CADIA joins REDUCA project to make school buildings more energy efficient
CADIA Ingeniería, a PITA engineering company, has joined an ambitious R+D+I project financed by the Centre for Technological Industrial Development (CDTI) and whose mission is the “Energy Renovation of School Buildings in Andalusia,” a project that goes by the acronym REDUCA in Spanish.
The programme has a budget of more than 9 million euros to ensure that buildings have optimum interior quality and will increase their energy efficiency, among other parameters. The project, which is co-financed by the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF), part of the ‘Technical Assistance’ Operational Programme 2007-2013, and backed primarily by ACCIONA, has the participation of several specialized companies from different fields in the sustainable construction sector, and CADIA is now one of them. Also participating are universities and other research entities. Collectively, all hope to make this one of the most important R+D+I projects in the sphere of energy renovation for buildings.
The main goal of REDUCA requires the development of new technologies designed to be applied in the renovation of school buildings in Andalusia. Also vital are the actual application of said technologies and the development of a method that makes it possible to analyze, install and evaluate innovative technologies that guarantee optimum quality of interior spaces over time to increase the energy efficiency of the buildings in question.
“The idea here, for example, is for the old buildings and facilities of schools, high schools and universities to reach the energy consumption standards of current environmental requirements established for new buildings as closely as possible,” stated Luis M. Domene Mirallas, head of the Automation, Robotics and Electronics Department for CADIA. The project has the participation of a group of companies specialized in different fields: consulting, building materials, facilities, etc. Several trial operations are planned to be carried out on real buildings, which will also include the collaboration of research groups and technology centres in Andalusia. “As for CADIA, we will be in charge of, among other things, evaluating the IT aspects of the measures implemented during the renovation process to improve comfort and air quality and to reduce energy consumption,” added the CADIA engineer.
CADIA’s main goal in this ambitious project is to therefore develop a complete package of evaluation services for interior environmental quality and advanced control of installations in building renovation projects. This would include preliminary assessments, specific IT solutions (hardware and software) and supervision and monitoring programmes. Once renovation work is finished, it will also be necessary to develop a completely new system that is decentralized, scalable and flexible so that it may be applied in any renovated building in order to supervise and monitor work and installations while providing significant energy savings in buildings.
This is the first R+D+I project in the field of building renovation which sees the participation of advanced engineering companies from Almería. This particular local company has made a commitment to strengthening and consolidating its Sustainability and Energy Efficiency Department and is currently preparing to develop a second project, this time on a national level, that is based on designing an innovative automated system for energy conservation.
