60 homes in Sant Cugat have reduced their energy consumption by 20% thanks to a project driven by Gas Natural Fenosa and Indra

The 3e-houses pilot European program has already produced its first results after the first year in operation. The 60 homes in the municipality of Sant Cugat del Vallès (Barcelona) that participated in the project attained the project objectives and managed to reduce their energy consumption by 20% throughout the 12 month period.

The project ended in April and it involved the integration of new technologies in homes to achieve an innovating energy saving system. To do so, a series of tools were developed to calculate and visualise the consumption of electricity, gas and water inside each home in real time. Next, each participant was provided with free Internet access and a digital device (a tablet) where they could easily check the consumption at each moment. The aim was to increase the awareness of participants, who followed a series of simple instructions to reduce their energy consumption.

The first results of the project showed that each home was saving in the following areas: a mean of 20.2% litres and kWh of hot domestic water, 10% less heating consumption, 31.5% less gas and 16.2% less cold water consumed. The reduction of the energy consumption also had an impact on the atmospheric emission of CO2, which was reduced by 52.74 tonnes.

In addition, the project had a positive impact on the buildings, since the savings reached 22% in the common areas of each building participating in this initiative.

The lower energy consumption of the 60 project participants translated into mean annual savings of 164 euros per home in the electricity, water and gas bills. We must also add the lower consumption in the common areas to these figures, with annual savings of 92 euros per home. To sum up, each home participating in the study achieved savings of up to 256 euros in their energy consumption.

In addition to Gas Natural Fenosa's and Indra's participation, Promusa, developer of the Town Council of Sant Cugat del Vallès, also participated in the European Union's 3e-houses initiative.

The project was implemented in Germany at the same time and the pilot projects are being replicated in England and Germany. The European Commission expects to gather the global results during the first months of the year 2013.

Solutions applied to homes

The consumption of 60 homes was measured between May 2011 and April 2012 (inclusive) to implement the program.

To this end, simple solutions were implemented to reduce the consumption of energy in homes, such as the elimination of the stand-by systems in electrical appliances with the installation of terminals trips and the installation of programmable thermostats in homes to reduce the consumption of heating systems.

The energy savings were achieved in the common building areas with the reduction of the automatic lighting times in garages and passing zones. Control systems were implemented in the garage ventilation systems and presence detectors were installed in lifts. The light used to be on 24 hours a day and, finally, the boiler control system was optimised to achieve a more efficient operation.

Conclusions of the study

Two main objectives were attained with the project implemented in Sant Cugat. On the one hand, the savings potential was assessed with the implementation of energy management systems in the residential sector and, on the other hand, we established the conditions under which these technologies are most effective, for their future implementation.

Therefore, the main conclusion in relation to the savings potential establishes energy consumption savings of up to 20% in individual homes. Likewise, the annual economic savings after adding up the electricity, water, gas and common area bills is over 256 euros per home.

As regards the conditions under which these technologies are more effective for their subsequent implementation, we must take into account the greater awareness of environmental matters and use of ICTs by home users, which provides few information that can be easily understand by these users and it allows the implementation of neighbour dynamisation activities that allow them to interact, share consumption information and maintain the commitment of all users to employ these systems.

Likewise, the analysis of the results shows how information and communications technologies (ICTs) can be used as an effective tool to achieve the energy efficiency objectives in the residential sector.