The EXCESS project builds up on nearly-zero energy multi-storey building (consumption below primary energy threshold) residential concepts of the main 4 EU climatic zones towards Energy fleXible user-CEntric poSitive houseS (EXCESS). EXCESS defines a positive energy building (PEB) as a building that produces more energy than they use, with high RES self- consumption rate (instead of using the grid for solving seasonal balancing issues) over a time span of one year. RES and smart technologies exist, but complete packages for different climates do not. Important technical developments for plus energy building materials and other individual technologies are required to address specific climate related needs in order to meet the PEB level; especially in harsh climates. Integration is needed for upgrading single technologies to be part of a large orchestra enabling also user-context-aware energy flexible services between utilities and customers (selling flexibility). These will unlock additional revenue streams that reduce the lifetime cost of the developed PEB solutions, making them affordable also large portion of the society. Thus, EXCESS will advance new materials, technologies and integrated technological systems (TRL5-7) promoting a user centric approach (building tenants), capitalized on new ICT opportunities, for optimizing the interplay of local generation, storage, consumption at the building and district level. The demonstration activities in each of the climatic zones (Austria, Belgium, Finland and Spain) will be accompanied by co-innovation, replication and exploitation activities to maximize the project technical, social and economic impact and to prepare for a future market roll out of the PEB concept by also scouting energy efficiency funding opportunities.

Heat Pump and solar appliances are the most social accepted residential Renewable Energy based energy systems. SunHorizon will demonstrate up to TRL 7 innovative and reliable Heat Pump solutions (thermal compression, adsorption, reversible) that acting properly coupled and managed with advanced solar panels (PV, Hybrid, thermal) can provide heating and cooling to residential and tertiary building with lower emissions, energy bills and fossil fuel dependency. A Cloud based functional monitoring platform will be realised in the project to be the “performance data mine” for the development of Data Driven/KPI oriented optimized algorithms and tools to predict maintenance, optimize the management towards maximisation of solar exploitation and give to the manufacturer inputs for new installation design, via an innovative “robust design under uncertainty approach” which aims to overcome classical H&C equipment oversizing due to safety factors . This monitoring platform will also drive smart end user interfaces that will be applied at building level to collect thermal comfort data towards a new end-user driven H&C control system. SunHorizon tools will be applicable not only to proposed solar coupled HPs, but to all H&C appliances towards a global increasing efficiency of EU H&C stock and its decarbonisation. 5 low emission H&C Technology packages (TPs) will be tested coupling HP and solar installation. SunHorizon aims to be a breakthrough demonstration to market project involving 21 partners and 8 demosites all around EU focusing its activities on “reducing system costs and improving performance as well as optimising existing technologies for H&C applications”. SunHorizon will be focused on three main research pillars interacting each other towards project objectives achievement, demonstration and replication: i) OPTIMIZED DESIGN, ENGINEERING AND MANUFACTURING OF SUNHORIZON TECHNOLOGIES ii) SMART FUNCTIONAL MONITORING FOR H&C,iii) KPI DRIVEN MANAGEMENT AND DEMONSTRATION.

AEGIR’s main objective is to demonstrate a scalable, industrialised, smart, non-intrusive, quick, and affordable four-packaged renovation solution to boost the take up of deep retrofitting achieving nearly zerAEGIR main objective is to demonstrate a physical and digital sustainable framework that boosts the take up of deep retrofitting achieving nearly zero energy buildings. This approach is supported by (i) innovative, industrialized, high performance and non-intrusive multifunctional plug-and-play envelope solutions to increase the use of locally deployed renewable technologies. These solutions can also be modulated depending on the requirements of the target buildings. (ii) A digital ecosystem of services to improve the whole construction workflow (from design, manufacturing, construction, and operation) reducing costs with a sustainable approach. And (iii) a socio-economic model providing financial schemes and business models at building scale. To demonstrate these objectives the project will deploy all these solutions in four demos (Spain, France, Denmark, and Romania) mixing the retrofitting actions which will use the solutions in four different climates. The demos combine different building typologies (multi-family buildings, educational buildings, offices, and single-family buildings) to proof the concept in buildings and tenants with different requirements. One of the demos (Denmark) is social housing so the intention of the project is to demonstrate that these solutions are feasible for the more demanding public. A second demo is a public school to demonstrate the improved air quality and comfort provided by the solution to solve many of the air quality/ventilation problems in this type of buildings. The project involves all the actors from the construction and energy management value chain with local and international SMEs, large companies, public authorities. Local and international clusters are also included to verify the developments at European level.