Water is the most abundant substance in the human body as much as on Earth and is also essential for the survival of all known forms of life.
And despite its importance, every day more voices warn of the dangerslooming on such a “precious element.” For example, the World Economic Forum met last January in Mount Davos (Switzerland) has placed the water crisis as the third overall risk over the next 18 months … and it will be the first risk to the world in a 10-year horizon.
Which are the causes that are positioning the water in this top ranking ahead of other potential problems such as oil or turf wars? Climate change, droughts, floods, population growth or demographic changes are some of the challenges around water. In addition, because of its close relation to agriculture, the idea of a “water war” breaking out in Africa, the Middle East or Asia is increasingly seen as a real possibility to the extent that these governments need to feed their populations.
To this long list of long-range dangers, today we want to draw your attention to a closest one: the lack of individual knowledge.
You certainly know the price of 1L of gasoline, but do you know what you pay for 1 L of water? First, you need to know that in Spain water supply is under municipal jurisdiction and each local authority sets its own prices and tariff structures. On average, in our country we pay 1.83 € per 1000 L of drinking water supplied to our households. Translated into usual domestic chores, a five-minute shower costs about 0.10 € and a bath about 0,55 €.
However, the key question is not what you pay for the drinking water, but what is the real cost to produceit and if this is a “fair and sustainable price” for the future.
Returning to the case of gasoline, in recent months we have witnessed a drastic fall in the price of crude. However, as consumers we have not benefited entirely from this drop as fuel is heavily taxed in our country (more than half of the final cost is linked to taxes).
Well, the water is at the opposite extreme, ie, it is heavily granted. While it is true that public money comes at the end from “the black box” of our taxes, there is a very important hint facing the taxpayer. It is difficult to value water if its real cost remains unknown and even when waste it goes so cheap. In the choice between taking a shower or a bath it is clear that today, the money does not come into the equation. And if you go for the more sustainable option probably it is because of the 100 L of water that you save when you do not fill the bathtub. But … what if the money began to count?
Apparently positive for the citizen, the situation is untenable and water will be, within a short period of time, a very high value resource that will need to be managed more efficiently.
In Spain, our supply networks are often obsolete and water losses due to leaks are incalculable. Would you be willing to pay a fair price for water if that would guarantee access to higher water quality and helps to improve infrastructure?
Knowing is the first step to value and informed citizens lead to a responsible society. As an example, a study sponsored by the Council of Almeria in 2002 detected the presence of natural radioactivity in the groundwater intended to supply the population. Furthermore, the existing water treatments at that time were not enough to provide water suitable for human consumption. Then, some municipalities launched information campaigns which sensitized population and a raise of the water price was approved. Thereby, new treatments installed allowed the access to a high quality drinking water.
In recent years, the average consumption of water per capita and day has decreased in our country. What you can keep doing? First, use common sense in your daily habits. Remember not to let the water run from faucets when not necessary, think about how you use the toilet if you have a dual flush mechanism, or if you use the washing and dishwasher machine with full loads etc. Also, when buying new appliances, consider criteria of water efficiency, or install aerators on faucets or shower heads to reduce the flow by 50%. If you are interested, you just can google it and read:
“It’s too late to be a pessimist”. In CARTIF we are seeking for solutions to current challenges and water is one of them. Sustainable use of water, removal of micro-pollutants (endocrine disruptors, trihalomethanes), water-energy nexus, water in the context of circular economy, are for us among the water challenges of this century. In future entries in this blog, we will be telling you our research in these lines.
Normally the idea that the average citizen has about the savings in the energy bill, depending on the equipment installed, is centred around the sacrifice of the personal welfare (lowering a bit the temperature at home in winter and rising in summer) or making important expenses (like solar panels) that are redeemed in a distant future and could generate something called, in economy terms, “loss of chance”, that can be translated as the money that could be used for some immediate pleasures.
Until not long ago the ways to effectively save were the same expressed beforehand, and it was clear that it could not do anything about with the exception of certain investments from the governments. However, some new tools have appeared recently that, through the means of technologies affordable and available for everyone, can reach the goal of saving money but without sacrificing comfort or making big expenses.
One of the solutions that is currently being developed is the so-called Building Energy Management Systems (acronym BEMS from now on). The BEMS makes use of software that gathers data from several origins (sensors, data bases, weather stations, timetables, polls and commands from users, etc.) and takes some decisions based on defined algorithms which adjust the behaviour of the equipment installed on the building to minimize the energy consumption but always keeping the marked comfort standards. In other words, the BEMS works like a butler who would be adjusting the home devices in order to create comfort optimizing the energy expenditure.
But what does the average user see about all this? Of course, although a user with large knowledge about building equipment and computing could install a simple BEMS, the truth is that the BEMS requires a large quantity of work:
The current commercial solutions require hiring technicians to set up the devices, and also a preliminary report done by the enterprise offering the product. Without question, in order to adjust the final price and minimize problems, the actual BEMS tend to be “locked products”, with fixed components, proprietary network protocols and layouts owned by the company or the consortium/association, and software solutions copyrighted and not accessible to the user or the maintenance service (save for the case that the service is the one offered by the company, obviously).
Taking into account all the former considerations, it is clear that the BEMS still need some research on open systems, also versatile but efficient, to generate some market competition, enhance the current systems, and open the possibility of using them inside the maximum number of dwellings in Europe, where there is a big concern about these issues as long as the dwelling stock there is old, inefficient in terms of energy usage and with poor levels of comfort (from the numbers of the EU, the 75% of the houses don’t apply energy efficiency measurements).
CARTIF, through the Division of Energy, has and still is working on European projects like E2VENT, 3ENCULT or BRESAER that include one BEMS amongst their fundamental elements of r&d, with demo sites in Spain, France, Germany, Poland and Turkey, and where CARTIF has the main role in the development of these systems.
It can be concluded that the BEMS will be, in a short term, an integral part of the equipment of any modern home, in the same way the air conditioning or the telecommunications did in the past, contributing in the enhancement of the welfare and the energy efficiency.
The title might suggest a classical scenario inside a horror movie: some people, typically a group of teenagers, enter inside a derelict house that seems to be alive, and is the cause of many troubles that, depending on the script, could end up dooming them all. In the real world exist those houses that, far from the evil intentions of their homonymous movie ones, communicate with the users, sometimes directly, sometimes in a subtle way, with the dwellers not being conscious of it.
Traditionally, the behaviour of the buildings have been like passive elements, that is, having features completely dependent both on the users’ handling and the equipment integrated on them (heating and air conditioned, electric power, plumbing and water, and recently telecommunications). This way the traditional buildings were conceived and existed with certain predetermined features and goals: people using the building enjoyed (and suffered from) the working status of the facility, and only a few parameters of these buildings could be modified with the direct intervention of the user or the administrator/maintenance crew.
It is not always clear if the progress of the technologies or the ideas to implement them are going ahead or following one to another, but it is true that the enhancements in the characteristics of the equipment installed into the buildings and the reduction of their sale prices to reasonable levels for the average user have taken to achieve, at global level, the change from the traditional passive dwelling to another active. But, what is the concept of active dwelling?
First of all, it is necessary to clarify that there are two general accepted concepts called Active House and Passive House (or PassivHaus in the original German concept), but using the concept at energetic level, that are referred, in the first case, to the traditional home, and in the second case to the house that, without any support from devices that consume energy, is able to keep certain environmental and comfort parameters to satisfy the final user. Here we are redefining the Active House in terms of interactivity at a energetic level with the user, where the dwelling “talks” to the user: it receives the requests and needs from the people using the building, and is able to make an intelligent management of its own resources and mechanisms (heating, lighting, etc.) in order to satisfy those requests and needs, generating an appropriate level of comfort for each case.
Nowadays there are solutions for these Active Houses (although Interactive Houses would fit better) that combine three fundamental elements when running these kind of houses: sensors and interfaces, control networks and equipment. The first ones are the senses of the system, and gather the current data of the environment and the needs of the user.
Next, the networks join together, like the body circulatory system, all the elements from the system, including the communications between them. And finally the equipment, that execute the actions necessary to fulfil the needs.
The sensors have evolved in price and performance to the point of being able to be used in private homes, and their future will see technological enhancements and reduced prices, as well as easiness in installation and maintenance.
About the networks, there are some manufacturers and consortiums with their own designed protocols, and the tendency for these cases is that only a few would survive, then simplifying the process to generate the network, along with the costs and maintenance.
Considering the equipment, this is progressively adapted along with the current needs, offering new possibilities in comfort, and enhancing the building energy efficiency. It can be commented that CARTIF is actually working on a relatively new concept called BEMS (Building Energy Management System) that would comprise the former elements. This is a concept being developed by some R&D centres in order to manage the Active Buildings as a whole, including many concepts like the Internet of the Things, neural networks and fuzzy logic for modelling prediction, decision making and so on. This is a concept that we will develop in future blog entries, due to its special interest in the social and scientific fields.
As a conclusion, it has to be commented that the paradigm of home management has evolved to the point of change it into a living element that interacts with us, and that provide us, in a clever way, all the comfort and energetic management that we need.
