A city can be defined as ‘smart’ when there are investments in human and social capital, along with traditional, modern communication infrastructure. There is also sustainable economic development and a high quality of life. Today ‘green’ energy production and sustainable energy consumption at home, is becoming a popular lifestyle. A hyper-connected consumer seeks a reduced environmental footprint, at the same time seeks to enjoy seamless services, ease of use, improved quality of life using complete digitized processes and complete control in day-to-day life.
There is also the arrival of smart metering systems as well as various technology platforms like SAP and other customized software solutions like SAP Predictive Maintenance and service that incorporate advanced analytics, machine learning, big data and AI. Energy utilities can easily collect data from smart meters and SCADA systems to monitor the health of infrastructural assets. This brings new opportunities to identify business processes and models.
Tech experts claim by the fall of next decade, anything that can be connected will be connected. That includes automobiles to daily appliances and temperature control will be connected in an interoperable network which will give consumers unmatched control and choice over their energy consumption. But consumers are also having the power of having real-time visibility of the consumption behavior with a better management at the household or a business level. The smart city environment also helps enable benchmarking which provides the energy consumers with insights of the energy usage of the neighbors and the neighborhood, town, city and also at the national level.