NFC – surface storage heating in a Europe-wide field test

Burgstädt / Saxony, February 26th, 2022:

As part of our DIGIFED EU project “Touch&Heat”, we are testing electric NFC surface storage heaters in a field test in several European countries.

Touch&Heat aims to accelerate the deployment of new electric heating variants that improve energy efficiency by using Near Field Communication (NFC) and mobile apps to make configuring energy-saving functions easier and more efficient. In the field trial currently taking place, the first European consumers are testing the new NFC functionality in Germany, France, Ireland and Great Britain.

According to the French ADEME (l’Agence de la Transition Ecologique), equipping households with programmable radiators can reduce annual energy consumption by up to 15% – an important contribution to meeting the EU sustainability goals.

The new NFC heaters allow installers and owners to automatically and securely connect a mobile phone to a specific radiator with an intuitive tap gesture and without entering access codes. Users configure the daily heating schedule and other features in the app. With a second tap gesture, the new configuration is transmitted via NFC. The same configuration can be applied to multiple radiators quickly and efficiently with the same tap gesture. Using the mobile app improves users’ understanding of programmable settings and eliminates the need for printed user manuals. Installations are simplified with no-pairing close proximity communications. This also eliminates the need to create accounts or enter codes, while maintaining the confidentiality of product settings.

The Touch&Heat project is a collaboration of three European companies with complementary expertise covering the entire product development chain from innovation to product

• • Lucht LHZ Elektroheizungen – a German designer and manufacturer of heating devices.
  • Cotherm SAS – a French SME developing electronic thermostat controls.
  • IoTize SAS – a French start-up company that develops wireless and NFC solutions to connect devices to mobile phones and networks.

The project is supported by European funding from DigiFed, which will help project partners to accelerate the development, testing and deployment of the new NFC heating products. For more information on Touch&Heat, contact a participating company or visit the project information page https://www.minalogic.com/en/digifed-high-success-rate-for-minalogic-members/.

For more information on DigiFed, visit https://digifed.org/.