EN
PL
EPBD: less energy and fewer emissions, but a smaller bill?
The EPBD directive is almost always cast in a single role — as one more obligation to cut. That is only half the picture. The other half is about money, and it is written directly into the construction of the rules.
The directive counts money, not just kilowatt-hours
The EPBD directive 2024/1275 is almost always seen the same way: less primary energy consumption, a zero-emission standard for new buildings, renovation of the worst performers. That is true — but it is not the whole story.
Let us start with how the requirements are set in the first place. The directive requires them to be established at the cost-optimal level across the building's whole life cycle, rather than at the level of maximum energy savings. The regulator therefore assumes from the outset that money counts, not only the kilowatt-hour.
The fourth pillar: automation that genuinely lowers cost
This is where it gets really interesting. The fourth pillar of the directive is building automation. The threshold for mandatory BACS falls from 290 to 70 kW, and those systems are to do more than monitor consumption — they are to make it possible to correct how the installation runs.
That is precisely the infrastructure through which a building shifts consumption in time, stores energy and heat, responds to exchange prices and consumes its own production from the roof.
The kilowatt-hour and the euro are two different currencies
And here we come to the thing that is missed most often. You can consume exactly the same amount of energy and pay noticeably less: by moving consumption out of peak hours, charging storage when the price is sometimes even negative, avoiding purchases from the grid in the most expensive windows.
By mandating automation capable of doing this, the directive opens the door to savings that are simply invisible in the kilowatt-hour account.
Satisfy the letter, or use the best part of it
Hence the conclusion from our projects: a building prepared for EPBD purely as "less energy" will satisfy the letter of the rule and miss its best part. The same set of equipment that lowers emissions is at the same time a tool for lowering cost — provided somebody actually manages it rather than merely owning it.
The directive does not say outright "lower your bill". What it says is closer to this: equip the building with the capability that makes it possible. A subtle difference, but a fundamental one for anyone looking at the cost of energy.
The kilowatt-hour and the euro are two different currencies — the same set of equipment that satisfies EPBD and lowers emissions also lowers the bill, but only when somebody actually manages it rather than merely owning it.
Percee is the layer that turns the automation mandated by EPBD from "owned" into "managed". As an EMOS-class system it sits on top of BACS, BMS and meters and automatically shifts consumption out of peak hours, charges storage (cold, heat, battery) in cheap or negative-price hours and maximises self-consumption from the roof — reaching, in other words, for that second currency which the kilowatt-hour account does not show. The same set of equipment that satisfies the directive then lowers the cost of energy by 15–40%, which at Solwena's customers has added up to more than PLN 50 million of documented savings across more than 50 deployments.
See how Percee works →