Gas Natural Fenosa, (GNF) is an integrated energy company that participates in the generation, distribution and retail business of natural gas and electricity. It operates in 23 countries. With more than 21.000 employees, GAS NATURAL FENOSA exploits a installed power of 10.300 MW and give service to 20 million gas and electricity customers. GAS NATURAL FENOSA has the Energy Efficiency as a strategic objective of the Group, not only for the economical benefits for the energy user, but because it constitutes a main step for a sustainable energy policy. Through the Energy Efficiency Center GNF develops mass campaigns that aim fostering the awareness for our customers and society in general about a rational use of energy based on the Spanish common energy use practices, habits and culture.Energy Action Plans related to Energy Efficiency grants and subsidizes launched throughout Spain by the Administration, are accompanied by a marketing campaign in the main communities in a periodical basis aimed to offer our services linked with the grants.

GNF has recently participated actively as the leader of a spanish PROFIT TRACTOR (public granted) project related to the topic Ambient Intelligence at homes, where GNF has developed an interoperable, scalable, plug&play and open gateway for energy management purposes at the homes. This Project was multi-utility oriented (electricity and gas) covering the awareness of the residential sector as well as the automation of the processes as powerful aspects of an effective strategy for energy conservation, Energy Efficiency (better equipment) and peak shifting, all in all resulting in a lower energy bill, so that it becomes a commercially successful product in the market. Another project related to energy management in the demand side is called “GAD” (ACTIVE DEMAND SIDE MANAGEMENT), publicly granted by a CENIT Spanish subsidize. The goal is to investigate new mechanisms and technologies which optimize electric energy consumption, decreasing costs without quality service reduction. Thus, GAD Project aims at manage Demand Side by means of intelligent Devices allowing the shaving of demand curve, and the reduction in demand growth. The GAD Consortium confident that the project could help to reduce the foreign Spanish energetic dependence using renewable energetic sources, but also helps to reduce CO2 emissions and contaminant gases.

In the project, GNF will be the project coordinator and responsible for the development of Pilot B1 held in Spain. In this context, due to their expertise in energy management, GNF will contribute to the pilot implementation in several aspects such as the design of methodologies for measurement, design of ICT services to be provided in the pilot, implementation of services and tunning of the process to make it work properly. They will also take an important part in dissemination activities.

Indra is the premier Information Technology company in Spain and a leading IT multinational in Europe and Latin America. It is ranked as the second European company in its sector according to stock market capitalisation, and also the second Spanish company with the most investment in R&D. In 2008, revenues reached € 2,380 M, of which a third came from the international market. The company employs more than 29,000 professionals and has clients in more than 100 countries.

Indra is organised around six vertical markets: Security and Defence; Transport and Traffic; Energy and Industry; Telecom and Media; Finance and Insurance and Public Administration and Healthcare. Over the years we have gained comprehensive insight into each business and crafted solid relationships with customers. This knowledge, coupled with latest-generation technology, allows Indra to create unique in-house solutions and services for each market segment.

Indra provides its clients with an offer that is both complete and of value which ranges from consultancy, project development, and systems and applications integration to outsourcing of IT systems and business processes. This offer is structured into two primary segments: Solutions and Services.

The offer in Solutions includes a wide range of systems, applications, and components for obtaining, processing, transferring, and subsequently presenting, data and information, which are basically aimed at controlling and managing complex and/or critical processes. Indra has a wide supply of consultancy, which includes technological, operations and strategic consultancy, which is offered by Europraxis.

In general, Indra solutions serve the core of the business operation of our clients, and require as an essential capability the integration of systems, i.e. the design, configuration, development, and implementation of complete components, applications, and IT systems, featuring our own and third-party products.

SPM Promocions Municipals de Sant Cugat del Vallès S.A (PROMUSA) is a private municipal company – a legally constituted public limited company – and its social capital consists of nontransferable nominative shares owned by the town council of Sant Cugat del Vallès, a 76.274 inhabitants city in the metropolitan area of Barcelona (Spain).

In 1998, Sant Cugat Town Council founded the municipal development company PROMUSA. The main aim of the company is to provide the people of Sant Cugat with easy access to housing. Since then, PROMUSA has also carried out other interventions at the same time as its housing developments: it has built offices, commercial and retail units, and car parks. It has also worked on urban management and urbanisation. It has now extended its activities to developing the road network in the different areas of the town, building municipal facilities and running the Local Housing Office (LHO).

PROMUSA’s organisational structure comprises the General Board of Shareholders, formed by all the members of the Municipal Plenary Council, and the Board of Directors, whose members include representatives of all the municipal groups and a representative of the town’s residents’ associations. The mayor of Sant Cugat is its president.

For a number of years now, Sant Cugat del Vallès has been one of the most expensive towns in Catalonia where housing is concerned. This is why the town council has implemented a housing policy since 1989 to make it easier for its community to gain access to housing.

The town council has made important efforts to provide housing through PROMUSA. This is borne out by the fact that there is a large amount of public housing made available in terms of its population, compared to its neighbouring towns.

The price of housing for sale or to rent offered by PROMUSA is more than 50% below the average market price in Sant Cugat. The maximum sale and rental price and conditions of funding are those established at all times by the Housing Plan, which is approved by decree by the Catalan government.

The housing built by PROMUSA is geared to specific population groups in Sant Cugat, and grouped together in the following categories: Housing for Sale, General Rental Housing, Rental Housing for Young People and Rental Housing for the Elderly.

Due to their expertise and profile, PROMUSA will contribute in this project in those task related to the communication with tenants (engaging campaign, surveys, etc.) as well as in dissemination activities, which is the core of further scalability of the proposed solutions.

Ennovatis GMBH, Ennovatis, was founded in the year 2000 as a spin off of the University of Stuttgart. In 2008 ennovatis had a turnover of about 4.000.000€ and about 65 people working in the company. The primary goal of the company is the development of cost effective tools to increase Energy Efficiency and comfort in buildings. It holds patents in intelligent metering and model based monitoring. Thus, Ennovatis offers:

• Development of building specific and consistent optimisation concepts.
• Support in implementing the concepts.
• Continuous quality control to meet energy demand most efficiently.

Ennovatis offers holistic systems to increase Energy Efficiency of buildings both during planning and operation. The systems are scalable to the building size and the energy costs. Thus, solutions can be provided for the whole range of buildings from single family houses to public buildings, office buildings and even industrial buildings and production plants. The holistic approach includes hardware to monitor, control and adjust consumption in the building and selected components and software to visualize consumption data in various contexts (intelligent monitoring), to evaluate the consumption in the frame of the whole building performance (rule based monitoring) and to determine demands for heating, cooling, electricity, etc in the frame of the concrete operating conditions of the building (model based monitoring). Also users will be integrated into the whole process by the so called Energieampel concept. Thus we are able to optimize the whole lifecycle of a building or a community from an energetic point of view.

Ennovatis will contribute to the project in the aspect of Energy Efficiency in buildings. This includes both software and hardware. In the field of software, we will be responsible for the development of the ontology from the point of measurement of building performance. All of this will be based on the available infrastructure explicitly the Visual Energy Center and our component based development framework. In the field of hardware, we will contribute our equipment to measure analyse consumption and to improve the applicability of the methods developed. Here, ennovatis will place the ennovatis Smartbox as a data-logger and unit to watch and control the energy consumption in the apartments and the whole building.

In the project, ennovatis provides its technology at first to monitor the consumption of energy and afterwards to provide the data in a web-content for the energy-manager of the building. Additionally, it is planned to install building automation utilities such as valves, temperatures sensors, switches etc. to measure and reduce the energy consumption on the central heating as well as in the apartments. To cut the energy consumption and costs in the apartments it is necessary to 1st monitor and analyse the measured data and 2nd set and adjust the comfort levels. With its experience in optimizing of central heating units ennovatis is able to reduce the energy consumption of the main energy consumption of the building. Therefore, changes in the regulation system parameters and optimizing of systems schedules will be done. To achieve a reduction of energy consumption during the project, it will be necessary to develop algorithms for the control of the building automation utilities. It will be also a part of the project to create and adjust these algorithms to the need of the end-user and the objective to reduce the energy consumption ignificantly.

The Bulgarian Housing Association (BHA) is an independent, private, non-profit legal entity, registered under the Bulgarian law for non-profit entities. The BHA came to life as a result of revealed and deeply realized necessity for new type of housing organisations that are independent from the Central Government and capable to identify and deal with the real housing issues mobilising and integrating all public and private resources.

BHA goals are: (i) to facilitate the overall housing reform in Bulgaria in achieving contemporary standards of housing and living environment; (ii) to enable the provision of affordable housing by introducing effective forms of co-operation between public and private parties (local governments, customers/occupants, construction companies, financial institutions); and (iii) to create incentives and promote the establishment of non-governmental organisations /NGO's in the housing sector.

BHA has participated in several activities related to Energy Efficiency in owner-occupied apartment buildings in Bulgaria (evaluation of Energy Efficiency action, energy auditing and labelling, involvement of residents in pilot projects, analysis of payback period of Energy Efficiency measures etc). BHA maintains contacts with different housing related institution in Eastern Europe and the EU. Their main expertise focuses on: (i) maintaining a data base for the performance and the status of all housing sector's aspects (construction, industry, housing stock, institutions, researchers); (ii) mediating the exchange of scientific, technical and business information between Bulgarian and foreign parties and supporting joint-venture projects; (iii) facilitating the development of modern housing policy legal framework at central and local level as a prerequisite for Bulgaria to strengthen its position as member of the European Union; and (iv) promoting and developing both, national and joint venture research and investment housing projects, implementing modern methods for financing, construction, management and maintenance of housing.

The contribution of BHA to the project will be in: (i) WP3 leadership; (ii) final selection of the Bulgarian replication building and the replication program (to adapt the original pilots results to the specificities of the Bulgarian users, which are different to those in Spain or Germany; consideration of the different tenancy status – homeownership - therefore, involvement of users is becoming extremely important); (iii) coordination and implementation of Bulgarian replication; and (iv) organizing of public awareness and training campaign and dissemination of the 3e-Houses project achievements.

Bristol City Council, BCC, was recently shortlisted among seven other top environmental cities to become Europe's first Green Capital. Bristol also has a leading reputation in Europe for encouraging citizen e-participation and e-democracy. Bristol is a growing city with up to 30,000 new homes being planned and developed, particularly within the South of the City. The City Council has ensured that new buildings have been built within UK standards for Energy Efficiency by enforcing regulation and providing additional guidance and advice to Developers to achieve higher standards.

Connecting Bristol is Bristol City Council’s Digital Partnership. Using ICT innovation to reduced environmental impact and carbon emissions is one of Connecting Bristol’s priorities. Connecting Bristol is a founder member of the DC10plus Digital Inclusion Network, which links Bristol with other leading digital cities in the UK and with the UK Government. Bristol leads on Green ICT issues for this national network.

BCC is the largest landlord in the city with some 30,000 units of social housing. The Council has improved these homes through:

• Hot water cylinder insulation.
• Compact fluorescent light bulbs. For example, in 2004/5 we distributed 116,000 lamps.
• Loft insulation and cavity wall insulation. For example, every home now has loft and cavity wall insulation (where practicable).

This has led to improved efficiency, more comfortable and healthier homes (especially for our poorest households) and a reduction in CO2 emissions per person in Bristol. Bristol also has a large stock of old homes, built to poor energy standards. BCC has improved the Energy Efficiency of the overall housing stock by 23% since 1996 and are planning further improvements. Through Connecting Bristol, BCC is working on an existing FP7 project called Digital Environment Home Energy Management system (DEHEMS), that is enabling BCC to work with Knowle West Media Centre to test the use of real-time energy meters in a number of homes in South Bristol.

In the 3e-HOUSES project, BCC will build on its experience by:

• Promoting the project to tenants living in social housing.
• Identifying 300-400 social housing units, of varying sizes and accommodation types, from within the 30,000 BCC housing stock where tenants wish to work with the project to implement ICT solutions that provide real-time data on energy consumption.
• Working closely with Knowle West Media Centre, our community partner, and IP-Performance, our technology partner, to support tenants to take-up these ICT solutions and to evaluate their effectiveness, in order to learn how to successfully implement similar solutions on a larger scale.

Knowle West Media Centre (KWMC) is engaged in developing the creative, educational and social potential of people within the local community, the city and further a field using media and communication projects to achieve this. KWMC is a registered charity and company limited by guarantee. KWMC performs a wide social, cultural and educational role in the community. A core element of this function is the location of the organisation in South Bristol.

KWMC has been working in innovative activities engaging the community including developing environmental projects. Recently, KWMC built a new straw bale flagship media centre to operate from that includes many cutting edge environmental features. As with all KWMC projects the community were involved in the design and build process. The building itself is a learning tool for the community and in particular young people. In addition, KWMC has worked on a Carbon Makeover Project that aims to reduce the carbon footprint of the estate by supporting individuals in the community to effect change through media activity e.g. developing websites.

A number of social marketing campaigns have emerged. Carbon Makeover Project involves the community in environmental campaigns, events, and taking actions that reduce energy consumption. As part of this project the team has worked with the community on a pilot project installing Energy Efficiency meters to raise awareness of domestic energy consumption and have developed campaigns to increase understanding around the financial and environmental cost of high energy usage. There expertise will play an important role in this project, being the core to identify the homes and residents who will be involved in this project. Furthermore, KWMC will:

• Support the recruitment and engagement of participants using print, web and social media to inform potential participants about the project.
• Work directly with residents to document their experiences of working with the metering systems.
• Provide residents with digital and internet skills support in order that they can access information about energy metering on line.
• Use this digital connectivity to provide residents with other opportunities to increase understanding about carbon and energy reduction.
• Feed back the user experience to other partners.
• Work directly with residents to develop social marketing tools that make use of the data and encourage behavioural change around energy consumption.
• Work directly with residents to raise awareness and increase knowledge about metering, using digital media, etc.
• Work with BCC and IPP to explore how residents’ experiences can be used to inform future policy in relation to energy management and carbon reduction in social housing.

IP-PERFORMANCE LTD, IP-P, provides network infrastructure solutions to enterprises, service providers, universities and the public sector. They deliver networking services and products as well as professional services, certified network management and technical support. IP-P provides a wide range of products and services in order to enhance and maintain existing network infrastructure, or support customers in migrating to new technologies and services.

IP-P boasts numerous ICT specialists in a number of different fields, namely, broadband ADSL, core IP routing, network performance, network management, security and wireless networking. The company has been involved in many large scale projects within the transport industry, public sector and education. Many of our customers are based in the UK, but we also have international customers.

The company also has a comprehensive support organisation which operates a 24x7 service to some major internet service providers.

The role of IP-P in the 3e-Houses project is to provide the IT infrastructure to the pilot replication in Bristol. IP-P will be responsible for the design and installation of the network in order to meet the interconnectivity requirements of the project, namely, between the smart meters and monitoring/controlling systems as well as Internet connectivity to the residents of the social housing complex chosen for the replication.

Toshiba Research Europe Ltd (TREL) is one of the four globalised corporate-level R&D organisations founded by Toshiba Corporation. TREL has its headquarters in Cambridge, UK and incorporates two divisions, the Cambridge Research Laboratory (CRL) and the Telecommunications Research Laboratory (TRL), which was funded in Bristol, UK in 1998.

Toshiba is one of a handful of companies in the world with business interests in every part of the value chain of the energy market from power generation, through to transmission and distribution, to customer devices. As Toshiba's Research Facility in Europe, we are conducting research and development in the intersection of telecommunications and power areas to develop technologies to resolve practical problems and technology gaps.

Our smart grid activities in Europe include fundamental research, targeted standardization, strategic collaborations, rapid prototyping and trials. TRL’s smart grid research consists of a number of internal and collaborative research projects covering a broad range of topics involving Toshiba business divisions in Europe as well as European smart grid stakeholders as well as academic institutions developing algorithms, optimization, and protocols feeding into smart grid and home networking applications, in particular communications technologies to smart metering and smart grid networks and security.

TRL has been actively involved in several FP5 (TRUST, SCOUT, BRAIN, and MIND), FP6 (E2R I and II and GOLLUM) and FP7 ICT projects (ARAGORN, FARAMIR, CONSERN) in technical areas covering flexible protocol stack frameworks, flexible middleware platforms, cognitive radio, sensor networking, and energy management, having acted as Work-Package and Sub-Work-Package leaders. Toshiba has very long experience in the wireless standards and technologies, reconfigurability solutions, consumer electronics and radio modelling paradigms, smart metering, home automation and smart grids. TREL is a member of BSI (British Standards Institute), ETSI and ESMIG, CEN/CENELEC, ETSI M2M on home automation, Smart Grid/Smart Metering standardization.