A Smarter Future A Smarter Future | Page 15

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15 technology
the power shift

From 2001 through 2005,

Enel, a multinational energy company that serves 61 million clients in 30 countries, began rolling out the world’ s first Smart Grid. In five years, it installed 32 million smart meters across Italy, establishing two-way communication with its customers and collecting data on consumption, contract parameters and the quality of electricity supply.
Our future cities strategy is to leverage the smart grid to maximize convergence” Livio Gallo, Head of Global Infrastructure and Networks, Enel
Today, it has seven million smart meters in Spain and plans to reach all 13 million customers in the near future. Meanwhile, Enel’ s
Open Fiber group began laying a $ 2.8-billion, ultra-fast network in Italy in September that will reach 224 cities and towns nationwide by 2020. This will connect the next generation of 32 million Enel Open Meters, permitting faster and more flexible data measurement to respond to its clients’ desire to optimize energy use and efficiency.
As the global population migrates to urban areas and demand for services mostly powered by electricity increases exponentially, Enel’ s vision of the Smart City is focused on convergence. Power networks, telecommunications, transportation and other infrastructure that makes cities tick will need to be upgraded in terms of capacity, responsiveness and quality service.
Once Enel has the high-speed hardware in place to connect millions of homes and businesses to its grid, it will be able to deliver almost any service required, now and in the future.“ Our grid has a very
Enel created the world’ s first completely electric smart city for Expo 2015 smart architecture; not just electricity but also water and heat,” says Enel’ s head of global infrastructure and networks, Livio Gallo.“ With intelligent substations, we can collect data from sensors about air pollution, wind speeds, temperature, even waste. Using these connections, we are creating an Internet of Things.”
The next step, Gallo says, will be redefining the relationship between power providers and consumers and transforming bilateral communication into commerce. Using decentralized storage and smart distribution, customers will be able to draw down power from the grid if they need it, and inject
energy back into the network when they have a surplus and when renewable generating capacity does not satisfy demand.
Analyzing big data, balancing usage and demand, providing on-demand power when possible and purchasing from prosumers as required, Enel aims to work with urban managers on smarter sustainable solutions for tomorrow.“ Municipalities have to have a clear plan. They play a major role in the development of infrastructure,” Gallo says.“ When you talk about smart cities, you’ re talking about smart customers and smart institutions.”
Thinking big about adding value to data

Big data presents an opportunity that has to be managed to not be missed. It can provide vital knowledge into how, in our connected world, everything works or fails. It is massive and rapidly-expanding, in hundreds of formats, yet virtually worthless without analysis and visualization. The challenge“ will come from keeping IT resources connected and coherent as deployment broadens,” notes David Chalmers, vice president and chief technologist EMEA, Hewlett Packard Enterprise( HPE).

Since the 1960s, improvements to IT architecture have been driven by faster processors, but Chalmers points out that you can only go so fast in an old model before it breaks. HPE’ s“ The Machine” project aims to
revolutionize computing by putting data first. Driven by memory, connected by light and with limitless storage, it offers a scalable solution to transform data securely, efficiently, and cost-effectively into intelligence that customers can act upon.
“ At HPE, we see a dramatically larger need for sophisticated infrastructure that enables information to flow for the new world,” Chalmers explains.“ Organizations have a critical role to play, putting in place the infrastructure at the heart of these solutions, talking to devices on the edge and the IoT, assimilating data, analyzing it, getting value from it, processing it and protecting it.”
HPE is committed to open-source standards rather than closed, proprietary solutions, because, Chalmers insists, it believes collaboration offers greater benefits to customers. The last company left
in the marketplace to sell the entire technology portfolio, HPE is working closely with peers and clients
Getting value from big data demands powerful analytics at the edge, the data center, and in the cloud” David Chalmers, Vice President and Chief Technologist EMEA, Hewlett Packard Enterprise
to avoid potential roadblocks to currently unforeseeable demands.
With a projected 30 billion connected devices worldwide by 2030 generating more data than ever, the process by which we gain insight also needs to change. Instead
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of using data to confirm trends we think are already there, we need to dig deeper to discover“ gold dust” where we did not expect to find it. Doing so will require ever more powerful analytics to combine and consolidate data.
HPE’ s value proposition is all about seeing beyond big data to the bigger picture.“ The value from the pieces you do not expect is where I think we will see a lot of gains in smart cities,” Chalmers says.“ You can only do that if you have enough ability to gather and look at all the data, from the center, the cloud and the edge. Our openness of approach, breadth of perspective, and willingness to partner really make a difference.”
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