced by solar systems and water reused on toilets.
Expected savings	20%
Dwellings equipped with service	174

Resource Usage Awareness Service (RUAS)

Service Description

The service collects information on water, electricity, gas, solar production, recycled water, space heating and DHW consumption. The portal provides the tenants with access to historic consumption on different time scales. Personalised saving tips are generated automatically according to the consumption. Tips not only depend on consumption resulting in generic advice (e.g. lower temperature of thermostats) but take into account the environmental influences and suggest appropriate actions (e.g. consider closing thermostats while opening windows).

Features

Devices/Media	WEB Portal, IN-HOME DISPLAYS (partly), paper
Link to prototype	http://beca.cimne.com user: demo1; pwd: demo1
Prototype
Parameters shown	Electricity, water, space heating, domestic hot water and gas consumption (partly also internal temperature, humidity, thermostat set-point, electric sub-metering and solar energy)
Periods data is visualised	Monthly, weekly, daily and hourly
Benchmarking opportunities/ comparisons	Previous periods Other tenants Average consumption of all dwellings in the same building m²
Units	In [kWh] and [m³] and also calculated approximately in [€] using utility’s average prices
Target setting	Tenants can fix their energy consumption objective separately for gas and electricity for the month introducing it in [€].
Forecasting	In case of very high energy consumption levels and abnormal inside temperatures. For simplifying the web portal usage these alarms will be pre-defined by the service providing company.
Alerts (in portal, email, sms, phone call)	Personalised tips are generated according to the tenant’s specific consumption profile.
Saving tips	Users can introduce and modify their weekly occupation profile. The occupancy profile is weekly and for each hour the number of persons occupying the dwelling is introduced.
Report by letter	Mailbox: automatic tips and advises generated from the system are shown, and also the messages to tenants from the energy manager are visualised.
Energy coach	Monthly reports summarising the energy consumption of the tenants are generated automatically by the energy web portal and sent to tenants by email.

Resource Management Service (RMS)

Service Description

The RMS monitors the energy produced by the solar system and aims to assure the achievement of the projected solar fraction, early fault detection and maintenance management. In many cases the solar thermal systems, which are obligatory for new residential buildings in Manresa, do not operate properly and this has not been detected for a long time. This has led in a lot of cases to higher consumption and higher energy bills for tenants. This situation could be improved substantially with early detection and corrective maintenance.

The service will be automatic and does not require specific actions of the tenants or the housing company. Automatic maintenance warnings are created from the monitoring system and sent to maintenance staff. Monitoring of the solar thermal contribution is installed in the central solar system. The solar contribution to water heating is calculated by the monitoring system back office.

When there is thermal energy consumption for three consecutive days, but there is no solar energy contribution, the system sends automatically an alert to the maintenance staff.

Features

Devices/Media	WEB Portal
Prototype
Parameters shown	The same parameters as for RUAS, plus hot water produced by solar systems, gas consumption in central boilers and water reused on toilets.
Alerts	Automatic maintenance warnings are created from the monitoring system and sent to maintenance staff.

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