Iren Smart Solutions S.p.A, supported by Iren S.p.A, is responsible for the identification and management of the PRELUDE demo case of Turin, in Italy: 8 flats located in a multi-apartment building built in 1960–1970s representative for the Turin and general northern Italian residential building stock.

The apartments do not have any previous monitoring or smartness components. This building has a centralised heating system, connected with the city district heating solutions, based on radiators with thermovalves to support end-user control. Additionally, it is characterised by a prevalent free-running summer season, in line with many Italian and southern European residential buildings. The tenants show different level of involvements, representing real local conditions.

The main expectation from using this building in PRELUDE as demo is the possibility to study, test and identify the optimal set of sensors and actuator systems that allows all the building tenants to monitor their energy consumption, optimize indoor thermal comfort and implement the best actions to achieve conscious savings, both in economic and energy terms.

Considering the starting point and the specific reference market sector, different levels of smartness have been considered during the PRELUDE implementation plan, even if they are based on sensoring solutions and on end-user self-actuation actions, without the installation of automatic actuators.

This has supported the implementation of PRELUDE technologies that may be compatible with this building typology and context, including the Comfort – Energy Efficiency optimizer developed by STAM and different PREDYCE functionalities developed by POLITO.

In particular, Gruppo Iren carried out installation and maintenance of sensors (environmental sensors, smart plugs, electricity meters, smart thermovalves) and data acquisition devices for 8 apartments; collected data/analysis of results, technology implementation and testing are performed by POLITO and STAM thanks to the end-user involvement mediated by Gruppo Iren.

STAM is working on the empowerment of Turin demo end-users. Their varying energy smartness is enhanced by leveraging data-driven services that can cut cost bills while keeping the desired indoor comfort. In particular, the STAM’s “En-Power platform” is designed to offer an energy monitoring dashboard and a comfort energy optimizer tool. Thanks to deployed IoT sensors, the citizen can have access to clear and effective data flows, which support her or him for a smart energy management of the apartment.

POLITO supports the 24h forecast technology integration in one of the Turin demo apartments, with the aim of improving thermal comfort via free-running technology activation, i.e. shading activation and window opening, by supporting tenants’ self-actuation actions. Users’ suggestions are sent via a Telegram Bot with custom notification timetables to avoid continuous alerting and focusing when tenants are usually at home. Post-analyses are possible thanks to IEQ sensors in the apartment and a historical weather forecast database logged respectively on FusiX and POLITO servers.