iBECOME’s First General Assembly was held on the 10th-12th of November 2020. It had initially been planned to take place in Dublin, Ireland however due to the Covid-19 situation, it forced the event to turn it into a remote virtual meeting with consortium members joining across Europe.
Approximately 25 people joined throughout the three days to attend presentations of the project activities which gave updates and enabled further discussion on different aspects of the projects. It was chaired by Dimitrios Ntimos from IES R&D.
The iBECOME’s Project aims at demonstrating a combination of novel technologies and new business models for optimizing buildings energy performance and comfort conditions, while reducing the operational costs. It is made up of a consortium of ten organizations working over a four-year period to complete this ambitious program.
Day 1 kicked off with an update on the progress of the project. This was followed by refresh on legal, financial and data management along with what to watch out for as the project moves into the next phases. The final part of the day one workshop was an exploitation workshop presented by the Rina-C team.
On Day 2, Pierre Bernaud from CEA, guided the group through a workshop to review the array of comfort and power usage flexibility metrics that could be us integrated into the vBMS (virtual building management system). The second session of the day was a dissemination workshop lead by IMR, the workshop included updates from IES on iBECOMES’s branding, communications and website as well as discussing deliverables for the DCP Plan.
Day 3, the final day of the meeting gave time to those involved to give updates on their various work packages and pilot sites, and finally the group decided on next steps going forward over the next 6 months.
The team hope to meet in person in May again for the next assembly however that is subjectable to change due to ongoing Covid-19 issues.