Sustainable urban living in Finland

The building has an A energy rating, which is the best possible. This means that it has several solutions related to the efficient consumption of energy, including heating, and lighting, all helping reduce the building’s energy use.

The elevator supplied by Kone, for example, will consume substantially less power than traditional elevators with braking energy that will be fed back in to the electric network. Moreover, residents will be able to monitor and adjust their energy consumption through ABB’s KNX technology to be installed in each apartment, allowing them to accurately control their apartment’s climate while minimizing their energy consumption, even while they are out, via the internet.

This makes the housing corporation Espoon Adjutantti the first apartment building in Finland to utilize KNX technology extensively.

“The appliances and lighting as well as electric heating in the flats are connected to a network. The network controllers can be adjusted to the user's preferences, which means that even small energy savings can be made accurately and effortlessly,” says Paavo Tammisto, Manager for Low Voltage Products, Wiring Accessories, ABB Finland.

In addition, solar panels producing 15,000kWh of electricity a year will be installed on the building’s roof-top, by Fortum, a Finnish energy company, providing lighting for the shared staircases and for recharging an electric vehicle to be jointly used by the residents. Furthermore the housing cooperative will offer four electric car charging points to be installed in anticipation of growth in the use of electric vehicles.

The part supply of electricity from renewable solar panels, together with the installed state-of-the-art energy saving technologies, will give the Espoon Adjutantti apartment building a lower environmental impact than any conventional, equivalently sized, apartment block.

To learn more about KNX technology and other ABB products visit the Electricity, Telecommunications, Light and Audio Visual fair (link ) in Jyväskylä, Finland, from February 1-3, 2012 - stand D102.