+100
members daily monitored
DHOMUS Platform: Shared energy management in energy communities
Use Case
Energy flexibility
A Platform for Residential Energy Awareness
In an era defined by the pressing need to evolve towards a sustainable energy matrix, minimizing dependence on fossil energy sources, the advent of the concept of energy communities represents a fundamental milestone. Within this context, the model emphasizes the importance of end-users' awareness of their energy consumption profiles and promotes the optimization of the management of energy resources on an aggregated scale. Key elements of this transition include the implementation of infrastructural changes and the adoption of advanced technologies, coupled with a profound revision of energy consumption habits. Advanced platforms for energy management, integrated with IoT (Internet of Things) devices and mobile applications, play a predominant role in enabling this shift towards new energy consumption models.
As part of the Electrical System Research Project, funded by the Ministry of Economic Development, the company Apio has designed and implemented for ENEA the DHOMUS platform, an acronym for Data HOMes and USers. This platform acts as a technological epicenter for the realization of this strategic vision, integrating cutting-edge solutions for the management and analysis of data related to energy consumption, with the goal of promoting energy efficiency and self-consumption within energy communities.
Dhomus platform
The DHOMUS platform emerges as an innovative ICT solution, outlined to effectively meet two primary objectives in the residential context: to raise users' energy awareness and to promote an optimization of energy resources management. This system distinguishes itself by its ability to facilitate the aggregation of these resources, enhancing the provision of flexibility services for both the electrical grid and energy communities. For the residential user, DHOMUS aims to perform a granular analysis of energy consumption data, with the goal of providing a detailed understanding of the amount of energy used and the specific modes of consumption. Through sophisticated analysis, the platform intends to guide users towards reducing their energy needs and related costs, substantially contributing to the reduction of the environmental footprint. This model transforms the residential consumer into a proactive actor, actively contributing to the resilience and stability of the national electrical grid.
From the aggregator's perspective, DHOMUS offers a set of advanced functionalities for real-time monitoring of energy flows - generation, storage, and consumption - within the energy community, significantly enriching the quality and precision of the collected data.
On the technical front, DHOMUS is revealed as an open-source ICT solution, characterized by high interoperability and complete programmability in Javascript/Html. It is designed to perform the collection, aggregation, and analysis of residential energy data, while simultaneously offering personalized educational feedback to users. Its open architecture ensures easy integration and smooth data exchange with third-party applications, through the adoption of standard and open protocols, thereby facilitating advanced data processing.
The platform is conceived to support a wide spectrum of user profiles, including standard consumers, owners of Smart Homes, and cluster administrators. Its versatility is manifested in the ability to interface with external systems for the exchange of information crucial to the energy management of the home, offering the possibility to integrate with alternative commercial solutions and enabling value-added services for the end-user, such as home security systems and Assisted Living solutions. In this context, DHOMUS asserts itself as a leading solution in the panorama of ICT technologies dedicated to residential energy, providing cutting-edge tools and services for an effective and sustainable energy management of domestic environments.
Project's numbers
+15 MWh
daily energy shared
+5
communities involved
Sustainable goals achieved with the project
The Dhomus architecture
The DHOMUS platform proposes itself as a technologically advanced solution for optimizing energy management in Smart Homes, offering users an intuitive interface divided into three main sections: Data, HOMe, and USer. These components have been meticulously designed to meet the expectations of a diverse user and aggregator demography, offering a comprehensive overview of the acquired energy data, from the detailed visualization of the device park installed in the residential habitat, to comparative analysis and the receipt of personalized feedback.
The Data section serves as an energy analysis center, allowing users to dynamically and retrospectively monitor the energy flows consumed, generated, and stored. This section enriches the user experience with granular data related to the specific consumption of appliances and environmental comfort, providing metrics on self-sufficiency, self-consumption, environmental impact, as well as a disaggregation of consumption by final use categories.
HOMe facilitates an interactive interface with domestic sensors, enabling the real-time visualization of the monitored variables for each device, thereby ensuring optimal control of the domestic environment.
The USer component is oriented towards increasing the user's energy awareness, stimulating comparison with other members of the platform. This mechanism is aimed at providing personalized feedback on the energy consumption profile, with targeted suggestions to foster more conscious and efficient energy use.
The Aggregator section, on the other hand, is specifically directed towards the supervisors of user clusters, offering a holistic view of energy consumption, energy drawn from the grid, generated by the cluster, as well as detailed insights into self-consumption and the group's energy self-sufficiency, including disaggregated data for individual users and consumption categories.
DHOMUS addresses a wide range of users, from advanced Smart homes equipped with intelligent devices for optimized energy management to standard consumers aiming to reduce their energy consumption and environmental impact.
Apio's expertise in the domain of the Internet Of Things has played a crucial role in the development of the DHOMUS ecosystem, particularly concerning the Energy Box and the user device, both designed to interact with home sensors and actuators, transferring collected data via Internet connectivity, with minimal requirements for electrical power and network connection (LAN or WiFi).
The Energy Box gateway, a product of Apio innovation, facilitates communication through the Chain2 channel with a wide variety of communication protocols (including Z-Wave, EnOcean, Wi-Fi, ModBus, etc.). Equipped with "embedded intelligence," the Energy Box is capable of executing embedded functions to analyze data and make decisions independently, such as balancing consumption and comfort or identifying, through consumption patterns, the presence and behavior of the user, as well as detecting alarm situations, providing real-time feedback.
Moreover, through the Dashboard, the Energy Box enables the easy creation of new rules and solutions aimed at integrating energy management systems with automation and control systems, enriching the offering of additional services for the end user.
Furthermore, through the Dashboard, the Energy Box allows for the easy creation of new rules and solutions aimed at integrating energy management systems with automation and control systems, enriching the offering of additional services for the end-user.
The user's interaction with their Smart Home occurs via PC or smartphone, allowing remote control of devices, regardless of the user's physical presence in the home.
The use of a user-friendly interface makes all services accessible in real-time even on mobile devices, facilitating the management and remote monitoring of the home from anywhere in the world.
This advanced energy management system marks a significant advance in the field of residential energy optimization, promoting environmental sustainability through the use of innovative technologies.
Within the framework of research and development, in collaboration with the ENEA Research Center, the Smart Buildings project was also realized, aimed at maximizing the efficiency of energy resources in office environments.
The DHOMUS platform was also selected by the ENEA Research Center as a key technological tool for managing homes involved in pilot demonstrations of various research projects, thus representing an avant-garde technological solution in the panorama of residential energy management.
https://dhomus.smartenergycommunity.enea.it/progetti/
