OPTIX — short for Optimising Positive-Energy Districts through Interoperable Digital Platforms — is an EU Clean Energy Transition Partnership (CETP) project under the Joint Call 2023, bringing together participants from across Europe. At Innorma R&D, Solimpeks' R&D start-up, we contribute the part we know best: pioneering advanced heating and cooling systems powered by renewable sources. OPTIX is coordinated by DTU (Technical University of Denmark) and held its kick-off on 16 December 2024. It is funded under grant Cetp-FP-2023-00114, co-funded by the European Commission and national agencies, including TÜBİTAK (project 224N159). The Turkish pilot demonstrates PV/T collectors and solar-assisted heat pumps on the Solimpeks building in Konya.
What is a Positive-Energy District?
The core aim of OPTIX is to optimise energy performance across urban districts by integrating and managing renewable energy sources, storage solutions, and energy flows. The destination is the Positive-Energy District: an area designed to generate more energy than it consumes.
What is Innorma R&D building within OPTIX?
Our primary contribution is evaluating a solar-assisted heat pump system supported by both photovoltaic (PV) and photovoltaic-thermal (PVT) technologies, installed on the Solimpeks building in Konya, which serves as the OPTIX pilot in Türkiye. Within the consortium, Innorma R&D focuses on low-carbon technologies, energy auditing and sustainable urban planning. The objective is a synergistic system that meets a building's thermal (heating and cooling) and electrical energy demands using entirely renewable means — a heat pump's efficiency, expressed as its COP, turns each unit of solar electricity into several units of heating or cooling, improving energy efficiency and reducing carbon emissions.
Seasonal strategies keep the system performing year-round: circulating warm water to melt snow from PV/T surfaces during colder months, and actively cooling the PV/T collectors when temperatures exceed 40°C in summer. These measures support stable operation.
What has the Konya system already shown?
The Konya pilot builds on a system with a measured track record. A study funded under OPTIX / CETP (Cetp-FP-2023-00114) and published in Energy Proceedings (Vol. 61, 2025; doi:10.46855/energy-proceedings-12108) analysed 2020–2023 operating data from the 1,637 m² Solimpeks office building. Its 298 rooftop PV and PV/T collectors work with three 50 kW air-source heat pumps and eliminated the building's natural gas use of roughly 650 MWh. Compared with conventional fossil-fuel systems, the study reports about 66 % higher energy efficiency and about 65 % lower CO2 emissions. These figures describe the system's performance before the OPTIX work began; within OPTIX, the same installation becomes the basis for digital-twin optimisation.
How do SCADA and digital twins fit in?
A SCADA (Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition) system enables real-time monitoring of system outputs — temperatures, flow rates, ambient conditions — and can detect faults. On top of that, we are using simulation programs to create a digital twin of the installed model: a virtual representation that assists in optimising and configuring the system, refining energy-management strategies and overall control. It allows predictions and improvements without constant physical alterations to the actual system.
Where can this system be deployed?
The integrated renewable heating and cooling system is designed for sectors where climate control and sustainable energy are critical: large industrial operations (factories, workshops, the automotive and metal industries, shipbuilding), public and commercial facilities (shopping centres, cinemas, restaurants, universities, cultural centres, places of worship), and specialised facilities requiring high-precision climate management — greenhouses, animal farms, and critical data storage centres — alongside residential buildings and small businesses such as bakeries and laundries.
Strategic deployment focuses on territories with abundant solar resources and significant year-round cooling demand: countries dominated by the Mediterranean climate, including Turkey and various European nations, and the entire MENA (Middle East and North Africa) region. These regions combine high temperature and humidity levels, key tourist and settlement areas, and strong commitments to the clean energy transition — ideal markets for the integrated renewable solutions Positive-Energy Districts require.
A collaborative spirit
OPTIX's progress is the result of international collaboration, with Innorma R&D working alongside partners under the CET Partnership, including DTU, Lyngby-Taarbæk Municipality, Linköping University, Mälardalen University and University College Cork. That collective expertise is what makes challenges of this scale tractable — and what speeds the transition toward more sustainable urban environments.
For more information, visit the official OPTIX project site.
