APOLLON
Using Living Lab Methodologies in the Cross-border Context
for Energy Efficiency Pilots
Manuel Nina
1
, Pentti Launonen
2
and Álvaro de Oliveira
1
1
Alfamicro, Alameda da Guia 192A, 2750-368, Cascais, Portugal
2
Aalto-CKIR, P.O. Box 21230, FI-00076, Aalto, Helsinki, Finland
Keywords: Living Labs, Energy Efficiency, Cross-Border Collaboration, Smart Meter, Real Time Information, User
Behaviour Transformation.
Abstract: The APOLLON Project (CIP–ICT–PSP No. 250516) has addressed the challenge of stimulating and
measuring energy user behaviour transformation facilitated by ICT solutions to achieve an increase in
energy efficiency. Cross-border pilots in four different countries were established and tested common
methodologies and practices. The user-driven Living Lab methodology was implemented to achieve faster
and more effective results.
1 INTRODUCTION
People's well-being, industrial competitiveness and
the overall functioning of society are dependent on
safe, secure, sustainable and affordable energy. The
EU is committed to reducing greenhouse gas
emissions to 80-95% below 1990 levels by 2050 in
the context of necessary reductions by developed
countries (EC1, 2011).
Energy efficiency is at the heart of the EU’s
Europe 2020 Strategy for smart, sustainable and
inclusive growth and of the transition to a resource
efficient economy. Energy efficiency is one of the
most cost effective ways to enhance security of
energy supply, and to reduce emissions of
greenhouse gases and other pollutants. In many
ways, energy efficiency can be seen as Europe's
biggest energy resource. This is why the Union has
set itself a target for 2020 of saving 20% of its
primary energy consumption compared to
projections, and why this objective was identified in
the Commission’s Communication on Energy 2020
as a key step towards achieving our long-term
energy and climate goals (EC2, 2011).
Substantial steps have been taken towards this
objective – notably in the appliances and buildings
markets. Nonetheless, recent Commission estimates
suggest that the EU is on course to achieve only half
of the 20% objective.
Improvements to the energy performance of
devices used by consumers – such as appliances and
smart meters – should play a greater role in
monitoring and optimizing their energy
consumption, allowing for possible cost savings and
ensuring that consumer interests are properly taken
into account in technical work on labelling, energy
saving information, metering and the use of ICT.
Consumers need clear, precise and up to date
information on their energy consumption.
In future years the deployment of a European
"smart grid" will bring about a step change in the
scope for gathering and communicating information
about energy supply and consumption. This
information will allow consumers to save energy.
Member States are obliged to roll out smart
electricity meters for at least 80% of their final
consumers by 2020 provided this is supported by a
favourable national cost-benefit analysis.
Smart grids, meters and appliances will allow
consumers to choose to permit their appliances to be
activated at moments when off peak cheaper energy
supply or abundant wind and solar power are
available – in exchange for financial incentives.
Finally, they will offer consumers the convenience
and energy saving potential of turning appliances on
and off remotely (Bergvall-Kåreborn et al.) (Holst,
M et al., 2011).
336
Nina M., Launonen P. and de Oliveira Á..
APOLLON - Using Living Lab Methodologies in the Cross-border Context for Energy Efficiency Pilots.
DOI: 10.5220/0004976503360342
In Proceedings of the 3rd International Conference on Smart Grids and Green IT Systems (IEEHSC-2014), pages 336-342
ISBN: 978-989-758-025-3
Copyright
c
 2014 SCITEPRESS (Science and Technology Publications, Lda.)

2 OBJECTIVES
The work developed in APOLLON in the cross-
border pilots targeted the challenges in terms of
Energy Efficiency which the European Union is
currently facing. It has been stated that to identify
and address these key challenges, an ICT-based
transformation of the energy sector is needed both in
production and consumption. The Energy Efficiency
pilots focused on the stimulation of behavioural
changes. The aim was to do this by providing real-
time updates on energy consumption through Smart
meters. (EC3, 2011)
The four Living Labs involved in the experiment
were:
• Botnia Living Lab (Luleå, Sweden): Together
with Luleå Energy AB, Botnia Living Lab invited
20 households to participate in the test and
evaluation of two different visualization
technologies aimed at energy saving. The first
technology ELIQ focuses on electricity and price
while the second technology SABER can measure
and visualize consumption of district heating,
electricity and hot water consumption.
• Amsterdam Living Lab (Amsterdam,
Netherlands): The purpose of the Geuzenveld
pilot was to stimulate awareness among citizens
and their energy consumption patterns, to make
them aware of how to improve their behaviour and
thereby to actually save energy. The residents were
engaged on an individual and on a collective basis.
Another important objective was to gain
experience with respect to the implementation of
smart meters and energy feedback displays. Over
500 smart meters have been rolled out in the
Geuzenveld area. Sixty residents were also issued
with a display that is connected to the smart meter.
• Aalto Living Lab (Helsinki, Finland): Together
with the building owner and superintendent some
of the most vital energy consumption points were
mapped out. The building was originally chosen as
an energy saving living lab because of the owner’s
need to mitigate the energy consumption in all the
like buildings and, as the chosen building is also
the headquarter for Process Vision, it was easy to
start testing the different measurement solutions as
the immediate vicinity provided quick response
times to the needed configurations for the meters
themselves. The goal of the Living Lab was to test
technical solutions on the metering side, but also,
and more importantly, to see how energy savings
can be achieved through smart metering and user
involvement, in four different use groups at the
pilot building.
• Lisbon Residential Living Lab (Lisbon,
Portugal): The Lisbon Residential LL is located in
a residential block. The purpose of the LL is to
implement energy efficiency measures in private
households through behavioural change, to test the
effect of using smart metering technology and
remote management tool software in the reduction
of energy consumption and to achieving viable and
profitable solutions for energy management and
communication.
3 METHODOLOGY
Viewing Living Labs as an environment, several
different types of Living Lab environments can
exists such as, Research Living Labs that might
focus on performing research on different aspects of
the innovation process, Corporate Living Labs that
focus on having a physical place where they invite
other stakeholder (e.g. users) to co-create
innovations with them, Organizational Living Labs
where members of an organization co-creatively
develop innovations, and Intermediary Living Labs
where independent partners are invited to
collaboratively innovate at a neutral arena. Due to
the constant development of the concept, other types
of Living Labs certainly exist. (EC3, 2011)
Figure 1: Key Components of a Living Lab.
To be able to understand what a Living Lab is, there
are some components it should have. The
components for a research Living Lab are ICT and
Infrastructure, Management, Partners and Users,
Research and Approach (see Figure 1). (EC3, 2011)
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The ICT & Infrastructure component outlines the
role that new and existing ICT technology can play
to facilitate new ways of cooperating and co-creating
new innovations among stakeholders. Management
represent the ownership, organization, and policy
aspects of a Living Lab, a Living Lab can be
managed by e.g. consultants, companies or
researchers. The Living Lab Partners & Users bring
their own specific wealth of knowledge and
expertise to the collective, helping to achieve
boundary spanning knowledge transfer. Research
symbolizes the collective learning and reflection that
take place in the Living Lab, and should result in
contributions to both theory and practice.
Technological research partners can also provide
direct access to research that can benefit the
outcome of a technological innovation. Finally,
Approach stand for methods and techniques that
emerge as best practice within the Living Labs
environment. (EC3, 2011)
A Living Lab can also have a specific approach
to innovation. This approach is built on five key
principles. These are: Value, Sustainability,
Influence, Realism and Openness and these should
permeate all Living Lab operations. (EC3, 2011)
In more detail, the key principles can be
described as follows:
• Value: The notion of value and value creation in a
Living Lab concerns several different aspects such
as societal value, economic value, business value
and consumer/user value. A Living Lab might also
provide insights about how users perceive value.
These insights should guide the innovation process
to be able to deliver innovations that are perceived
as valuable from a societal, economical, business,
and a consumer perspective. A Living Lab has the
opportunity to create value based on all aspects of
the value term
• Sustainability: This key principle refers both to
the viability of a Living Lab and to its
responsibility to the wider community in which it
operates. Focusing on the viability of the Living
Lab highlights aspects such as continuous learning
and development over time. Here, the research
component of each Lab plays a vital role in
transforming the everyday knowledge generation
into models, methods and theories. Other
important aspects related to the sustainability of a
Living Lab is the partnership and its related
networks since good cross-border collaboration,
which strengthens creativity and innovation, builds
on trust, and this takes time to build up. Also, in
line with the general sustainability and
environmental trends in society it is equally
important that Living Labs also take responsibility
of its environmental, social, and economic effects.
• Influence: A key aspect of the influence principle
is to view "users" as active and competent partners
and domain experts. As such their involvement
and influence in innovation and development
processes shaping and transforming society is
essential. Equally important is to base these
innovations on the needs and desires of potential
users, and to realize that these users often represent
a heterogeneous group. While users often are
described as drivers and shapers of technology,
they still very often are treated as a homogeneous
and passive group that carry out activities assigned
to them. Hence, one important issue that Living
Labs need to manage is how to assure that
participation, influence and responsibility among
different partners harmonizes with each other and
with the ideology of the user influence of the
project.
• Realism: One of the cornerstones for the Living
Lab approach is that innovation activities should
be carried out in a realistic, natural, real life
setting. Orchestrating realistic use situation and
user behaviour is seen as one way to generate
results that are valid for real markets in Living Lab
operations. However, the aim to create and
facilitate realism is an endeavour that needs to be
grappled with on different levels and in correlation
to different elements such as contexts, users, use
situations, technologies, and partners. The
principle does not separate between the physical
and the online world. Instead it is argued that
activities carried out in both worlds are as real and
realistic to its actors.
• Openness:
The principle of openness emphasizes
that the innovation process should be as open as
possible. The idea is that multiple perspectives
bring power to the development process and
achieve rapid progress. The openness supports the
process of user-driven innovation. In a Living Lab,
digital innovations are created and validated in
collaborative multi-contextual empirical real-world
environments. Openness is crucial for the
innovation process in a Living Lab, where it is
essential to gather a multitude of perspectives that
might lead to faster and more successful
development, new ideas and unexpected business
openings in markets. However, to be able to co-
operate and share in a multi-stakeholder milieu,
different levels of openness between the
stakeholders seems to be a requirement (Bergvall-
Kåreborn et al.).
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3.1 Pilot Implementation Methodology
The pilot projects ran in Living Labs localized in
Amsterdam, Helsinki, Lisbon and Luleå. They
operate in a very fragmented market all over Europe
which raises problems and barriers that were
analysed during the project. These regional
differences are originated by for example: (EC3,
2011)
• Climate differences (Northern countries versus
Southern countries).
• Regulatory environments. Different standards.
Different levels of deregulation.
• Lack of standards and interoperability.
• Different communication and data transfer
standards.
• Different behaviour and cultures.
In order to address these specific issues the
Energy Efficiency experiment followed the next 5
steps: (EC3, 2011)
1. Preparation of the pilot - During this phase
the Living Labs share best practices and methods for
user testing. The Living Labs co-create a
methodology for the Energy Efficiency domain and
determine what actions to optimize the usage
scenario to be implemented for the cross border pilot
experiment. The common technologies and research
framework to be used are agreed for the four pilots.
2. Experimental setting - The selected
technologies are installed in the Pilots under a
general usage scenario. This includes a network of
sensors, actuators and smart meters connected to
wireless interface providing real time information.
Users interact with the system and behaviour
transformation is carried out. The level of
integration of the energy management systems and
the interface with electricity utilities depends of
local conditions.
3. Testing - Users are facilitated through a
participative innovation process. They define their
needs and the level of acceptable settings and
comfort they consider adequate for their life style
and expenditure. These are dependent of their
culture, climate and building insulation conditions.
Living Lab methodologies are used to gather the
user needs and ideas. Users get familiar with the
energy management systems and learn from each
other. Behavioural transformation approaches are
utilised.
4. Evaluation - The evaluation is done
continuously and will gather information on:
• Difficulties faced with product integration
due to lack of standardization and local regulatory
environment (Deregulation availability of real time
data, dynamic pricing, etc.);
• Difficulties with the users’ culture and their
surrounding environments. The setting of control
parameters is dependent on the local environment;
• Results on the impact of regulatory
environment, climate, culture and behaviour are
compared between the different Living Labs.
Methodologies and tools to gather results will be
assessed to select the most effective;
• Evaluation of the benefits of using cross
border methodologies for co-creating and co-testing
Energy Efficiency products.
4 TECHNOLOGY DESCRIPTION
In the way of involving end-users in the living lab
experiment, different levels of visibility for energy
measurement were given in the different Living
Labs. All four Living Labs have installed different
metering solutions. Also the different metering
systems are controlled by different management
systems and from these management systems the
measurements are shown thru different portals: (Oja
et al., 2012)
• Lisbon: The users were provided with an
easy-to-install meter that from the first minute
displays energy consumption, thus the user was
aware of its consumption right from the beginning.
The solution envisaged for the pilot could be easily
rolled out, since it was only necessary to set up a
distribution list, supported by a customer service
line, and the users can easily, by themselves, install
the equipment.
• Luleå: Metering solutions from two different
local vendors were installed, and both of these
vendors had their own solution for showing the
measured data to end users. Those users that had the
KYAB solution installed could follow-up on their
energy consumption through a web portal. Those
end-users that had the ELIQ solution installed had
the possibility to view their consumption from a
home display.
• Helsinki: The users in were able to view the
energy consumption thru an excel report that was
updated hourly to the intranet site viewable to all,
also they had the possibility to view the
consumption thru an extranet site called eGeneris
that showed the energy consumption also on hourly
basis.
• Amsterdam: The users had access to two
kinds of real time energy displays: Onzo display and
the GEO display, that real-time interacted with the
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smart meter and provided information on energy
consumption to the user.
Figure 2: Energy display at Lisbon.
Figure 3: Energy display at Luleå.
5 RESULTS AND DISCUSSIONS
Within the energy efficiency experiment there has
been in place during the Apollon project four
different LLs in four different countries: Finland,
Sweden, Netherlands and Portugal. All the four
countries had a different basis for energy
consumption because of the different climate
conditions and what borders these conditions set for
energy efficiency. Legal entities as well as national
energy players set demands to mitigate energy
consumption as well as lowering/shifting of
consumption peaks. The Living Labs are in most
part similar except for the Finland pilot that is
located in a higher voltage office building when in
the other Living Labs the pilot is of low-voltage
metering point; namely private homes. (Oja et al.,
2012)
From the four different Living Labs few key
issues have risen above others in terms of user
involvement and notification. The most flagrant
issues in energy saving is the avenue with which the
users are notified of their energy consumption and
therefore are incorporated in the process of energy
savings also on how to keep them engaged long-
term. End users are most likely to change their
consumption habits to greener ones if they have a
good knowledge on what their usage has been
before, what this usage means in terms of minutes
and euros as well as clear objectives on what the
consumption could be and with what means this
could be achieved. (Oja et al., 2012)
Users demonstrate an interest at the start of ICT
use and interaction, but interest tends to decrease in
time if users are not engaged and challenged on
regular intervals. Hence, energy efficiency
information workshops are essential to raise user
awareness, provided messaging and language are
appropriate to the audience involved. With this in
mind cross border activities are vital in sense of
fresh ideas and common methodologies for
interpreting the user behaviour changes. (Oja, R., et
all, 2012)
The results of the co-operation can be seen in the
good results in energy savings of the four living lab
pilots: (Oja et al., 2012)
(Gonçalves et al., 2012)
• Helsinki: Average 9% (increase of energy usage
4% to decrease of 24%)
• Luleå: Average 9% (5-12% decrease of energy
usage)
• Amsterdam: Average 6% (4-8% decrease of
energy usage)
• Lisbon: Average 15% (9-20% decrease of energy
usage)
6 CONCLUSIONS
6.1 Cross-Border Collaboration
Experiences & Evaluation
The most sustainable part of Cross-border
collaboration and its evaluation is the collaboration
between the Living Labs, who share most of the
interests and whose strategic focus does not shift as
rapidly as does the corporate side. Also, research
collaboration is very much linked to most Living
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Lab activities and sharing research findings add
value for those partners. Public sector partners such
as municipalities or regional innovation agencies are
there to support and facilitate rather than to take part
in the project operational side. (Launonen, P. et all,
2012)
6.2 Benefits
International cooperation benefits from exchange of
experiences and lessons learnt from the partners,
allowing the results of an initiative developed
elsewhere to be appropriated and worked upon in
other projects. This allows a convergence of
resources, leveraging European-wide available
assets (scientific excellence, technologies,
methodologies, tools, experimental facilities, Living
Labs, user communities) and avoids double work
while achieving the same results. (Launonen et al.,
2012)
A European level initiative can more broadly
assess a wider range of topics, methodologies and
technologies, count on a wider network of
stakeholders and reach a far bigger audience and so
prompt results on a totally different scale from those
achieved if the experiments are solely conducted at
the local level, which, due to a lack of economies of
scale and budgetary constraints, would of necessity
be deficient and incomplete. (Launonen et al., 2012)
Each pilot has its own specific target users but
uses common methodologies, allowing for
generalization of findings to other Living Labs.
Working at the European level is complementary to
city initiatives, fostering public collaboration in the
form of city’s cooperation to enhance impulse and
build upon each city’s strengths and expertise,
providing also the basis for harmonization in areas
where this is both essential and beneficial in
advancing and initiating follow-up studies.
(Launonen et al., 2012)
Benefits for Research and business are:
• Knowledge transfer
• Business matching & partnerships – SMEs and
Large Enterprises
• Technology testing and validation, market and
feasibility testing
6.3 Challenges
The challenge for public organizations and non-
profit private entities, which seek to contribute to
sustainable development by systematic and
continuous improvement of the energy and
environmental performance of the city is to
implement a continuous improvement process
involving all of the city’s key stakeholders in a
holistic and quantifiable way which results in a
measurably better energy and environmental
performance of the city. The cross-border activities
consisted of several such cases, all with the purpose
to test and evaluate new technologies for energy
saving and behavioural change in terms of energy
consumption, all striving to share experiences,
methods and tools among their sites and to provide
business opportunities for their SME communities.
(Launonen et al., 2012)
The challenge for SME’s is to take the advantage
of being in permanent touch with up-to-date
technologies, from different companies, in the field
of energy metering, with partners from different
European countries, sharing ideas and forming
business alliances. The greatest challenge is the
absence of a single uniform European Energy
service market for consumers. There are different
industry legacies, regulatory environments,
standards and supporting instruments for each
individual European country. (Launonen et al.,
2012)
6.4 Partners in the Project
Available public funding for SMEs helps when it
focuses on RDI issues close to markets, since their
development cycles are very short. LLs should aim
to provide ‘same type services’ for SMEs in each
location. (Launonen et al., 2012)
In this experiment Local Authorities were
municipality representatives, energy companies
owned by local authorities and energy agencies. So
local authorities drive the local energy policy and
support local SME community for piloting. Local
energy management systems are an asset in
achieving local energy consumption optimization,
facilitating the delivery of a balanced supply system
and an optimal integration of demand storage means.
The residential level created by e.g. the Lisbon pilot
promotes the reshaping of energy consumption
patterns by smoothing peak hours’ consumption and
implementing management procedures that allow
transfer of consumption to off-peak hours, settling of
dynamic baselines of consumption according to
energy supply conditions, combining grid needs with
dynamic accumulation sources and strategies that
shall be addressed within the energy management
arena for the installations evaluated. This
methodology, commonly used at a higher level than
the municipal can be easily replicated to the
municipal level. (Launonen et al., 2012)
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Municipal Energy agencies are the link to the
energy test bed. Their unique position allows them
to be the bridge between local authorities, SMEs and
Universities, positioning such a consortium to be the
real framework that motivates the LL methodology.
Municipalities can appropriate results and draw up
new policies and legislation both at the urban
planning and urban management level, exploiting
APOLLON results towards a more sustainable
approach to the urban environment. (Launonen et
al., 2012)
6.5 Research
In this experiment there were two Research
Institutions as partners; Helsinki Aalto University
and Luleå University of Technology. For research
institutions in this experiment, the focus has been to
do research on how to stimulate users to change their
energy consumption behaviour by means of new
technology and by means of tasks that stimulates
their use of the implemented technology.
In this experiment we have been able to elaborate
with methods and tools for user behaviour
transformation. For instance, one aspect of the
experiment has been to have done a longitudinal
study with user involvement for a longer period of
time. Here it has become obvious that it is difficult
to involve users and to keep them engaged for
several months. One way that we have tried to
stimulate their engagement has been to give them
assignments that they should carry out, with the
objective to stimulate use transformation and
adoption of the innovation and to stimulate the users
to change their behaviour. By this mean, it is
observed that the users do change their energy
behaviour to some extent, and they do also become
more knowledgeable in the area of energy saving.
(Launonen et al., 2012) Another focus area has been
facilitation of systemic innovations and orchestration
of open innovation networks in the energy efficiency
domain.
The added value for Living Labs has been the
increased knowledge in the area of energy savings.
This has led to new project initiatives, business
models, products and services. The project
initiatives will in turn increase the collaboration
between partners around Europe. Another aspect of
added value has been a strengthened collaboration
with local SMEs who have not been involved with
similar projects before. (Launonen et al., 2012)
The APOLLON project was co-funded by the
European Commission under Grant Agreement CIP–
ICT–PSP No. 250516.
REFERENCES
Bergvall-Kåreborn, B. et al. “A Milieu for Innovation –
Defining Living Labs”.
EC1, 2011. Communication from the Commission,
“Energy Roadmap 2050”; European Commission,
Brussels.
EC2, 2011. Communication from the Commission,
“Energy Efficiency Plan 2011”; European
Commission, Brussels.
EC3, 2011. Communication from the Commission,
“Europe 2020; A strategy for smart, sustainable and
inclusive growth”; European Commission, Brussels.
Holst, M. et al, 2011. “APOLLON D3.1: Requirements
Identification”.
Launonen, P., et al, 2012. Aalto-CKIR, Luleå Energi,
LTU-CDT, “APOLLON D3.4 Setup of the Experiment
in the Crossborder Living Lab”.
Oja, R., et all, 2012. “APOLLON D3.5 - Evaluation
Report on Cross Border Collaboration”.
Gonçalves, F., et al, 2012. “APOLLON D3.6 -
Recommendations for a cross border network of
Living Labs in Energy Efficiency”.
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