Smart Buildings/Smart Spaces: MIT Portugal Co-hosts Meeting

The 2nd Meeting of the Monitoring and Control Cluster on Smart Buildings/Smart Spaces was held on  November 11-12, 2010 at Instituto Superior Técnico and was jointly organized by the European Commission (through Dr. Jorge Pereira, Principal Scientific Officer of Embedded Systems and Control), Instituto Superior Técnico (IST), Telecommunications Institute (IT), and the MIT Portugal Program.

On the first day the conference was held at the Instituto Superior Técnico (Alameda Campus). Throughout the day, interventions by business and academia representatives pointed to the challenges and opportunities in capturing the “intelligence” of a fully networked environment of sensors that are already deployed but presently working in isolation (e.g. energy, meteorological, and transportation-related).  This would allow for a more informed decision-making process in our everyday lives, for instance in the adoption of networked vehicles or “intelligent” energy management solutions. Although this vision of a fully networked environment of sensors and actuators may have its benefits, some issues remain - like privacy and security - that need to be properly addressed.

Prof. Paulo Ferrão, Director of the MIT Portugal Program, addressed the audience with examples of how a multidisciplinary approach within the overall IST Energy Initiative could generate results in the development of innovative solutions in the smart energy management area that could be applied as a test-bed at the IST campuses. Prof. Paulo Ferrão presented some of the research work being developed in the Portuguese universities, by doctoral students within the MIT Portugal Program from the Energy Focus Area, aimed at developing new energy modeling techniques, smart grid models and decentralized energy production systems optimization, as well as the analysis of consumer behavior when faced with information from smart metering solutions. All of this research work is in fact aimed at the development of a ”smart city” vision, in which all the information gathered from energy measuring sensors and actuators may, in a coordinated approach, work together as a more “intelligent” overall system, contributing to the goals of energy efficiency and the reduction of CO2 emissions.

Prof. Paulo Ferrão

One of the projects cited by Prof. Paulo Ferrão was the energy efficiency living lab that is being developed by the MIT Portugal Program and that has been deployed at the IST building at Taguspark, in which there are installed 19 gas meters, 72 enthalpy meters, and 44 electricity meters. The main objective of this living lab is, at a first stage, to capture all the energy measurements from the IST building at Taguspark. Based on that data, we should be able to generate intelligent demand side management algorithms that can impact energy consumption (thus acting on the demand side of the equation) -  for instance shutting down lights if there is sufficient outside luminosity, achieve load transfer techniques by shifting consumptions to non-peak hours, simulate dynamic pricing mechanisms to promote consumer energy shifts from peak-hours, or to simulate the possibility for the utility companies to directly affect appliance consumption in peak hours by giving financial benefits to consumers that permit direct control of their appliances.

On November 12, conference delegates visited the technical facilities (energy and HVAC) at both the Alameda IST campus and the Taguspark campus. At the IST building at Taguspark delegates had the possibility of seeing the technical facilities of the building, but also the energy metering infrastructure installed within the scope of the energy efficiency living lab developed within the MIT Portugal Program.