21.12.2007: BeAware EU project invited to contract negotiations

The project proposal BeAware (Boosting energy Awareness with adaptive real-time environments), submitted in response to the 2nd Call of the ICT theme of EU's 7th Framework Programme on 8.10.2007, has been invited to contract negotiations after clearing the technical evaluation with good marks.

The project aims to contribute to the reduction of energy consumption, a societal challenge of first order that requires combination of technical, economical, and social means. So far, energy conservation has focused on new often proprietary technologies and automation, treating users as passive consumers. However, strong evidence suggests that users can adapt actively their behaviour to energy saving with suitable feedback, support, and incentives, reducing significantly and cost-effectively energy use without impacting adversely their comfort.

At present, energy information flows are slow, aggregated, and hidden, being operated by a market lacking incentives and proper service models. The opaqueness discourages users to learn and apply conservation strategies in their everyday lives. However, novel ICT’s offer opportunities for removing this bottleneck. In particular, ubiquitous interfaces and web services, combined with low-cost sensors, support real-time information from energy networks and consumption, empowering users to learn and share conservation strategies.

The project studies how ubiquitous information can turn energy end users into active players by developing: 1) ambient and mobile interfaces to integrate energy use profiles into users’ everyday life; 2) an open and capillary infrastructure sensing wirelessly energy consumption at appliance level; 3) value added service-based platforms and models where consumers can act on ubiquitous energy information while energy producers and other stakeholders gain new business opportunities. The expected impact focuses on 1) grounding the conservation potential to users’ cognitive constraints and practices, 2) ubiquitous computing applications for sensing wirelessly energy use and enabling users to act, and 3) value added service models to innovate a new energy and multi-utility market.

HIIT is the coordinator of the project which also involves the BaseN Corporation (Finland), Interactive Institute II AB (Sweden), Engineering Ingegneria Informatica (Italy), University of Padova (Italy), IES Solutions (Italy), Telefónica Investigación y Desarrollo (Spain), Vattenfall AB (Sweden), and Enel.si (Italy). For more information, please contact Dr. Giulio Jacucci.