Telefonica launches the Environmental Projects Workgroup

February 27, 2009

The Environmental Projects Workgroup has been recently created in Telefónica I+D with the purpose of coordinating all the projects related to sustainability and energy efficiency in the company and present them in a coherent and comprehensive manner towards Telefónica. The persons initially involved in the workgroup belong to the Telefónica I+D centres in Madrid and Barcelona but the group composition will be dynamic to integrate new initiatives as they arise. In the first meeting of the group, held in Madrid on 9th of March 2009, 2 major work lines have been identified where the role of the telco is fundamental:

• Increase energy efficiency in ICT processes and operator platforms
• Increase efficiency for the user: Services for the final customer with a component of sustainability and energy efficiency, including videoconferencing capabilities, remote assistance, tele work, energy saving at home, etc.

Currently, the group of researchers of Telefónica I+D in Barcelona are developing new platforms for urban computing, human behaviour modelling (in the city), city sensing (traffic, persons), development of applications for the mobile phone that promote fitness and wellness, CSCW technologies (Computer Supporting Collaborative Work), and pervasive technologies applied to the mobile phone as user’s terminal. Their work has a practical application in a shared bicycle program (in collaboration with www.bicing.com).

Analysis of fingerprints obtained from the web bicing.com revealed different urban routines and cultural influences. Most of the workgroup participants in Madrid work in projects related to efficiency in ICT platforms and energy management platforms for the utilities, mostly in the context of EU Celtic and FP7 projects. In this framework, BeyWatch was presented as a project that joins the interests of the utilities and of the final user. Telefónica I+D is the administrative leader of the project as a proof of the importance that it has for the company. The Digital Home Group of Telefonica I+D that is involved in BeyWatch is also willing to collaborate with the Digital Home and the Energy Efficiency Spanish Technological Platforms, both funded by the Science and Innovation Ministry, in an open solution at national level for energy efficiency.

The proposal is driven by the need to change all the energy meters by smart meters that allow remote metering and time based rates. This will ease the creation of new business models for the utility that could be benefitted from a better manageable global platform (generation, distribution), controlling the energy demand of the user and having demand graphics much more precise than those existing nowadays.

Telefónica faces the challenge of convincing the utilities in Spain that they could improve their business thanks to ICT technologies and that the operator is not going to jeopardise their business, but to offer complementary capabilities (management, messaging, information aggregation). Just each partner plays its role. Otherwise, if a common solution is not adopted, the utility will have their own home platform (that will include the smart meter and a kind of home gateway for communications, integrated in the same physical device or not) while the operator will substitute current broadband routers by home gateways that, among others, can offer services such as energy consumption measurement, messaging to the utility and to the user, home appliances control, notifications to the user, reinforce energy saving behaviours and giving options to him to change his bad habits.

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