The Project

Intelligent home automation technology offers considerable potential for increasing energy efficiency and energy awareness among consumers. With the background of the high energy consumption of private households, this is of great relevance in terms of energy and climate policy. A key challenge in mobilizing this potential is to make the energy consumption of heating, ventilation and electricity use in households and, above all, rented flats transparent to residents. In addition, it is necessary to create opportunities to influence and control energy consumption and thus create incentives for energy saving.

Goal

The aim of the project “SHAPE – service-oriented home automation platform for increasing energy efficiency” is to develop a decentralized energy management system for households and rented flats consisting of intelligent home automation technology. The following positive effects can be achieved with this:

• The end consumer receives greater transparency as well as possibilities for influencing and controlling his personal energy consumption. With the help of intelligent, learning technology and services, they can minimize their household energy consumption and synchronize their electricity consumption with future time- or load-dependent electricity tariffs.
• A decentralized energy management system based on these platforms enables the development of new services that can, for example, bundle efficiency and shift potentials or act as a broker between end consumers and energy suppliers. By mediating between energy storage and relocation potentials, local energy production and flexible tariffs, energy efficiency and competitive structures are promoted which enable the end consumer to have more transparency and influence in the selection of control options and tariffs.
• In the future, energy suppliers and grid operators will be able to integrate households into a balancing of energy demand (load management) by coupling flexible electricity tariffs and intelligent electricity meters (smart meters) with decentralized energy management and involving service providers.
• The legislator can use this development to support the implementation of European and German law, e.g. EU Directive 2006/32/EC on energy end-use efficiency and energy services, thus improving knowledge and transparency of energy consumption and strengthening the role of end consumers.
• In the SHAPE project, existing approaches to intelligent home networking and home automation technology will be further developed in such a way that they can be used in a targeted manner to tap energy efficiency potential by the end consumer in the household. A decentralized energy management system will be developed for this purpose, based on the existing SerCHo Home Service Platform (HSP) and Service Provider Platform (SPP) technology. By systematically integrating decentralized energy management into these platforms, household energy efficiency and shift potentials from the operation of heating and household technology as well as the adaptive use of energy and electricity consumers can be mobilized and made usable for the consumer.

The HSP, whose modular functionality is integratively integrated as part of a home gateway (interface between the home network and access network), will be extended by interfaces to various components of the decentralized energy management system. On the SPP side, components are being developed which, using variable tariffs, allow energy consumption and additional energy services to be billed in real time.