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The annual Finnish National Housing Fair was arranged this year in the city of Vantaa from July 9th until August 10th with a total of approximately 140.000 visitors. BaseN was present at the fair with the Smart Building IoT service that was built for Vantaan Energia, the local energy company, to provide real-time information of the varying hourly electricity price and other energy-efficient smart home features to the residents of apartment building Spinelli.
BaseN Platform measures the electricity as well as cold and hot water consumption of each of the 58 Spinelli apartments in real time. The electricity and water usage is additionally translated to the actual cost in Euros, a more understandable measure for households. The tenants have at a glance insight to the hourly changing electricity price, enabling them to plan ahead for their energy usage, e.g. to run the washing machine or dish washer during the most economical hours.
A new energy efficiency feature is the demographic comparison between households. The user interface allows households to see how their electricity and water consumption relates to other households with the same amount of family members. Via home/away control the families can request the system to send an alarm if electricity or water consumption is higher than expected when no one is at home. This can help detecting water leaks or faulty electric appliances before serious harm is caused.
Now that the Housing Fair is over, the new tenants are moving in to the Spinelli building. The energy management system already received many positive comments. “A lot of fair visitors wondered why their apartments or houses are not equally smart considering the service comes with a considerably low cost”, says Timo Vitikainen, Business Manager at BaseN. “We at BaseN believe that this kind of Smart Home solution will be implemented in every new and retrofitted building within a couple of years as the energy saving impact is big with low effort. People become more and more energy aware and want to have options available at their home to save real money and to lower their carbon footprint.”
Iivari Airaksinen from Vantaan Energia says that the consumption behaviour of the energy and other resources is changing. “People expect good services for reasonable price. However, they do not waste the valuable resources but are conscious about these limited resources.”
More information about Spinelli is available here.
