IDEAS

IDEAS: Innovative Technologies Improving Building Sustainability

 

Buildings play a significant role in the global energy balance. They account for about 40% of total EU energy use, and 36% of energy-related greenhouse gas emissions. The EU’s renovation wave strategy requires buildings’ final energy demand to be reduced by 14%, and heating and cooling energy use reduced by 18% by 2030. Deployment of Renewable Energy Systems (RES) will be essential in reducing achieving these goals.

 

RES often require more space than is practicable in the densely built-up urban setting. Apartment blocks and offices have restricted roof space and surrounding building footprints. This means that traditional solar and geothermal technologies space requirements are often insufficient to meet the needs of buildings’ energy needs.

 

IDEAS brings together a number of efficiency and scale improvements to solar thermal, PV and geothermal RES. These enable greater energy efficiencies to be achieved using a smaller area. This will mean that buildings in urban settings will be able to have more of their energy needs met by sustainable sources.

 

If you have interest in knowing more about the project please check here.

 

 

The Key Components:

 

Luminescent Downshifting Layer (LDS)

Compound Parabolic Concentrators (CPCs)

Phase Change Materials (PCMs)

Flat Panel Ground Source Heat Exchangers (GSHX)

Air-to-water Heat Pump (AWHP)

Radiant Floors

Smart Building Software System

 

 

 

Integrated Efficiencies

 

The space and efficiency that these components capable of achieving are integrated via an intelligent building management system. This predicts the buildings energy requirements on an hourly, daily, and seasonal basis to manage the outputs from the RES to create a comfortable consistent ambient temperature in the building year-round.

 

 

Project Achievements

 

Our prototype installation was very successful with recorded increased efficiencies of >20%. We have now moved on to two real-world demonstration installations (in Mayo, Ireland and Ferrara, Italy). Both buildings have very different climates and user conditions and so reflect a cross-section of possible applications for the technology. User responses at the installations have been very promising.

 

IDEAS will launch the successful deployment of its Irish installation in May 2022 at a public stakeholder event. After this launch, we will commence the third stage of our work actively seeking industry partners from the relevant building energy efficiency sectors across Europe to bring this exciting new technology to production.

For more information on the project email: info@horizon2020ideas.eu

 

 

IDEAS Partners

 

The IDEAS project is led by the Department of Civil, Structural and Mechanical Engineering in TCD, utilising modern laboratory resources in close partnership with the University of Belfast.

 

The other IDEAS partners consist of universities, public and private organisations with demonstration sites to be located in north and south Europe (specifically Ireland and Italy):

 

  • APESF & APREN (Portugal);
  • APK Architects Ltd (Ireland);
  • Energy Co-operatives (Ireland);
  • Fasthouse (Northern Ireland);
  • Institute Mihailo Pupin (Serbia);
  • LEITAT Technological Center (Spain);
  • LNEG - Laboratório Nacional de Energia e Geologia (Portugal);
  • Mayo County Council (Ireland);
  • Phase Change Material Products Ltd (United Kingdom);
  • Power Capital (Ireland);
  • Trinity College Dublin (Ireland);
  • Ulster University (Northern Ireland);
  • University of Ferrara (Italy);
  • University of Cagliary (Italy).