Future buildings and neighbourhoods are expected to combine a manifold of Energy using Products ("EuP") ranging from electrical lighting to Heating, Ventilation, and Air Conditioning (HVAC) with locally available renewable energies (e.g. solar, wind) and with locally available storages (e.g. car batteries). An intelligent management of energy in such a local grid would enable customers to participate in the energy market and even contribute to the stability of the power grid. The problem is that such an energy management requires fine grained infrastructure and expensive hardware. Today, this limits applicability of energy management to large consumers in the industrial and commercial sector.

The objective of SmartCoDe is to enable the application of advanced techniques for energy management in private and small commercial buildings and neighbourhoods by

1. Developing new methods for automated energy management that specifically considers the requirements of Energy using Products in homes / offices and local renewable energy providers, considering the required information security and dependability.
2. Developing an inexpensive hardware/software implementation that can be integrated into arbitrary Energy using Products, providing them with the ability to communicate and to remotely control its use of power.
3. Demonstration of technical and economic feasibility and benefit of intelligent energy management in buildings and neighbourhoods with an initial focus on electric lighting.

If successful, the project will allow all manufacturers of EuP to add energy management functionality (and maybe additional features such as remote control, etc.) for very little additional cost, and thereby address a new and huge market in homes and offices. The local energy management will enable local entities to participate in the energy market as an intelligent, managed "sub-grid" that can – if necessary – even contribute to a demand side management and thereby reducing the required "spinning reserve".