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Description
Yodiwo S.A. is a company operating within the field of digital systems for Business Operation Management. They provide solutions based on an in-house developed groundbreaking IoT cloud platform.
Energy efficiency in buildings is becoming increasingly important, with relevant EU Directives (e.g. EU 2018/844) and efforts taken towards increasing energy savings for the existing building infrastructure are needed.
Yodiwo’s R&D project EUROSTIA is a proposed solution to these challenges. The project comprises of the development of an ESG-aligned Integrated Management System (IWMS) that will combine IoT, Big Data and AI/ML to create the digital twin of facilities and organizations, and optimize their operation across several areas, including energy consumption but also equipment maintenance and the comfort of its occupants. The solution will lead to a reduction in energy consumption of any type of facility, reduction of equipment maintenance costs, while improving the environmental conditions (taking into account the comfort levels for temperature, humidity, CO2, noise and lighting).
12 new jobs and 1 new green industry innovation solution will be created through the project. Additionally, increased revenues and competitiveness of Yodiwo.
Summary of project results
In the EU, around 40% of the total energy consumption takes place in buildings, while about a third of the energy-related greenhouse gas emissions comes from buildings. In addition, 80% of the energy used in EU homes is for heating cooling, and hot water. Currently, 85% of EU buildings were build before 2000, and amongst those, 75% has poor energy performance. (source: European Commission).
Energy efficiency in buildings is therefore becoming increasingly important, with relevant EU Directives (e.g. EU 2018/844) and efforts towards increasing energy efficiency measures for the existing building infrastructure coming to force.
Yodiwo’s project EUROSTIA proposed solution to these challenges. The project concerned the development of an ESG-aligned Integrated Management System (IWMS) that combines IoT, Big Data and AI/ML to create the digital twin of facilities, and optimize their operation across several areas, including energy consumption but also equipment maintenance and the comfort of its occupants. The solution will contribute to an overall reduction in energy consumption of any type of facility, reduction of equipment maintenance costs, while improving the environmental conditions (taking into account the comfort levels for temperature, humidity, CO2, noise and lighting).
Through the project, Yodiwo developed software modules operating remotely to minimize the energy consumption of any type of facility, while also considering predictive maintenance of equipment, indoor air quality, occupants’ habits, production intensity and process-oriented operation of organizations, as great contributors to energy efficiency. Yodiwo closely collaborated with the University of Southeast Norway (USN), that is known for research in predictive models for energy consumption in buildings. Those models were tested using historical data that Yodiwo had collected from its customers, were augmented with additional functionalities and adapted/improved accordingly, before being tested again through Yodiwo''s existing client base.
The project will contribute to improved energy efficiency in a large variety of different facilities, while as the same time respecting and tracking ESG metrics. It will therefore contribute to decreased CO2 emissions, improved working environment, as well as savings for facility managers and companies.
The project also led to the creation and retention of 5 new positions (jobs) within Yodiwo, and will contribute to increased turnover and net operating profit for the company.
Summary of bilateral results
The partnership between Yodiwo and USN has proven to be extremely beneficial, and led to significant knowledge exchange between the two organisatons. In collaboration with Yodiwo, USN advanced their research on predictive models and data analysis, and engaged students in applied work through projects. USN leveraged its prior experience and expertise on energy estimation modeling and AI/ML applications. By working on the project and using real-life datasets from building operations as well as buildings outside of Norway, USN had the valuable opportunity to to apply its models on a large-scale dataset generated by actual buildings, and also to test them in a different climate than Norway. USN therefore verified the models’ effectiveness, evaluated, validated, adjusted, and further extended them based on the performance of the algorithms on the datasets. Before the project, these models had been based on parameters to estimate energy consumption in Norwegian buildings, but through the project, they were enhanced to also consider parameters such as space occupancy, the Coefficient of Performance (COP) of cooling systems (which is critical for buildings in Southern Europe) as well as production demand in cases of industrial applications.The partnership is likely to extend beyond project completion and, according to Yodiwo "This synergy serves as a model for how academia and the private sector can work together effectively to achieve common goals."