ENTRANCE: Advancing Smart and Decarbonized Buildings
The energy and building sectors play a crucial role in Europe's environmental and energy policies. As the energy transition accelerates, buildings are increasingly recognized as key players due to their potential to adopt smart management systems and advanced control strategies.
Why Buildings Matter in the Energy Transition
- Buildings can cost-effectively enhance energy efficiency and flexibility.
- Improved energy use leads to greater comfort, productivity, and health for occupants.
- Optimized energy consumption accelerates the adoption of on-site and nearby renewable energy sources.
- Electrification of demand helps reduce Europe's energy dependencies and strengthens resilience.
The ENTRANCE Vision
To fully enable the building sector's transition, interoperability with energy carriers and non-energy services must improve. Buildings must evolve into active contributors to the energy system—ensuring reliability, resilience, and sustainability amid climate change, resource constraints, and emerging threats like cybersecurity and geopolitical challenges.
Our Approach
ENTRANCE is developing and demonstrating innovative solutions that make buildings smart-grid-ready and decarbonized by integrating:
- Energy efficiency and flexibility
- On-site renewables and mobility solutions
- User empowerment and engagement
- Interoperability with district heating and electricity grids
Real-World Demonstrations Across Europe
To validate its impact, ENTRANCE will implement its solutions in six demonstration sites across different European regions, ensuring adaptability to diverse climates and market conditions.
By combining technology integration, digitalization, user engagement, and performance-driven economics, ENTRANCE is paving the way for a smarter, greener, and more resilient energy future.
ENTRANCE Solutions
Our 11 innovations will be demonstrated in 6 pilot environments across Europe
Optimal design and operation
Integrated technical solutions for on-site RES generation and storages to enhance flexibility integration
Physical interfaces
Improving contribution of buildings to electricity grid robustness
HVAC integration
Physical interfaces to improve contribution of buildings to district heating grid robustness
Data-driven control
Integrating buildings and energy infrastructure for smart-grid-ready building
Smart charging
Predictive strategies for charging solutions considering dynamic pricing mechanism
Enhanced flexibility
Control solutions for batteries, thermal storages, and heat pumps with user engagement
User engagement
Algorithm to integrate and optimize technical solutions focusing on IEQ, cost, and environmental indicators
Interoperability
Enhancing interoperability among different devices including IoT – legacy of control systems
User-friendly indicators
Smart readiness of buildings and flexibility indicators for easy use
Data framework
Interoperable data framework to enable easy data exchange among buildings and energy infrastructure
Economic evaluation
Guidelines for performance-based economic evaluation to empower end-users