Innovation that helps to save heating costs

Dübendorf, St. Gallen and Thun, 29.09.2022 — The Empa Innovation Award was presented for the eleventh time this week. This award honors outstanding projects that successfully bridge the gap between research laboratory and practical application. This year's winner is viboo. The EMPA spin-off has developed a self-learning algorithm that controls the indoor climate in buildings more efficiently and enables energy savings of between 20 and 40 percent.

The Empa Innovation Award honors excellent innovations and technology transfer projects. This year, the award goes to Empa spin-off viboo, which provides answers to the question of how buildings can be operated more efficiently and thus save energy — an issue that is extremely important in view of the current energy crisis.

The company was founded by Empa researchers in March 2022 Felix Bünning and Benjamin Huber together with Matthias Sulzer, senior researcher at Empa, founded. Over several years of research in Urban Energy Systems Lab Bünning and Huber developed a control algorithm that can predict and optimize a building's energy requirements several hours in advance based on weather and building data.

In numerous experiments in the innovation building NEST and most recently in a pilot test in an office building on the Empa campus, the researchers were able to prove that this approach enables heating energy savings of around a quarter. And even better: The solution is relatively easy to integrate into existing buildings — by replacing analog thermostats with intelligent variants.

For this purpose, viboo works with the international manufacturer Danfoss together, which has intelligent thermostat solutions in its portfolio. In order to further pave the way into the market, viboo is planning further pilot projects in the coming heating season — together with Danfoss, but also with other manufacturers such as FIG and Schneider Electric. In addition, other buildings on the Empa campus are to be equipped with the ViBoo solution.

With the Empa Innovation Award, the two founders not only receive recognition from a jury of Empa experts and its industrial advisory board, but also prize money from 5,000 Swiss Francs. “We are delighted to receive this appreciation and support from Empa,” said Felix Bünning at the award ceremony. Benjamin Huber added: “We will return the favor soon and do our part to ensure that Empa gets through the upcoming heating season well. ”

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The Empa Innovation Award

Since 2006, the Empa Innovation Award has been presented every two years for outstanding innovation and technology transfer projects. The prize, endowed with 5,000 CHF, honors individuals, research groups or laboratories for excellent innovations or successful transfers to the private sector. Empa is thus honoring the commitment of its researchers to further strengthen the bridge between science and industry through market-oriented, applied research.

Source: Empa media release
https://www.admin.ch/gov/en/start/documentation/media-releases.msg-id-90537.html

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