Greece: Aspra Spitia

• Pilot Site: Aspra Spitia
• Location: Mytilineos, Greece
• Year of construction: 1960s & 1980s
• Type of buildings: Apartments and Detached houses
• Area: 2,492 m²
• Number of dwellings: 1088
• Number of residents: 3000
• Demographics/Residents: Working-class families
• Facility Manager: Metlen
• Iot Developer: Hypertech

Description:
The Aspra Spitia (White Houses) settlement was constructed in the 1960’s at the area of Viotia, 150 km away from Athens at the Antikyra Cove. The settlement is a model working-class community accommodating the families of employees of the local aluminium production industry and two large power plants of Metlen. It was designed to be self-sufficient while ensuring high living standards to its residents. Over the years, Aspra Spitia has been expanding and today it spans over an area of 2,492 m². The settlement accounts for 1,088 dwellings and more than 3000 residents. It incorporates tertiary buildings including schools, health & public services, a cultural & sport centres, as well as numerous shops and other small businesses. Overall, Aspra Spitia has evolved to an outward community with strong social dynamics as its residents forge strong relationships within their neighbourhoods and their workspace.

The Project:
Through this pool of diverse buildings, a selection of dwellings will act as CHRONICLE’s pilot sites including 7 apartments and 12 detached houses. As owner and FM of these buildings, Metlen aspires to higher rating as well as a smarter and more sustainable operation for all the settlement buildings under the corporate social responsibility it adopts in line with the UN Sustainable Development Goals. CHRONICLE services will support and motivate end-users in improving their energy efficiency and offer actionable recommendations to the FM to improve the overall building operation. Additionally, Metlen can minimise its operational and maintenance costs through more accurate monitoring and predictive maintenance, while reducing and de-risking investments for renovations using CHRONICLE’s renovation planning services.

 IoT implementation:
For the CHRONICLE testing and validation activities, two sites already equipped with Hypertech’s IoT solution were considered: the pre-validation testbeds (available from the earlier stages of the project for pre-validation testing activities) and the Greek pilot site (Aspra Spitia). The former comprises a diverse group of buildings and the latter consists exclusively of single-family buildings. Within CHRONICLE, to accommodate economies of scale at the case of the Greek pilot, the households selected had Hypertech’s core IoT solution already deployed, as part of the project H2020 – ACCEPT. This solution was further enhanced to fulfill CHRONICLE’s data requirements.

In principle, the solution is designed to provide a cost efficient and modular system, based on certified, off-the-shelf devices. Hypertech’s IoT Gateway acts as a bridge between the physical devices on site and the cloud component responsible for managing and distributing the collected data. The Hypertech’s IoT Gateway functionalities relevant to CHRONICLE activities are only briefly described in this section as they have already been reported in previous tasks documents as the conceptual architecture of the IoT Gateway

At the heart of Hypertech’s IoT solution stands the IoT Gateway. The IoT Gateway is in principle responsible for establishing bilateral communication with the different sensors and smart meters installed locally, through a multi-protocol communication system. The IoT Gateway component responsible is the multi-protocol sensing and actuation communication which facilitates data collection from the IoT equipment installed on site, further allowing for control automation on site although this functionality will not be used within CHRONICLE.
The commissioning and configuration application is also part of the IoT Gateway firmware, providing a UI through which different devices can be included and configured in the local infrastructure in a user-friendly and intuitive manner. A number of additional functionalities are also included in the gateway firmware to improve the maintenance activities and ensure the continuous and seamless communication of the system. From these functionalities, the ones relevant to the scope of CHRONICLE include:

1. the firmware over-the-air updates, ensuring that the local firmware remains up to date to the latest version available;
   
2. the back-up mechanism activated if the local internet connection is disrupted to
   prevent data loss until the connectivity is restored;
3. the network healing component allowing the gateway to identify and self-heal a number of issues to reduce the necessary interventions during its operation;
4. Further infrastructure designed to ensure that the Gateway complies with all security requirements of the project;
   

Hardware wise, the devices included in the solution have been selected to be off-the-shelf, certified and discrete to ensure end-user acceptance. The main protocols used for their communication were WiFi and Z-Wave. Plug and play solutions are favoured as they allow easy installation and minimize intrusive interventions at the pilot households. The overall health of the respective installations can be monitored by an auxiliary in-house tool developed by Hypertech to facilitate the real time overview of installed equipment health,
thus facilitating the day-to-day maintenance of the pilot sites by the partners adopting Hypertech’s IoT solution.

Within CHRONICLE, a number of adjustments were performed to allow the pilot site compliance with project technical requirements. First, in compliance with CHRONICLE’s architecture, the system was configured to send the collected data to Hypertech’s cloud where they are further processed and stored before being sent to the CDE in the agreed data model.

In addition, to fully address the indoor air quality (IAQ) indicators defined within D2.2 CHRONICLE dynamic Level(s) approach for building and LC performance assessment, new sensors were ordered and installed at the Greek pilot site to allow the monitoring of a wider range of environmental parameters, in compliance with the data requirements of CHRONICLE.