Page 40 - European Energy Innovation - Summer 2016 publication

40 Summer 2016 European Energy Innovation

INTERNET OF THINGS

How IoT will play a crucial role in
slashing energy use

The main theme in this issue will focus on energy efficiency in industry. We want to highlight the
importance of the Internet of Things’ functions to help communities and industry in becoming
smarter energy consumers.

By Mario Campolargo (pictured)

Oil prices may have
bottomed out, but energy
use still remains one of
the highest manufacturing
costs. It is also one of the most tedious
to track down: where do you start
when you want to reduce your energy
bill? Fortunately, new ICT technologies
and especially advances through
the Internet of Things (IoT) are now
emerging that can make a difference.

The IoT is sometimes presented as a
fashionable and fuzzy concept. The
reality is however that it is starting to
be implemented today and to make
an impact across sectors. What do
we mean by IoT? The IoT represents
the next major economic and societal
disruption enabled by the Internet:
the physical and the virtual worlds will
merge into a new smart environment,
which will sense, analyse and adapt.
In the IoT, objects and people are
interconnected through communication
networks, in and across private, public
and industrial spaces, and report about
their status and/or about the status of
the surrounding environment.

They produce data that is collected
and aggregated in some IoT platform
connected to Internet. Through this
IoT platform, resources and solutions
can then be programmed so that the
connected objects and applications
can be activated and operate tasks
and functions to deliver specific
benefits (ex: start of a machine/
process at a time that minimises the
energy bill). The possibilities that IoT
offer are exponential. Dynamic and

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