LITO uses Kamstrup meters for innovative and energy efficient plug-and-play HVAC solution 

LITO manufactures prefabricated HVAC systems under the brand name Litobox®. Each box contains all components needed for residential HVAC: heat pumps, expansion vessels, buffer tanks, meters, solar panel inverters, batteries, ventilation, and more. Highly configurable and user-friendly, a Litobox® can be craned into place in around 15 minutes, after which the HVAC installer can hook up the feed and return lines for hot and cold water plus ventilation.

"Our goal is to make a Litobox® that is accessible to everyone renovating a building, and which is as easy to install as a washing machine," says Lieven Smeyers. "If you've connected one Litobox®, you can connect the second one blindfolded. My 12-year-old daughter could connect one in half an hour!" 

The installation site in Genk is part of the EU-funded oPEN Lab project which aims to develop positive energy neighbourhoods by renovating existing buildings. A positive energy neighbourhood is an area with buildings that produce net zero greenhouse gas emissions from energy use. oPEN Lab is also active in Estonia and Spain, and the goal is to demonstrate how the EU can reduce energy consumption from housing through technologies, processes, and social innovation.

In Genk, the project has transformed a former mining town and a social housing district. 27 houses have been completely renovated with new facades, new insulation, and new HVAC solutions. LITO supplied 20 Litobox® LX units fitted with 100 intelligent Kamstrup MULTICAL® 603 and MULTICAL® 403 meters which provide the data needed by both LITO and oPEN Lab.

"We need to know what's happening in the buildings, and that's where the Kamstrup meters come in," says Lieven Smeyers. 

To address the challenge of driving down energy consumption, the oPEN Lab researchers need to compare the efficiencies of different solutions – for example, radiators versus underfloor heating, or different types of heat pumps. This requires lots of data and great flexibility.

"We were asked to add many measuring devices and storage devices for excess thermal energy," explains Lieven Smeyers. "Even though every Litobox® looks the same, there is a whole matrix of different technologies inside: geothermal heat pumps, air to water heat pumps, solar thermal systems, photovoltaic panels, AC or DC battery packs ... When I looked at the matrix of different things oPEN Lab wanted to integrate, there were around 7,500 possibilities."

For each Litobox® in Genk, LITO developed a specific hydraulic and electrical scheme. After that, they needed box-specific meter configurations, and for this, LITO received strong programming and customisation support from Kamstrup's Belgian distributor and partner Ecompany.

"Before the project started, we had several meetings with LITO to understand their requirements and then delivered turnkey packages that made it easy for LITO to get the meters required for every box," explains Sven Verhoeven, sales engineer at Ecompany.

"The Kamstrup meters we get from Ecompany are preregistered with the Modbus addresses of all energy meters for each Litobox," says Lieven Smeyers. "We simply get a package with the serial number of the Litobox® in question, open it, and mount the contents."

The MULTICAL® units give LITO full access to detailed operational data about their HVAC installations, helping the company troubleshoot and optimise their solutions remotely. The data from the 27 homes is fed into a custom-made digital platform via a third-party Modbus controller. LITO retrieves data at different intervals: Outdoor temperature data is measured once an hour, flow temperatures in the heating system once every second. 

According to Lieven Smeyers, LITO selected Kamstrup meters for their flexibility, performance, and quality, and because of the valuable support from Ecompany.

"We're very happy that Ecompany makes the effort to think our way," he says. "We're a small company. We don't have the resources that big companies have so we have no choice but to put more stress on our suppliers! It's as simple as that: If we want to grow, we need good suppliers."

Ecompany, in turn, has used Kamstrup meters since 2010 because Kamstrup has delivered the quality, performance, and support that the Belgian meter specialist needs to support its customers.

"LITO is making it look easy, but their products are complex," says Sven Verhoeven. "That's why it is important for us to use quality components, and that's why Ecompany always uses Kamstrup meters. For us, it's Kamstrup all the way. It's about the accuracy, the Modbus capability allowing you to get the readings you need, and the build quality. We know we get that with Kamstrup."

"We started out with Kamstrup MULTICAL® models fifteen years ago, and we believed in the product right from the start," adds office manager Loes Lambeets from Ecompany. "As we are an independent distributor, we have the freedom to choose the products we believe are the best. Our team, which consists mostly of engineers, does this based on thorough knowledge and experience. And in those 15 years, we never doubted Kamstrup. Our team has extensive knowledge about how the Kamstrup meters work. This additional technical knowledge and support is important to our customers, and if there is something we don't know, we get the support we need." 

Positive energy neighbourhoods could play a major role in reducing energy consumption in the EU, driving down greenhouse gas emissions while at the same time making the union less dependent on imported fossil fuels.

Early indications suggest that the insulated houses with Litobox® HVAC solutions and intelligent Kamstrup meters provide efficient performance. LITO measures performance using its own metric called energy performance factor (EPF); in other words, how many kilowatts of heating and cooling energy you get for every kilowatt of energy fed into a Litobox®. And whereas solutions with only heat pumps typically offer efficiencies around 4, the Litobox® solution delivers an EPF of around 6 thanks to increased self-consumption of solar energy.

"The results so far don't only have to do with what we do, of course," says Lieven Smeyers. "But by integrating heating, cooling, and daily hot water production, and by using energy from solar panels, we decrease energy consumption further. And the Kamstrup meters contribute to this result through accurate measurements at apartment level."

Time, and more data, will tell if this is the future of energy-efficient housing in the European Union and elsewhere. For now, the project looks promising, based in part on the key role played by LITO – and its metering suppliers. 

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