The Portuguese pilot site is organized in three different buildings: a city hall, a school complex and a kindergarten. In the current phase of the project, these buildings assume a very important role: they are the pilot buildings where all tools developed by the MOEEBIUS project will be tested.
Before tests of all MOEEBIUS tools, the three buildings need to have real-time monitoring in order to calibrate models, optimize energy efficiency strategies and compare the efficiency of each building before and after the implementation of MOEEBIUS.
In November and December 2017, metering equipment was installed in all three buildings. The way this equipment works is by having PLC (programmable logic controller) that connects all sensors and actuators to the MOEEBIUS cloud platform. This platform will allow us to see real-time data and send commands to the actuators.
The metering equipment is tailored to each building and its performance conditions. With energy meters it’s possible to track the energy consumption both on global and local level. Heat meters allow us to see the heating or cooling energy which can be used for the purposes of maintenance of a machine. Ambience conditions meters enable the integration of parameters such as indoor air quality or occupant comfort. On the other hand, the actuators will work as a means to test MOEEBIUS tools. By changing setpoints, dimming levels and equipment schedules accordingly to MOEEBIUS results, we can check the effectiveness of this tools on energy efficiency.
In the city hall there will be seven validation rooms, representing around 10% of floor area. The main purpose in this building is to increase energy efficiency by controlling HVAC and lighting systems, always taking in consideration the occupants’ comfort and indoor air quality.
The school complex is composed of the school itself, plus a sports hall and the swimming pool. In the school itself there will be four validation rooms, which accounts to a quarter of all classrooms. In the swimming pool, the main purpose is to monitor the boilers. These boilers produce heat, not only for the swimming pool water heating but also for space heating in the school. The main purpose in the school complex is to monitor the heat production and distribution as well as optimize lighting systems, indoor air quality and occupants’ comfort.
Finally, the kindergarten is a small building where the focus will be the same as in the city hall. There will only be monitoring equipment on two of the four classrooms.