Innovation competition gave rise to new perspectives in energy efficiency of public buildings

The project group surveyed the current status and needs of the premises targeted by the project in preparation for the competition. Last autumn, Forum Virium Helsinki visited the City of Helsinki’s properties and engaged the City’s experts in defining the themes and challenges of the innovation competition. Based on this work, the project group formulated three key topical themes, which the participating companies were asked to start developing energy efficiency solutions around in the innovation competition:

1. Intelligent control of sites and utilisation of new data sources

This theme was used to survey solutions that utilise diverse new sources of information for smarter and more flexible site control. Sources of information include weather conditions, use of space and numbers of visitors. The aim is to improve conditions, reduce energy consumption and facilitate the operation of sites in extreme weather conditions, for example. 

2. From reactive to proactive property maintenance

This theme focused on solutions aimed at making property maintenance proactive instead of reactive. These include improving building services engineering performance, disruption identification and more specific targeting of measures. Here, participants were asked to focus on anticipation, lifecycle cost management and support for site operation.

3. Comparison of challenging properties 

The third theme focused on solutions that enable comparison of challenging properties and prioritisation of identified good practices and measures in areas such as energy efficiency and building services engineering. The service or product could, for example, help produce situational pictures of the City’s property stock and identify scalable solutions.

Companies received help and expert feedback during the competition

The competition started in October with an open information event. Activities to introduce companies to the challenges associated with energy efficiency efforts in public facilities and to help them with developing their solutions were organised during the competition. The activities also allowed companies to network with other companies and talk to Forum Virium Helsinki and City of Helsinki experts.

A key part of the work on the results was a joint brainstorming workshop organised during the competition, focusing on exploring the issues involving challenging properties through co-created themes and reflecting on factors that influence the implementation of energy efficiency solutions. 

In the first phase of the workshop, participants envisioned what the energy-efficient public property of the future would look like for each theme and categorised the challenges associated with each theme from different perspectives. Participants then tried to categorise emerging challenges and understand the underlying factors contributing to their creation. Finally, attention was shifted to measures that could be employed to tackle energy efficiency issues most efficiently.

After the workshop, individual mentoring sessions were held with each company, the aim of which was to summarise and continue the discussion on key approaches emerging from the workshops in terms of the company’s solution. These mentoring discussions made it possible for companies to further develop their own solution before submitting their final competition proposal.

The final competition entries were presented by the companies at a pitching event where representatives of the City of Helsinki’s efforts to promote energy efficiency and implement measures were also present.

“The City of Helsinki is aiming to achieve carbon neutrality by 2030. All measures related to energy efficiency bringing us closer to our goal are extremely important. The companies participating in the innovation competition had varying approaches to the challenges, which made the work of the steering group particularly interesting. However, the outcomes proposed by the three winning companies excelled in the competition thanks to their innovativeness and implementation solutions, among other things.”

– Toni Vepsäläinen, unit manager, City of Helsinki Culture and Leisure Division.

Three winning solutions

Based on the final results of the competition, the steering group of the project rewarded three works by Nolla_E Oy, Nuuka Solutions Oy and Energy Plus Engineering Oy. 

Restructuring of energy flows – Nolla_E Oy

Nolla_E is a software company focusing on energy efficiency. It makes buildings energy efficient in a financially viable manner. The best economic profitability comes from the combined effect of dozens of measures, not from a single measure (e.g. change of heating system). Nolla_E software tells the user which combination of measures is the most profitable in the building in question.

First, the software is used to simulate the current status of the building, i.e. make a 3D model of the building and its building services engineering. The software then calculates the current energy consumption. After this the software calculates 1,000 individual measures and 100,000 combinations of the same measures to find the most profitable combination for the building in question.

The objective is to identify profitable measures to improve energy efficiency and proportion the heating system to meet the new, considerably lower need for heating capacity. Finally, the software produces proposals for measures: what are the measures and how they should be executed, what the costs are and what the overall profitability is.

The possibility to review property investors’ and owners’ portfolios more comprehensively to determine the most profitable renovation sites from a large mass of properties was also identified as an option alongside the project. On this basis, a prioritised list was proposed based on profitability. Furthermore, circular economy associated with building services engineering and piloting the elasticity of demand by using the simulation model were also identified as options.

“Taking part in the competition was a positive experience for us overall. Working in workshops and collaboration ran smoothly. Discussions with Ville and Pyry, which we were able to use to enrich our work further as we found cooperation ideas with other competitors among them, were especially memorable.”

– Tuomas Ojanperä, energy specialist, Nolla_E

Nuuka AI: AI to become new user for building services engineering – Nuuka Solutions Oy

Nuuka is a software service aimed at public and commercial properties. It ensures that property users are able to enjoy indoor climate conditions promoting productivity and wellbeing and streamlines the performance and energy efficiency of building services engineering systems as well as maintaining their constant reliability.

With the help of Nuuka AI Optimize, the right indoor climate conditions can be programmed for all kinds of different uses, eliminating unnecessary energy consumption. Nuuka AI Optimize machine learning solutions, AI Air ventilation optimisation, AI Heat heating network optimisation and AI Cool cooling network optimisation learn the connections between the dynamics of HVAC processes and indoor climate conditions and update the optimised settings automatically for current building automation, which in fact controls HVAC processes. Nuuka AI Optimize optimises values automatically every 1–5 minutes, i.e. approximately 10,000–40,000 times a month, and generates savings of 10–30% in the total energy consumption of properties.

The nearly 200 different diagnostics algorithms of the Nuuka Diagnostics service conduct comprehensive monitoring on behalf of people and execute all key monitoring events (e.g. disruptions and user errors) automatically. Diagnostics allows us to move on from reactive fault repair and unnecessary advance maintenance towards proactive and prescriptive maintenance, where data read from building engineering devices and AI are used to support and prioritise maintenance tasks. Analyses and data produced by diagnostics can be utilised in long term planning, as well, when assessing the condition, performance and lifecycle of devices.

Nuuka Analytics is the user interface entity of the service, compiling the data recorded in the service, analyses and reports on various themes in one user interface. Users have access to a large selection of standard reports for the purposes of energy and indoor climate control as well as building services engineering and operational verification, optimisation and responsibility reporting.

“This was an exceptionally well organised competition with a good atmosphere and outstanding participants. The remote competition workshops included constructive discussions and modern tools were used to outline key challenges related to the theme of the competition, which participants then solved through their own implementations.”

– Mikko Maja, CTO, Nuuka Solutions Oy

Energy analysis to improve energy efficiency of indoor ice rinks – Energy Plus Engineering Oy

Energy Plus Engineering Oy (EplusE) entered the innovation competition with their solution focused on improving the energy efficiency of indoor ice rinks through energy analyses. EplusE is a new, expansionary expert company on property energy efficiency established in 2021 based on research conducted at LUT University. 

The objective of EplusE is to produce accurate, transparent and understandable data on how property owners can save money in their properties. Indoor ice rinks were selected as the target sites for the solution, as they are challenging special facilities in terms of property type. Indoor ice rinks consume lots of heat and energy, their systems are complex and they have many special characteristics, such as the ice that needs to be kept cool and the air that needs to be heated for drying purposes, which is why solutions that work elsewhere are often unsuitable for ice rinks as they are. 

Cost savings potential in ice rinks can be found in electricity consumption (e.g. optimisation of the utilisation of the overall system), heat consumption (e.g. utilisation of waste heat) and water consumption (water recycling equipment) alike. Additionally, by improving energy efficiency in indoor ice rinks, the conditions and ice quality can be improved, leading to improved user satisfaction. 

In order to translate cost potential to tangible savings, the owner of the ice rink needs reliable information on the energy measures and investments that are suitable and economically viable for the site. This is where EplusE’s energy analysis comes into play. The energy analysis includes comparing the energy consumption of the ice rink with other ice rinks, optimising the use of the current system, adjusting the parameters, and guiding the use and training of the operating staff. Indoor ice rinks almost always have the potential to save on energy consumption by adjusting control and automation as appropriate. Users can calculate the amount of waste heat and produce accurate estimates of the savings potential of heating investments with the help of the EplusE simulation tool.

“It was nice to see that the events of the innovation competition brought people together for an important cause. The feedback that we received from the competition as well as the award show that we have developed our services in the right direction.”

– Mirika Knuutila, CEO, EplusE

Competition leads to presenting solutions to city decision-makers

The competition showed that there are many companies working on energy efficiency interested in closer cooperation with both public property owners and other companies in the sector. Functional collaboration and open dialogue support development work so that the services and solutions developed meet the needs of property owners.

So far, very few companies have references from challenging properties, such as historical and large multi-purpose buildings or complex sports facilities. Indeed, more traditional building engineering solutions are already available for these properties, whereas new technologies, innovative solutions and services have focused more on the most well-known property types, such as apartment buildings and office buildings. This is why the competition played a significant role for companies in directing their solutions to the target properties of the project, public cultural and leisure facilities.

The competition enabled companies to present their solutions to city operators who make decisions on promoting the energy efficiency of buildings. According to previous experiences of the participating companies, the promotion of energy efficiency requires active counterparts on the part of the public sector, in addition to raising awareness of existing solutions.

“The innovation competition of the ERKKI project showed that companies play a key role in developing innovative energy efficiency solutions. The proposals awarded in the competition proved that companies are able to offer versatile solutions and services that meet the needs of challenging facilities and help improve energy efficiency from a variety of perspectives.”

– Timo Sillander, technology director, Forum Virium Helsinki

Solutions were submitted for all three of the competition themes. The main focus of the solutions was on smart control, i.e. the use of new data sources and algorithms to optimise the steering of building automation. On the other hand, the challenges related to outdated building automation were discussed in connection with the activities of the competition, which means that technology can actually impose restrictions on the steering of existing systems.

In addition to control, the companies’ proposals reflected solid competence in energy consultation and multiple objective building optimisation. Focusing on specific buildings would enable the identification of individual property challenges and needs for solutions that would achieve the best possible outcome, e.g. from the point of view of energy efficiency. Portfolio thinking also brings a new perspective to improving the energy efficiency of properties by identifying where and what should be done first.

Open call and pilot programme to start in spring 2025

The aim of the pilot programme is to implement 2–3 pilots aimed at improving energy efficiency in sites managed by the City of Helsinki Culture and Leisure Division. The pilot programme for the project is initially scheduled for the period of March 2025 to February 2026 with the duration of an individual pilot being two to six months. A separate open call will be initiated for the pilot programme to select implementing parties and piloted solutions. 

The pilot programme will be designed using not only the targeted visits carried out during the project in properties owned by the City of Helsinki and stakeholder interviews, but also, in particular, the solutions created and lessons learned during the innovation competition. 

While the evaluation of the final outputs of the innovation competition highlighted innovation and the scalability of the solutions to challenging properties, the pilot programme shifts the focus to the feasibility of the solution proposals.

Upcoming project events

The business and expert group of the ERKKI project will be meeting for the next discussion and co-creation event on Thursday 6 March 2025 from 9.00 to 11.30 in the GNF premises (Kuortaneenkatu 2, Helsinki). Please visit the event website for more information.

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Main photo of the article: Jussi Hellsten, Helsinki Partners