HEART – Holistic Energy and Architectural Retrofit Toolkit

Coordinated by Politecnico di Milano (POLIMI), HEART is an EU-funded Horizon 2020 project consisting of 16 partners from 10 countries. HEART stands for Holistic Energy and Architectural Retrofit Toolkit, and this 4-year Innovation Action (IA) project advances the improvement of energy efficiency and the dissemination of renewable energies in buildings across Europe, with a focus on Central and Southern Europe.

HEART is a multifunctional retrofit toolkit including different components (ICT, BEMS, HVAC, BIPV and Envelope Technologies) that cooperate to transform an existing building into a smart building.

While the toolkit focuses on providing high levels of energy efficiency in existing residential buildings, the concept can be extended to new residential and commercial buildings. The core of HEART is a cloud-based computing platform that includes decision-making and energy management features.

HEART contributes to the improvement of the European building renovation process by simplifying and optimizing all the related activities, reducing the total energy consumption, reinforcing the integration of renewable energies, rationalizing energy flows inside and between buildings and smart grids, involving stakeholders,  supporting energy financing and renewable energies exploitation.

Based on a whole-building performance approach, the toolkit is conceived to achieve extremely high levels of energy efficiency in the existing residential building stock, with reference to Central and Southern Europe, where climate change and energy transition have boosted electricity consumption peaks both during summer and winter seasons.

The Toolkit thus provides energy saving, energy fluxes optimization, data exchange, stakeholders’ active involvement and Smart Grid interactivity.