Abstract

Energy efficiency is one of the main societal goals for a sustainable future. Buildings, both residential and commercial, are at the forefront of energy efficiency initiatives. However, in order to achieve the next level of democratization of efficient energy management, all participating systems from smart building and energy domains need to work together in an integrated and interoperable manner. The main objective of the H2020 InterConnect project is to enable this interoperability between systems, platforms, services and all other endpoints which participate in complex ecosystems of energy efficiency management of smart buildings. In order to achieve this, the project specifies interoperable and secure IoT and energy reference architecture based on standard reference architectures in both domains and leveraging semantic web technologies. The semantic interoperability is based on SAREF (Smart Appliance Reference) ontology standard, which enables implementation of innovative semantic reasoning and discovery procedures to be implemented. The InterConnect interoperability framework also provides a service store for all interoperable energy and non-energy services, P2P energy marketplace based on private permissioned blockchain technology and advanced security and data protection procedures. The InterConnect interoperability enablers will be validated in seven large scale pilots across Belgium, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, Portugal and The Netherlands. Carefully specified, highly innovative use cases are selected for realization within each of the project pilots. This will ensure that the project results are validated in real-world deployments with high impact on the energy efficiency management market, relevant standardization bodies and regulation efforts on country and European levels.
This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under Grant agreement No 857237.

Authors

Milenko Tosic (male), MSc is director of innovation at the VizLore Labs Foundation. He received his Master of Science degree in Electrical Engineering from University of Novi Sad, Serbia 2009. His research interests are oriented towards knowledge based and context aware computer network management, machine learning techniques for pattern recognition, energy efficiency management systems for smart buildings, context aware algorithms and protocols for management of IoT service provision and resources and application of blockchain technologies in IoT and energy domains.

Ognjen Ikovic (male), MSc is director of engineering at VizLore Labs Foundation. He has received his Masters degree in Microprocessor electronics. Ognjen is leading company’s engineering activities in the domain of the Internet of Things (IoT) as applied to Smart Cities, Smart Buildings, Smart Grid and Smart Transportation. His research aspirations are aimed at building blockchain based systems for and beyond IoT, machine learning and data analysis model development and implementation, cloud based systems and smart building systems.

Sasa Pesic (male), MSc is director of software development at VizLore Labs Foundation. He received his Master of Science degree in Software Engineering from University of Novi Sad. He is currently a Teaching Assistant at the Faculty of Sciences, Department of Computer Science, University of Novi Sad, where he is also pursuing his Ph.D. degree. His research interests include blockchain technology, machine learning based microlocation asset tracking and indoor navigation, context-aware edge computing systems and detection of communities in large-scale social networks.

Prof. Dragan Boscovic (male), PhD is founder and president of the VizLore Labs Foundation steering committee. He is a seasoned internet industry executive and senior technology expert with more than 25 years of experience focused on technology innovation, research strategy, business development and product management. Prof Boscovic commands an excellent understanding of global R&D landscape via his personal network of connections that include business, academia and regulatory aspects. He currently leads the Blockchain research Lab as part of the CASCADE institute at the Arizona State University.

Fábio André Coelho (male), PhD is currently a senior researcher of the High Assurance Software Lab (HASLab), one of the INESC TEC’s research units. He obtained his PhD degree, in the context of the MAP-i Doctoral Programme, from the universities of Minho, Aveiro and Porto (Portugal) in 2018. His research is focused on cloud SQL HTAP databases, non-relational databases, cloud computing, distributed systems, Blockchain and IoT. He has several international publications in top-tier conferences, such as SRDS, DAIS and ICPE. He participated in several national and EU H2020 projects such as CoherentPaaS, LeanBigData, CloudDBAppliance, InteGrid and InterConnect.

David Emanuel Rua (male), PhD is Consultant/Senior Researcher and X-Energy Management Area Leader. In 2008, he received the M.Sc. in Electrical Engineering at IST, UTL, Lisbon. He obtained his Ph.D. degree in the Doctoral Program in Sustainable Energy Systems (MIT Portugal) at FEUP in 2015. He was the main coordinator of the H2020 AnyPLACE project and has been involved in EU project MERGE and SUSTAINABLE and national projects such as InovGrid in cooperation with the Portuguese DSO (EDP) and REIVE in cooperation with Portuguese industrial partners. He has been involved in telecom and power system projects for more than 12 years, in the control and operation of power systems, supporting telecommunication infrastructures, DER and renewable energy integration in smart grids. David coordinates the InterConnect project.