Viikki Environment House is a high-performance office building in Helsinki. Part of the energy consumed in the building is produced on-site: the solar panels placed on the façade and roof cover 572m² and produce 20% of the energy consumption along with four wind turbines. The energy needed for heating water and interior spaces is supplied by Helsinki’s district heating network. The cooling is supplied through a cost free borehole water system that consists of 25 boreholes each 250 m deep and making 95% of the cooling energy renewable.

There is a building automation system that manages the building’s indoor conditions (heating, ventilation and air-conditioning). Another control system, including electricity storage, manages the electricity production and use. The storage is connected to other building energy loads to enable better optimisation and provide the nearby public e-car charger with solar energy.

During the project, in the Viikki Environment House, these systems have been furnished with an extra layer of intelligent control. The offices have been equipped with smart heating control that enables heating the rooms according to their use and piloting of a heat demand response service. In addition, modifications to the existing building automation systems have been made to render the energy saving systems easier to manage and monitor.

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