This week we would like to present you another SMARCTIC project partner: Lapland University of Applied Sciences, located in northern Finland.

The School of Arctic Natural Resources and Economy at Lapland UAS offers Bachelor’s Degree programmes in Engineering, which also include topics such as renewable energy sources. The School has previously been working with photovoltaic solar energy, energy efficiency and energy storage solutions and solar thermal collectors in different national and Nordic projects.

The contribution of Lapland UAS to SMARCTIC will be sharing potential solutions and tools that could be integrated in the Smart Energy Management Model, engaging with the local community and other key stakeholders (including the associated partner Regional Council of Lapland) and piloting the solutions developed in Finnish Lapland.

How will they increase energy efficiency?

Our Finnish partner is developing a pilot based on smart city technologies that brings together data and services from multiple public sources to improve a community’s capability to facilitate changing user needs and increased energy performance. They will use predictive analysis to promote proactive building maintenance and performance optimisation. Additionally, they will assess technology capable of adapting to changing ambient conditions, including the needs arising from energy production grids, e.g. renewable energy generation, storage, and demand response. Moreover, this pilot will use and assess IoT, Bluetooth, Z-Wave, Zigbee, Wi-Fi, VR, LPWAN, AR, smart grids and AI to collect, aggregate and share data from multiple sources, and use visualisation tools to monitor and optimise heating, electricity, water consumption, indoor air quality and waste production, among others.

Asked about what do they expect to achieve in three-years’ time, project partner Hannu Korhonen from Lapland UAS responds: “we are expecting to find new and fresh solutions that haven’t been tested in our area before. Also, I’m expecting future cooperation in terms of new research projects as a spin-off from SMARCTIC”. The pilot will support an interactive user experience to increase energy awareness, optimise energy management performance and change user behaviour.

Hannu Korhonen recommends other regions outside SMARCTIC partnership to keep an eye on the project because, “the solutions and topics that we’ll cover over the project lifespan will be applicable to other regions as well”.