Predictive Control as a Service (PCaaS)

viboo

How would you describe your solution in a few words?

PCaaS is a cloud service that connects to smart thermostats learns the thermal behavior of a building in one to two weeks based on collected data. Our model predicts a building’s temperature evolution for the next couple of hours, considering several factors such as the weather forecast and occupant preferences. This for example optimizes energy consumption because solar gains can be anticipated, and heating is lowered predictively before a room overheats. Also lowering room temperatures at night can be integrated easily, because the algorithm predicts when it needs to start heating again.

Who are your customers?

We differentiate between end-users and customers. Our end-users are owners and tenants of residential and light commercial buildings, i.e. buildings without a dedicated management system. As a cloud service provider, our customers are manufacturers of heating equipment, e.g. smart thermostats.

What are the environmental benefits of your solution?

Buildings account for 33% of Europe’s CO2 emissions. Existing buildings offer significant untapped potential for energy savings as they are the majority and often have a high heating demand. Our target end-users are tenants and owners of residential (SFH and MFH) and light commercial buildings (i.e. buildings that do not have a dedicated building management system). 93% of buildings in Europe are of this type and equipped with water-based heating systems (perfect for our solution). With our solution, we can save 20-40% of energy and emissions in these buildings, leading to a potential saving of 6-12% of CO2 emissions in Europe.

How do you manage to exist on the market?

We partner with the leading manufacturers of heating equipment, such as smart thermostats. We are in various stages of collaboration with the leading manufacturers Danfoss, ABB, Schneider Electric, Feller and Netatmo. By going through the thermostat manufacturers, we can piggyback on their outreach and leverage their already existing base of smart thermostats in the market. This gives us a large scaling potential and ultimately the potential to save CO2 in the entire building stock.