FiWare

Tera

Tera is a young knowledge intensive company launched in 2007 by 20 years experienced engineers, with expertise in different fields, such as energy efficiency, renewable energy, environmental monitoring, in terms of both industrial and R&D developments. Tera focuses its activities on the concept of efficiency, implementing this in innovative solutions.
Beeta, the solution developed by Tera for energy savings, aims to manage and improve the energy efficiency in homes and small buildings. Through the monitoring of user’s energy consumption (or production from PV plant if any)  and elaborating environmental data also coming from installed sensors  (gathered in the field from the Beeta gateway) it provides (by APP) users with custom indexes and suggestions useful to increase their energy consumption awareness and to  improve their energy usage. In a full automation version, the system takes care also of appliances monitoring and control.
The gateway integrates the most common technologies used into Smarthome environment and it is ready to be expanded with new technologies based on customer needs and future market trends. The user specific indexes and suggestion are made by proprietary algorithms which are able to provide users with info like: detailed consumptions profiling and classification, alerts for overloads and peak shaving, appliances  and devices faults/derating. The mobile APP is linked to the gateway in order to have both digital and physical engagement of users.
 

Goals and challenges

Beeta goal is to become a “trusted advisor” for energy efficiency. It is a modular and scalable system which allows to overcome the technology fragmentation (one of the main market barrier to mass adoption of smarthome solution) and thanks to the physical interaction of the gateway and to the innovative concept adopted into the mobile APP, Beeta guarantees effective savings to users on energy bills.

The choice of FIWARE

The main benefits offered by FIWARE include flexibility and interoperability with other platforms. Being open source, FIWARE makes the tools integration easier and allows to easily overcome the problem of Vendor-lock-in.

The use of FIWARE technology

FIWARE technology has been implemented in different steps into Beeta. It is used for  gathering data from the gateway and make them available to the Orion Context broker and related subscribed services. Data elaborated from CEP GE, based on proprietary algorithms, are sent back to the Context Broker for further interaction with users (desk SW, mobile APP).

Benefits and accomplishments

Beeta allows  to maximise the return on investment on PV plants and to get real savings by means of user’s behaviours changes in daily energy consumptions. Benefits for users are in terms of energy saving (cheaper bills), CO2 emissions reduction and, for the prosumers ((owners of Photovoltaic plant with power <100kWp)), low production costs and higher profits.
TERA estimated that buildings/houses without photovoltaic system can save up to 200€ per year  on their bills, while the savings increase up to 400€ per year  in case there is also a photovoltaic system.
Beeta is currently undergoing a pilot phase in Bari city, and it has been installed in private and public buildings and PV plants. In the coming months a refinement of the SW will be implemented based on feedback from the field.