Last week, the SENDER project partners met at the W.E.I.Z. Innovation Center to take stock of the work accomplished and prepare for the piloting phase, which now extends to the end of the project.

Our partners have had to deal with the COVID situation, the blocking of the Suez Canal, the war in Ukraine and its consequences on energy and inflation, but we have managed to reorganize task planning and the budget so that the project can continue to produce the expected results, effects and impact.

What is the SENDER box* ?

The core of the SENDER box consists of a small Raspberry Pi, connected to the electric board, which reads data and sends information about the energy usage at home. It is able to turn on and off home appliances through the SENDER app based on the user needs, based on the energy prices in order to lower your bill, your photovoltaic production (if any), etc. It goes along with a set of sensors which is also installed at home to keep track of the temperature, humidity, light level and occupancy of the rooms, and small actuators to turn on and off the devices when the SENDER box or the user orders it

Many thanks to our project partner, the W.E.I.Z. Innovation Center, for hosting the meeting on its premises, located in the eastern part of Styria, around 30 km from the provincial capital Graz in Austria, which represents one of SENDER’s demonstration sites.

This physical meeting gave us the opportunity to visit the homes of two of the participants in the SENDER experiment, where the SENDER box*, together with its sensor kit and smart boiler, has been installed and is now operating as part of the demonstration phase of the project. The pilot area includes the municipality of Weiz (11.700 inhabitants), as well as the six neighbouring municipalities and a total of 26.000 inhabitants.

Read the latest article (translated into English below) published in the latest issue of the magazine of the SENDER project partner, Innovation Center WEIZ.

“Welcome to Weiz” – with the introduction of our city, Weiz Mayor Erwin Eggenreich warmly welcomed the international project partners of the EU project “SENDER” from Norway, Greece, Italy, France, Spain and Finland to the WEIZ Innovation Center.

SENDER has set itself the goal of using smart home solutions to analyze consumption patterns and energy requirements in order to optimize how the grid can provide more sustainable energy to meet energy needs. Around 140 households from the town of Weiz and the entire region are also actively involved in this project.

At today’s project meeting, the partners gave the project assessor from the European Commission an overview of the work to date and presented the implementation at the pilot site in Weiz. The representatives of the various European project partners are currently meeting at the WEIZ innovation center to discuss the interim project results to date.