What is EINSTEIN?

EINSTEIN is a methodology for the implementation of a holistic integral approach to thermal energy auditing in industry and in large non-industrial users such as hospitals, office buildings or sports halls. 

In other words, EINSTEIN allows for the development of strategies for the reduction of energy demand and operating costs by heat recovery and process integration and by an intelligent combination of existing affordable heat and cold supply technologies, under the given economic constraints.

The EINSTEIN methodology is supported by an expert system software tool that guides the user through the whole auditing procedure from data acquisition, processing and synthesis to the design and quantitative (energy and economic) evaluation of alternative solutions.

 Within the EINSTEIN tool-kit in addition complementary tools can be found, such as an audit guide, questionnaires for data acquisition, a survey of existing auditing tools and manuals etc.

"EINSTEIN's eye": Overview and hierarchy of measures for improvement of energy efficiency and renewable energy use

Why EINSTEIN?

Industrial thermal energy demand constitutes about 28% of the total final energy demand in Europe. Space heating and cooling in buildings contributes another 27% to the final energy demand. Despite improvements in energy efficiency across Europe over the last few decades, there remains a large unexploited potential for reducing thermal energy consumption in companies, as well as non-industrial users such as hospitals or large office buildings, by an intelligent combination of existing technologies. For example, between 25 and 55% of the total process energy input in industry is lost as waste heat.

The History of the EINSTEIN project 

EINSTEIN has been developed since 2007 in a collaboration of more than 20 institutes and companies in the Framework of the European projects EINSTEIN (2007-2009), EINSTEIN-II (2010-2012), i-ThERM (2015-2020) and several national and regional projects in Spain, Catalonia and Austria. Apart from the development of the methodology and the tool-kit, within these projects more than 500 energy auditors have been trained in 13 European countries and several other countries world-wide.