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TelecomsTalk | March 28, 2024

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Digital Home World Summit to Energise the Smart Home Ecosystem

Editor

Leading connected home event highlights how telecom operators and energy companies should position themselves in the growing home energy management market

As Smart Home services rapidly evolve and increasing focus is placed on rising energy costs, consumption and conservation, the industry is undoubtedly poised for further growth. This represents an attractive opportunity for telecom operators and utility companies to expand their services and revenue streams, which will be addressed at this year’s Digital Home World Summit, taking place 18-19 June in London.

Home control can be tracked back to the 1980s, however despite the continuous development of Smart technologies for Smart Homes, there is still a huge growth opportunity within the industry. It has been forecast that the number of installed households with HEMS (Home Energy Management Systems) will grow to more than 40 million in 2020[1], highlighting the enormous potential for operators and energy companies.

Jean-Paul Krivine, Project Director of Smart Energy – Smart Home at French energy supplier, EDF, who is speaking at the event, says: “Helping to create energy-efficient Smart Homes, where the energy bill is controlled, is an obligation and commitment for energy companies. By becoming smart, the house will also be able to deliver energy flexibly to the power system. The Smart Home is an opportunity for utilities to reinforce trust and confidence and to consolidate an improved and sustainable relationship with their customers.”

Focussing on the energy sector, the fourth annual Digital Home World Summit holds more relevance than ever for those in the HEMS ecosystem. This is echoed by the content of the event programme which also includes a presentation from Vince Maret, Director, E-Lab at Bouygues Telecom, who will explore converging energy, Smart Grids and telecoms. His session will assess the Smart Home opportunity for energy companies and the prerequisites for achieving profitability, while highlighting the importance of partnerships, collaborations, eco-systems and standardisation.

The conference will include a focus on standardisation, which plays a crucial role in the evolution and adoption of energy management systems. Standardisation promotes best practices and provides the tools to design sound policies, optimise installations and systems and improve energy efficiency.

“The past two decades, and particularly the past five years, have changed consumer expectation of technology services and products. The combination of continuous internet access, and smart phones with effective user interface and app-store, means that people expect a similar style user interface, downloadable functions and extensibility when dealing with home services like energy, security and health. HGI is working with broadband service providers, manufacturers and chip vendors to develop software and hardware architectures to make this a reality and we’ll be discussing the latest findings at the conference,” says Ruth Wilson, Member of Board of Directors, HGI, who will discuss the value of standards in the connected home as part of the agenda.

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