The new Grundfos dormitory is situated at the harbor in Aarhus and was ready for its first residents in August 2012. Besides the great view of Aarhus Bay which the 198 students can enjoy from their apartments, people do not think there is anything unusual about the typical tower block at first sight.

But they are wrong. The grey concrete building has integrated technology equipment worth of millions, and now researchers are starting perhaps the world's largest full scale experiment with intelligent control of the energy use.

"This is the most monitored building I know and therefore it is a completely unique research lab. We are able to register the residents' energy consuming behaviour with a frequency of a few seconds down to room level", says Steffen Petersen, assistant professor at Aarhus University School of Engineering.

The purpose is that each apartment automatically provides a good indoor climate with low energy use. For instance, the apartment is able to register visitors and then makes sure that the air humidity is not too high. And the building's systems collect continuously information about the weather forecast and communicates with the heat and ventilation functions in the apartments such that they at all times have a comfortable room temperature with the lowest possible energy use.

Researchers monitor energy use 24/7
During the next three years, the dormitory will form the basis of one of Aarhus University's large energy research projects. For each one of the dormitory’s 132 apartments, temperature, humidity level, CO₂emission and water flow, heat and electricity will be logged every sixth second 24 hours a day. In this way, researchers get access to completely unique data.

"When we have a sufficient amount of data, we can begin to take a look at correlations. Are there any particular peak periods? And are we able to control the energy consuming behaviour in relation to the actual supply of electricity in an energy supply system based on renewable energy", explains Steffen Petersen.

Furthermore, it is the intention that the building will receive weather prognoses about temperature, wind conditions and the direction of the sun, and the researchers are already doing experiments on how this information is able to regulate the building's total heat and ventilation need automatically with the lowest possible energy use and the most optimal comfort level for the young people that live there.

Want to make buildings intelligent
If you forget to turn off the light or other equipment, the apartment must be able to help you either by turning off the light itself or by asking you for permission to do so. Or perhaps it lowers the temperature when you are out and turns up the heat in good time before you return in order to save energy. This is the researchers' development scenarios, explains Steffen Petersen:

"We must further develop intelligent energy use control that is able to help the users of a building develop desirable energy behaviour without them noticing it. I think that this will be the case in a few years. There is a huge energy saving potential in automating certain processes. The building itself must know if it has a cooling or a heating need tomorrow and it must calculate itself when it is most appropriate to use more energy", says Steffen Petersen.

For the individual apartments, the intelligent control of the energy use will give increased possibilities in the long term of using the electricity when the electricity production is high and the price is low. The difficult thing about electricity is that it must be used when it is produced - otherwise it is wasted.

"We want to see how much we are able to adapt buildings of this type to a future with fluctuating energy. The goal is to develop a finished prototype of an intelligent system that is able to control the electricity consuming units in the home based on supply and demand. If it is windy during the night, this time will be the most appropriate to use the laundry machine", says Steffen Petersen.

Future buildings make predictions
One of the researchers' largest technological challenges is to develop a communication system that not only automatically registers information about the amount of available electricity but also predicts patterns in the electricity use of the dormitory's residents.

"When we have collected information about the energy use in the dormitory during a specific period, we can begin to predict what will most likely happen at a given time under the given weather conditions. And this is very valuable in that we can start working on the design of intelligent buildings which automatically respond to the users' needs in the most sustainable way", says Steffen Petersen.

BACKGROUND

The research project includes Denmark's most comprehensive measuring program for buildings' energy use.

The title of the project is Virtual Power Plan for Smart Grid Ready Buildings. The project is funded by energinet.dk under the ForskEL program and has a total budget of DKK 7.55 million.

Grundfos dormitory at the harbour in Aarhus has integrated technological equipment worth of millions. A large part of the equipment is funded by the industry concern Grundfos A/S which also uses the measuring facilities to do experiments on heat recovery from waste water.

Read more about the project "Development of the future's intelligent electrical grid"

CONTACT

Steffen Petersen, assistant professor, Aarhus University School of Engineering: stp@iha.dk; +45 41893347