District heating project with Vattenfall a success

Smart algorithms and a mobile application delivered lower costs, a reduced carbon footprint, and more satisfied customers in Vattenfall’s project in Gustavsberg, Sweden.

In the urban area Gustavsberg near Stockholm, tenants of property company VärmdöBostäder had access to the latest technology for optimising district heating over several years. With the help of AI and a user-friendly mobile app, a new solution is being developed to raise efficiency of heat consumption for the property owner, as well as increased comfort and lower energy costs for the tenants. To deliver the project, Vattenfall Research & Development partnered with Eliq for its customer engagement platform and mobile app, as well as Quant Co and Cosa for energy optimisation and connected radiator valves.

Mobile apps, AI and IoT devices

The project addresses the need for multiple people to adjust their heating settings during the day in a building heated centrally, without creating an unstable heating system that operates with an unnecessarily high consumption rate. By offering tenants access to a mobile app where they can understand their consumption and make adjustments to their temperature settings during the day, and replacing the radiator thermostats with sensors and remote-controlled valves from Cosa, it’s now possible to control the heating remotely to achieve a tenant’s desired temperature.

The study shows that consumers are more satisfied and make fewer calls with complaints to customer service, which in turn frees up time for the property owners’ customer service staff.

One of the clearest results was that we received fewer calls to our customer service. Fewer complaints, simply. Our tenants received an app that they personally could use to alter their temperature and track their heat consumption.

Hanifi Atceken, operations manager at VärmdöBostäder

Digital tools help customers reduce their energy consumption, which is something Vattenfall Heat sees as an advantage. It means a reduction in the amount of fuel used in their plants, which among other things helps reduce the carbon footprint.

I am pleased and proud that we have now shown how, with the help of greater digitisation, we can achieve more satisfied customers and at the same time reduce our energy consumption,

Ulrika Jardfelt, Head of BU Heat Sweden at Vattenfall

The next step in the pilot project is a larger scale test to test and evaluate the broader market interest.

We were very excited to see that the Eliq platform can address the same customer engagement challenges in district heating, as it does for customers of electricity and gas and we see a huge opportunity in the district heating field. We’ve enjoyed working with Vattenfall and the other partners on this project, and are looking forward to this next part where we are looking to scale this up to other Vattenfall customers

Joakim Botha, co-founder and Head of Sales at Eliq

Read Vattenfall’s press release on vattenfall.com. For more information about the project or Eliq, contact hello at eliq.io.