18 februari 2025
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Digitalise the energy sector, connecting it to smart devices, smart homes and buildings. This formed the starting point for the InterConnect project. Now that the project has finished, after four and a half years, Neth-ER speaks with Laura Daniele and Gjalt Loots from the Dutch Organisation for Applied Scientific Research (TNO) about the project. Read more in this article about the results InterConnect attained and its follow-up project: “HEDGE-IoT”.
Making the energy sector more digital and integrating this with smart devices, homes and buildings. This formed the core of the InterConnect project of which TNO was a partner and technical coordinator. At the beginning of the project, Neth-ER already highlighted the goals of the project. Now, almost five years later, we reflect on what the project has been able to attain together with Laura Daniele and Gjalt Loots. With fifty partners in total, the project ran for 4,5 years in total with it being finalised in March 2024.
The project delivered large-scale semantic interoperability solutions based on open standards to connect smart homes and buildings with the energy sector. The size and variety of the consortium made the project very unique, explain Daniele and Loots. The consortium included a wide set of different actors: from research organisations, to manufacturers, to ICT providers, to Distribution System Operators, to consultancy providers. Given it was an Innovation Action and there where many large industry players involved, as well as SMEs via open calls, the project was close to the market implementation. It allowed them to show how the smart technologies and advanced interoperable solutions work in real-life scenarios, from residential buildings to commercial buildings, such as offices, supermarkets and hotels. Since 11 different countries were involved, it forced them to create a flexible core technology that is adaptable to different national requirements. With a large consortium, it is not always easy to ensure good coordination. COVID-19 further complicated matters. For a long time, the partners were not able to meet in-person due to the pandemic, making it difficult to build relations and understand each other. However, despite this challenge, not one partner dropped out along the way.
The real challenge started when the Russian invasion of Ukraine took place. The invasion shifted Europe’s energy landscape, making the work of InterConnect even more relevant, illustrates Loots. It added extra pressure on the project as the Commission asked the project team whether they could already deploy some of the results in the new geopolitical situation. That is where the consortium was challenged to create a reference framework to deploy apps for people to check the EU grid operating conditions in real-time, monitor their energy spending, and get recommendations for optimised energy consumption and more sustainable behaviours. This request of the Commission led to the creation of a Common European Reference Framework (CERF) for energy saving applications. Based on this framework, countries can develop their own apps to cater it to their citizens. Applications that got developed in InterConnect based on this framework can still be found on well-known application stores today.
Another major result of the project was the creation of a Code of Conduct (CoC) for energy smart appliances, tell Daniele and Loots. The creation of the CoC was an initiative from the Joint Research Institute of the Commission, together with DG Energy. The work on the CoC from the JRC and DG Energy built on the activities of InterConnect together with the consortium. The CoC provides a definition of the principles of data sharing amongst appliances and makes use of SAREF, an open standard for interoperability of which TNO is creator and contributor, used as main pillar in InterConnect. The first version of the CoC was released in April 2024 and eleven manufacturers have committed to it. When the appliances they place on the market adhere to the Code of Conduct, they receive a mark on the European Product Registry for Energy Labelling (EPREL) to indicate that they are “interoperable”.
Part of the InterConnect project is now being continued in a new project, which receives funding through Horizon Europe: namely the Holistic Approach towards Empowerment of the DiGitalization of the Energy Ecosystem through adoption of IoT solutions project (HEDGE-IoT). HEDGE-IoT is again focused on digital transformation in the energy sector, however, compared to InterConnect, there is more AI involvement, but it is also more focused on energy itself. With the use of AI and data the project looks into the integration of renewable energy sources. Just as was the case with InterConnect, there is a pilot on Dutch soil. While for InterConnect it took place in Eindhoven, the location for the new pilot takes place at Arnhem’s industrial park, Kleefse Waard. Some of the partners from InterConnect also participate in HEDGE-IoT, but there are also new partners that hopped on the train. The HEDGE-IoT project started in January 2024 and is set to be finalised in June 2027.
Laura Daniele is a senior scientist at TNO. She graduated in Electronic Engineering from the University of Cagliari (Italy) and holds a PhD in Computer Science from the University of Twente (Netherlands). She is specialised in ontology engineering, semantic technologies, Internet of Things (IoT) and standardisation. She is the creator of the Smart Applications REFerence ontology (SAREF), a European standard for interoperability in IoT. She serves as expert for the European Telecommunication Standardization Institute (ETSI), and is co-chair of the Semantic Interoperability Expert Group in the Alliance for AI, IoT and Edge Continuum Innovation (AIOTI). Laura is lead scientist in large-scale innovation projects, such as InterConnect and Hedge-IoT.
Gjalt Loots is a senior project manager at TNO. Gjalt is specialised in collaboration projects with multiple stakeholders, in which major societal challenges such as the energy transition are addressed. He was the Technical Coordinator of the H2020 InterConnect project and as such responsible for the technical course of the project as well as its key innovations.
In the series ‘Highlighted’ (Uitgelicht), Neth-ER casts a light on education and research projects, from its members, that are (partly) funded by the European Union and have European applications. For this first edition of 2025, we spoke with Laura Daniele and Gjalt Loots from the Dutch Organisation for Applied Scientific Research (TNO) on the InterConnect project that was financed under Horizon 2020. In 2020, Neth-ER already spoke with Daniele during the early stages of the project development.
"Hoe dan ook moet er méér geld naar kennis. Simpelweg omdat dat de enige grondstof is die we hebben in Europa.", Jurgen Rienks (Neth-ER)
ITRE commissie pleit voor onafhankelijk nieuw kaderprogramma
Highlighted: How InterConnect powered the future with smart, connected homes, buildings and energy systems
Uitgelicht: AIProHealth voor interdisciplinair onderwijs en AI in de gezondheidszorg