The Future Is Here: Smart Meters at the Corners of Europe

A little more than a month ago I went back to my beloved hometown, Torre Annunziata, a sunny place in the south of Italy situated in the Gulf of Naples. It spreads between Vesuvius’ slopes and the famous Pompei, right in front of Capri and Sorrento.

Having said that, it could seem that this town is the perfect place to be. Unfortunately, though, while the climate and the landscape are fantastic, it is not really at the forefront of social and economic development.

Nevertheless, I found a pleasant little surprise in that hot day of late May. In my apartment a new “smart” meters for power consumption, which had been installed by Enel, the Italian energy supplier. Reading the instructions I found that this device was able to read automatically my energy consumption and send the information back directly to the power supplier. I could also modify automatically the amount of energy supplied to my apartment without any phone calls ortechnicians’ visit.

Suddenly something came up to my mind…wait a moment! This is just what I heard talk about for months in Brussels! Smart meters, smart grids … these advanced technologies were also reaching this remote corner of Europe. (Well, actually, Italy has been amongst the first in Europe, and in the World, to implement this kind of solutions — a bit of national pride.)

This is a good example of how Europe is at the forefront of the development of ICT for energy efficiency. The European Commission provided about €74 million for the period 2009/2010 to fund R&D projects in green ICT and ICT for energy efficiency.

ICT are at the core of the future energy market. We must be able to take advantage of the distributive nature of ICT to allow the deployment of no-centralized clean power acumulation and distribution systems.