The potential of smart technologies in the building sector was heavily emphasised in the 2018 revision of the European Energy Performance of Buildings Directive (EPBD) and the concept of a Smart Readiness Indicator (SRI) was introduced.
What makes a building smart
The ‘smartness’ of a building refers to its ability to sense, interpret, communicate and actively respond in an efficient manner to changing conditions in relation to
- the operation of technical building systems,
- the external environment (including energy grids)
- demands from building occupants
The SRI rates the smart readiness of buildings (or building units) in their capability to perform 3 key functionalities:
- optimise energy efficiency and overall in-use performance
- adapt their operation to the needs of the occupant
- adapt to signals from the grid (for example energy flexibility)
Advantages
The SRI will raise awareness of the benefits promised by smart building technologies, such as building automation and electronic monitoring of building systems including heating, hot water, ventilation, lighting, etc.
Illustration of some of the expected advantages of smart technologies in buildings.
Through the implementation of the SRI framework, technological innovation in the construction sector becomes supported, and thus it creates an incentive for the integration of cutting-edge smart technologies in buildings.
Smart-ready services
A “smart-ready service catalogue” refers to building services that are categorised into 9 technical domains
- heating
- cooling
- domestic hot water
- ventilation
- lighting
- dynamic building envelope
- electricity
- electric vehicle charging
- monitoring and control
Such smart-ready services are enabled by a combination of smart-ready technologies, but are defined in a technology-neutral way, such as ‘provision of temperature control in a room’.
For a given building, all smart-ready services are assessed against the following desired impacts of smart buildings
- energy efficiency
- maintenance and fault prediction
- comfort
- convenience
- health, well-being and accessibility
- information to occupants
- energy flexibility and storage
SRI rating
The result of the smart-ready services assessment is aggregated into an overall SRI score, which expresses how close the building is to maximum smart readiness. In addition, specific scores on each of the 3 key functionalities of building smartness are calculated.
Documents
- Energy Performance of Buildings Directive (2010/31/EU)
- Amending Energy Performance of Buildings Directive (2018/844/EU)
- Consolidated version of the Energy Performance of Buildings Directive
- Implementing regulation on optional scheme for rating smart readiness of buildings C(2020) 6929 | Annex
- Delegated regulation on optional scheme for rating smart readiness of buildings C(2020) 6930 | Annex