The most relevant innovative elements of MESSIB are:

• New phase change materials (PCM) for improved active components (that allow energy transportation within the building by circulating phase change slurry and water). The active components will be implemented in building envelope, indoor walls, floors and ceilings.
• Advance ground storage (GS) technology combined with radiant systems and ground thermal contact improvement by the development of a conductive fluid material (CFM).
• Composite materials (with nanomaterials) for flywheels (FW) to increase the storage capacity.
  Adaptation of the whole system for new use in buildings.
• More durable vanadium red-ox flow batteries (VRB) improving vanadium stability and more compact system adapted for its use in buildings.
• Integration of the storage systems in the building with conventional installations.
• Renewal energy sources integrated with the storage technologies in the building.
• Combination of thermal and electrical energy storage.
• Combination of short and long term storage.
• Short storage (during a day): by means of the PCMs and FW.
• Medium term and Seasonal storage: by means of GS and VRB.
• Simulation tools to properly integrate the technologies developed, in the design phase of the building.
• Advanced intelligent control system to manage the energy demand of buildings by adapting the storage times and rates to the different energy customers demand profiles.

Within the project, the appropriated integration of these innovative elements with conventional technologies, RES and building architecture will be carried out. This is essential in order to achieve the maximum performance of the system due to the building process is more than simply combination of elements; the successful introduction of energy efficient technologies in buildings needs an integral approach as is proposed in MESSIB.

MESS will be installed, monitored and evaluated in two buildings: One new residential in Greece (mediterranean climatic conditions) builded within the I-SSB FP6 IP and the other one, an office building in Germany, at the Fraunhofer ISE installations, the Solar House in Freiburg, specially equipped with RES (central European climate). Both buildings will be fully equipped with sensors for monitoring through a wireless network.

Furthermore, technical and economical feasibility studies will be carried out in a real district level in Madrid to assess the applicability of the storage technologies.
All the technologies involved in MESSIB have an important material development: micro materials for the PCM, nano-materiales for the composite wheel, advanced materials for soils improvement in ground storage, and vanadium stability improvement and materials development for the red ox flow battery. All this development could be exploited not only for the applications proposed in MESSIB, but in other industrial applications such as phase change materials to storage energy from thermal solar panels, high strength composite materials for structural construction and aerospace applications.