InterConnect

Project partners from eleven European countries are involved in the 36 million euro project: Austria, Belgium, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, Poland, Portugal, Serbia, Slovenia and the Netherlands.

Over the next four years, InterConnect will lay the foundations for the future of intelligent energy management solutions at seven interconnected test sites in Portugal, Belgium, Germany, the Netherlands, Italy, Greece and France.

The declared aim of InterConnect is to enable efficient, interoperable energy management and the grid-compatible use of energy consumers in smart homes and commercial buildings throughout Europe.
The broad participant base ensures interoperability between devices and systems across sectors and manufacturers, as well as data security and the protection of user data in accordance with European standards. In addition to the technologies for networked energy management, InterConnect will also create a digital marketplace for applications and services relating to the efficient use of energy.
Manufacturers, distribution system operators and energy suppliers will be able to use these solutions in future. End customers, in turn, will be able to contribute to the energy transition without any loss of comfort - thanks to the energy management systems to be developed.

In its pilot projects, InterConnect is focusing on the following eight areas:
- Open standardization of the developed solutions
- A common description language (ontology) for all energy-relevant systems
as a guarantee for interoperability between sectors and manufacturers
- The use of open digital platforms
- Use of Internet of Things technologies
- Service offerings via cloud applications
- Reducing the load on the electricity grids as a primary goal
- Use of big data to increase efficiency on a large scale
- Special focus on cyber security in networked applications

All solutions developed as part of InterConnect use technologies based on open standards such as the European SAREF (Smart Appliances Reference Framework).

IKT will support the project in the areas of system and network architecture for IoT-based data acquisition, signal pre-processing and semantic data representation under real-time conditions and with regard to quality of service, particularly in relation to the SAREF ontology. Furthermore, IKT will collaborate in the area of WoT/SAREF data modeling, simulation in the smart home/building sector and the associated field and laboratory investigations.