THERMOSS

Challenge

Nowadays the building sector has to face the following three main challenges:

• Residential buildings have a high energy consumption, with a high share of natural gas and low to medium penetration of renewable and district heating
• The EU building stock is mainly composed of old buildings and given their lifespan and the current renovation rate, 100 years are required for a full compliance.
• District heating/cooling management is not optimized

THERMOSS (Thermal Energy Resource Modelling and Optimisation System) has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 723562 in order to produce an outstanding contribution to the wider deployment of advanced building heating and cooling technologies in the EU. 

In particular, THERMOSS Project Consortium will develop: 

• a geo-clustered, building typology aware, heating and cooling technology catalogue that will be made available online
• smart DHC technologies
• an automatic sizing toolbox
• a thermal energy management algorithm at building and district level
• an energy management strategy, that will be validated on real sites with different climatic conditions

Our role

In the framework of this project, RINA is in charge of supporting the deployment and demonstration of THERMOSS innovative technologies in order to:

• defining the monitoring approach and sensoring instruments in selected buildings on test sites
• support the collection and post-processing of the data for energy baseline assessment and demonstration

Moreover, RINA will developing appropriate safety measures and procedures for securing the safe performance and installation of the different THERMOSS Technologies to satisfy the safety and building integration standards.

Finally, ensuring that the THERMOSS systems comply with norms and standards currently in force will be an integral part of our activities.

Conclusions

In conclusion, THERMOSS project will have high impacts on competitiveness as well as social and economic welfare of the EU community by ensuring an efficient match between supply and demand of energy through real-time management of thermal energy at building level, then scaled up to district level for District Heating and Cooling (DHC) connected buildings.

Moreover, the project will increase the efficiency of residential building thermal retrofitting, with a target of 30% reduction in energy consumption and sharpen the construction and energy industry awareness as to the need to provide open access to a heating / cooling technology database.

Last but not least, the Project Consortium will demonstrate a high potential of replication throughout Europe, allowing a large market introduction of the selected THERMOSS solutions before 2025.