On 29 June, BRICKER co-organised a workshop at Sustainable Places 2016, this year held in Anglet, France. The workshop featured three FP7 fellow projects (BRICKER, A2PBEER, RESSEEPE) which combined forces to share their experiences and to deliver insight on the challenges of public building retrofitting with innovative technologies.
Pablo de Agustín and Ander Romero (Tecnalia) provided an overview of BRICKER and its expected impacts before going on to depict the novel passive and active technologies used in the BRICKER system. Special emphasis was placed on the concept of renewable trigeneration based on solar and biomass sources. Their presentation also included details of each technology developed under the project as well as how such technologies have been combined and adjusted for the three demos, given the local climates, thermal demand and user needs.
In the same way, Amaia Uriarte (Tecnalia) and Mónica Mateo-García (Coventry University) described the technologies and aims of A2PBEER and RESSEEPE projects respectively. During the open discussion with the audience, representatives from the three projects agreed on some of the difficulties or challenges encountered during the project interventions such as demonstrating how to reach ambitious energy saving goals and payback periods, or the need for trained installers and maintenance personnel to operate these innovative technologies.
All three projects are now moving towards their final phases and the representatives pointed out that a further workshop to share their projects’ results from the various demonstration sites would be extremely worthwhile.
Ander Romero and Pablo de Agustin