/EINPresswire.com/ -- HELSINKI, FINLAND--(Marketwired - March 07, 2017) - The Smart Kalasatama project underway in the new Helsinki district of Kalasatama proceeds with five climate-positive pilot projects focusing on smart city parking and electric car charging, resident-generated solar power, urban green solutions, and the carbon footprint of households.

Kalasatama is under construction at the site of a former commercial harbor. The City of Helsinki has designated the district as a platform for smart city development. The Smart Kalasatama project develops new digital services to ease the lives of residents. One of the goals and benchmarks of the development is to give residents one extra hour per day freed from everyday chores.

The current five pilot projects, conducted from February to July 2017, continue an agile piloting program started in 2016.

(1) Rentapark is a sharing-economy parking service that takes away the trouble of finding a parking space in the city by putting available spaces into productive use. An app allows drivers to book a space and pay for it in advance. There is no more driving around looking for a space. Rentapark is conducted by three startups.

(2) In Smart Minigrid, startup Parking Energy (Parkkisahko) develops smart electric-car charging stations for housing companies. Parking Energy upgrades electrical outlets for car block heaters into charging stations remote-operated with smartphones. Smart Minigrid stations can use locally generated solar power.

(3) Elwedo has designed a solution based on the solar-power generation technology installed in Kalasatama residential buildings. The solution allows buildings to feed their excessive solar power to the local grid and distributes the revenue among the residents.

(4) Green House Effect pilots outdoor green walls that control urban runoff and increase biodiversity while providing greenness to urban blocks.

(5) The Natural Step Helsinki creates climate-smart practices and incentives for residents by combining real-time carbon footprint data, everyday choices, and sharing-economy opportunities.

Active resident participation is key to the success of Smart Kalasatama. So far 800 of the district's 3,000 current residents have joined the program, as well as launching their own initiatives such as landscaped construction sites. Kalasatama is projected to house 25,000 residents and to provide 10,000 jobs by 2030. The smart urban lifestyle development is based on the extensive new construction and a dense urban structure.

The Smart Kalasatama agile piloting program 2016-2017 comprises up to 20 pilots.

The 2016 pilots included a solution by the Finnish mobility startup Tuup designed to make car ownership unnecessary. Tuup created mobility packages integrating rental cars and all forms of public transit to cater for the transportation needs of citizens.

The life-crises solutions provider Auntie tested some of their low-threshold consultation concepts based on video call and chat sessions, such as the Did I Raise a Monster? consultation for the parents of difficult teenagers.

Smart Kalasatama is coordinated by Forum Virium Helsinki, a non-profit company that develops smart city solutions in the Helsinki metropolitan area. The current pilots are conducted with the Helsinki Metropolitan Smart & Clean program, which develops the metropolitan area into a smart & clean testing ground.

Smart Kalasatama: http://fiksukalasatama.fi/en/

Documents and/or Photos available for this release:

Kalasatama Living Lab resident meeting
Kuukkeli, Kalasatama public art by Villu Jaanison
Future Kalasatama

To view supporting documents and/or photos, go to www.enr-corp.com/pressroom and enter Release ID: 409200