LuxActive Develops Innovative Energy-Saving Chatbot, SRI-CHATPED

Austria-based company LuxActive was awarded at the first SUSTAIN Open Call for its groundbreaking project SRI-CHATPED. This innovative chatbot aims to transform how users interact with and understand statistics, specifically designed to help energy prosumers optimize their energy consumption and increase their Smart Readiness Indicator (SRI) rating of buildings.

SRI-CHATPED serves as a pocket companion for end users, providing educational insights and personalized recommendations to improve energy efficiency. It builds upon LuxActive’s previous project, PEDMaker, an energy coach that helps users reduce CO2 emissions and save money. Through SRI-CHATPED, users can now chat with PEDMaker, leveraging a novel semantic layer developed as part of this project to ensure secure and seamless communication with various applications.

During the first months of the experiment, the use of Large Language Models (LLMs) posed security challenges, particularly when employing the Retrieval Augmented Generation (RAG) approach. However, LuxActive addressed these concerns by creating a semantic layer that facilitates secure searches and conversations with integrated applications. This layer enhances user experience while ensuring safe interactions with LLMs.

The SRI-CHATPED project uses a custom-developed chatbot interface via Telegram, enabling the system to answer complex questions by combining live data from local databases, documents, and the web. This makes it a powerful tool for SRI-related information and recommendations.

Key Challenges and Sustainability 

Developing a chatbot powered by LLMs involved significant challenges, such as creating a novel declarative approach to rule-setting within prompts and handling the memory limitations of smaller open-source LLMs. LuxActive worked to balance information input to ensure chat continuity without overwhelming the system, all while testing energy-efficient approaches like Mixture-of-Agents.

By focusing on smaller, energy-efficient LLMs, LuxActive’s development of SRI-CHATPED reflects a commitment to sustainability, aligning with the broader goals of the SUSTAIN Open Call.

This cutting-edge project marks a new approach to AI-driven energy efficiency, empowering users to take charge of their energy usage while promoting sustainable technologies.