The EU building stock has large potential to increase its energy efficiency with solutions that can be integrated to existing dwellings and through different measures. One of them is optimizing the use and management of thermal energy by allowing it to be stored, levelling demand peaks and increasing use of renewables affected by intermittency such as solar-based heating. The MiniStor project aims at designing and producing a novel compact integrated thermal storage system for achieving sustainable heating, cooling and electricity storage that can be adapted to existing systems in residential buildings. It is based on a high-performing CaCl2/NH3 (calcium chloride/ammonia) thermochemical material reaction combined with parallel hot and cold phase-change materials for flexibility and usage year-round. It also stores electrical energy in a Li-ion battery that responds to grid signals and can sell to the electrical grid. The system is managed by a smart Building Energy Management System that connects to the Internet of Things. The system can have as input energy obtained from a variety of renewable energy sources such as hybrid photovoltaic thermal panels. This arrangement is demonstrated and validated in four demonstration sites (Ireland, France, Greece and Hungary), testing its effectiveness at different local climatic conditions and facilitating market replication. The system provides stability, performance and use of at least 20 years, an estimated compact storage material volume of 0.72 m3, reduced net energy consumption in a building by at least 44% and a return-on-investment period of 6.7 years, using high energy density storage materials that reach storage densities up to 10.6 times higher than water.

The main objective of REHOUSE is to develop and demonstrate 8 renovation packages of promising technology innovations until TRL7. The renovation packages are fully designed for a wide range of building renovation actions, including deep renovations, that overcome the main barriers that slow down the current EU renovation ratios, following circularity principles, including multi-functionality through active/passive elements integration, prefabrication and off-site construction of components and respect of buildings aesthetics, architectural and historic value. REHOUSE also implements an inclusive people-centric social engagement strategy to endow the renovation wave with a resident and owner perspective towards affordability, satisfaction and attractiveness of sustainable renovation. The renovation packages will be deployed across 4 locations serving as demonstrators located in Greece, Italy, France and Hungary. These buildings renovations include detailed design, pilot set-up, demonstration and evaluation to validate in operational conditions (social) the prototypes of the 8 renovation packages. REHOUSE proposes solutions that cover together a set of 5 renovation principles offering technically and economically affordable renovation solutions with enough flexibility to tackle almost 100 % of the building renovation challenges at EU level. The aim is to boost market uptake, scalability and replicability of REHOUSE renovation packages, linking its value proposition with critical economic, technical, social, regulatory and data security/protection aspects and barriers and propose practical recommendations on how to overcome them.