ZVEI Digital Talk: SmartLivingNEXT informs about possible implementation of the EU Data Act

At the beginning of the ZVEI Digital Talk, ZVEI Association Managing Director Kerstin Stratmann informed the more than 30 participants about the EU Data Act and what effects it will have on member companies. The data platform that is being created in SmartLivingNEXT is one way of meeting these obligations in the future. The research project officially ends in August 2026. “SmartLivingNEXT is hugely relevant for members of the Electrical Domestic Heating Technology Association, as it promotes innovative technologies and solutions that help to improve living comfort, energy efficiency and sustainability in the field of domestic heating technology,” Stratmann continued.

Michael Schidlack, Research Association for Electrical Engineering at ZVEI e. V. and consortium leader in the SmartLivingNEXT flagship project, explained the overarching approach of the technology program. He showed how the digitalization and networking of living and living areas (SmartLiving) can create new applications and digital services that make living more energy-efficient, safer and more comfortable. The basis for this is an open, sovereign and national access point that is available to all players in the technology program in the form of a shared data space, the so-called SmartLivingNEXT Dataspace.

With SmartLivingNEXT, the requirements of the EU Data Act can be implemented in practice

“Our main development goal is for each data provider to retain its technology and make all or part of the resulting data available in the SmartLivingNEXT ecosystem,” says Schidlack, describing the core of the project. This is the reason why SmartLivingNEXT enables companies to implement the requirements of the EU Data Act in practice. “We also provide technological add-ons to simplify the use of the SmartLivingNEXT Dataspace. These are basic services that can be used for data collection, mapping and classification of data, semantic search or machine learning.”

Presentation of the “Energy efficiency” use case

Filip Milojkovic, Materna, then presented the “Energy efficiency” use case from the SmartLivingNEXT flagship project. In particular, he shed light on the question of which processes and functions are required to publish heating and energy data in accordance with the requirements of the EU Data Act. The energy efficiency data portal developed in the SmartLivingNEXT flagship project serves as an illustrative example of this. By integrating data from various players in the building and energy sector as well as public administration, the portal already enables the visualization, AI-supported analysis and evaluation of energy consumption data.

At the end of the 60-minute event, it was pointed out that companies can gain exclusive access to information as associated partners of SmartLivingNEXT. All you have to do is contact the SmartLivingNEXT project office contact. The benefits of an associated partnership include, for example, participation in general meetings and, by invitation, participation in project meetings of the flagship project or the SmartLivingNEXT focus groups. This gives companies the opportunity to find out about current developments in the technology program and to exchange ideas with experts.