Our home is packed with electrical appliances and electronic equipment and all of it does exactly what it was designed to do. The AC cools the air temperature and lowers the humidity within an area; the washing machine cleans our clothes quickly after we load it with our dirty clothes and press the “Start” button; the fridge works quietly 24/7 to keep food fresh; the TV entertains us with programming when we turn it on and select a channel; and the smoke detector in a residential building warns us when it detects smoke.
Moreover, further straining the supply-demand gap, Indian consumers, businesses, and industries are seeking even more electricity. Experts predict that by 2035, India’s demand for power will double. Today, we are paying more for the electricity that we need and, more important, over the long term we will be using more electricity than the planet can support. So what is the solution?
Vivek Sharma, Regional Vice-President, Greater China and South Asia Region, India Operations Director, India Design Centers, STMicroelectronics, said, “Today’s electricity usage model has its roots in the early 20th century when oil was a cheap and was presumed to be an inexhaustible resource. At that time, everyone imagined that our climate was immune to the impact of human activity. Today, we know differently and we need to address this situation without further delay.”
So we need to bring the model into the 21st century: Everything must get “smarter”, - Smarter appliances, smarter homes, smarter cars, and smarter cities. In fact, we need to live in a smarter world where everything is connected via the “Internet of Things” and instead of working in isolation, every machine, appliance, home and car should be able to share information with its neighbours, with the infrastructure and with service providers. By allowing everything to communicate, the smart network will enable electricity suppliers to balance the peaks and valleys of demand, reduce costs, use significantly less energy and use that energy more efficiently. In October 2012, according to the Ministry of Power, Government of India, there was a deficit of 9.1 per cent between the demand for power and its supply, an amount corresponding to 7,654 MU (million units). Smarter appliances, homes, cars and cities can balance the load.
In India, roughly 27,000 megawatts of electricity are wasted every day. By ensuring that the washing machine, fridge and AC synchronize operations to minimize total power consumed, the smarter home will reduce waste. But this is just the tip of the iceberg. A smart home is one part of a huge network of smarter homes. Imagine if our electricity supplier could communicate with every smart home in the community, continuously checking on the temperature setting and synchronizing with every AC to retain that homeowner’s preferred temperature.
Beyond energy saving, however, there are other benefits to the smarter, connected home. Imagine a smoke alarm going off in your building while you are watching a cricket match with the volume turned up. Wouldn’t it make sense for the house lights to flash and the TV to tell you there was something more urgent that you needed to know?
