MVO Establishment of and participation in the IEA EBC Annex 81 "Data-driven Smart Buildings"

The International Energy Agency (IEA) Implementing Agreement on Energy in Buildings and Communities (EBC) is launching a new Annex 81 on "Data-driven Smart Buildings"; hereafter called Annex 81 or simply the Annex. The Annex will be operative for 3 years starting in June 2020, and it is now in the first year of operation. The operating Agent will be Australia; 7 countries already engaged in it and further 3 are likely to join, depending on funding availability, including Norway. SINTEF Community has already been involved in the drafting of the Annex 81 text and Description of Work, i.e. preparation of the first draft that received approval by the EBC ExCo and thereafter has been assigned the Annex number 81. The need for establishing this new Annex 81 arises from the fact that to-date no Annex has focused fully on the opportunities offered by Digitalization, and the potential opportunity of IT/OT convergence to deliver low-cost insights generated from data, more intelligent data-driven automation, and novel HVAC- and Building-as-a-Service business models. The purpose of the Annex is to help harness the emerging digital technology revolution to both reduce energy consumption in buildings, and to enable buildings to participate as distributed energy resources in support of increased use of variable renewable electricity sources. SINTEF Community is partner in an IPN-project together with IWMAC AS and DNB Næringseiendom AS. The project (Databygg) is very well aligned with goals of Annex81 and in that way Norwegian industry/companies can benefit from the international know-how in the field of data-driven smart buildings.

The overarching Annex aim is to increase access to low-cost high-quality data from buildings and support the development of data-driven software "Applications" that provide real time building optimization and decision support for building facilities managers. The Annex has a number of specific objectives relating to the sub-components of i) data-collection, ii) digital characterization of buildings, iii) coding of knowledge into smart "Applications", and iv) supporting the utilization of data-driven products and services. Additional objectives are - Developing a Building Emulator platform that enables testing, development and assessment of the impact of alternative building HVAC control strategies; - Developing building energy efficiency (and related) software "Applications" that can be used and ideally commercialized for reducing energy consumption in buildings.

The International Energy Agency (IEA) Implementing Agreement on Energy in Buildings and Communities (EBC) is launching a new Annex 81 on "Data-driven Smart Buildings"; hereafter called Annex 81 or simply the Annex. The Annex will be operative for 3 years starting on January 2020, and it is now in the one year preparation phase. The operating Agent will be Australia; 7 countries already engaged in it and further 3 are likely to join, depending on funding availability, including Norway. SINTEF Community has already been involved in the drafting of the Annex 81 text and Description of Work, i.e. preparation of the first draft that received approval by the EBC ExCo and thereafter has been assigned the Annex number 81. A short summary of the Annex 81 Description of Work is given in Appendix. The need for establishing this new Annex 81 arises from the fact that to-date no Annex has focused fully on the opportunities offered by Digitalization, and the potential opportunity of IT/OT convergence to deliver low-cost insights generated from data, more intelligent data-driven automation, and novel HVAC- and Building-as-a-Service business models.