Water & Wastewater Treatment Magazine
Issue link: https://fhpublishing.uberflip.com/i/670657
14 | Book your free ckets today www.u lityweeklive.co.uk The Connected Customer The electricity sector is on the cusp of a smart technology explosion. The mass rollout of smart meters beginning this year, and the impact of devices such as smart thermostats, herald a vision of the development of the connected home where all the electrical goods – from fridges to vacuum cleaners – feed into the internet of things. Here, RWE Npower's director of UK innova on, Neil Pennington, assesses the impact of the internet of things, the connected customer, and the new market opportuni es this presents. There is a massive change occurring in the energy retail sector that will fundamentally disrupt the business models we have come to recognise and depend on. The energy market is not alone in facing this disrup on; insurance, health, banking, transporta on, all will be changed beyond recogni on in ways we cannot imagine and at a speed previously not thought possible. This change is diff erent from others. It is not being driven by regulators, or governments - they are struggling to keep up with the change themselves. It is a change being driven by people and is being enabled and accelerated by the availability and use of increasingly smarter, cheaper and connected technology. Sensors and smart devices are becoming much easier to integrate and connect and actually deliver benefi t that is meaningful to more than early adopters. Solar and storage technology is becoming more accessible and cheaper. The use of data and analy cs is becoming much more focussed on how to underpin new payment models to secure value, than simply a presenta onal "nice to have". The advent of disrup ve digital technology such as the block-chain will transform rela onships, iden ty and trust across all market sectors. The challenge for us, with a current business based on the supply of energy and associated services is how to fi nd our new place in the hearts and minds of customers. We are unlikely to be a market leader in the development of hardware and so ware, but we can change through partnerships to bring the best capabili es, quickly. Connected Home and Business We are developing new use cases, enabled by the APIs and data from sensors and world class devices, such as through our strategic partnership with Nest, to bring personalised services that have meaning to people's lives. Personalised Energy Advice We are developing new ways of u lising data, analy cs and smart meters to diagnose the performance of appliances in the home and enable people to benefi t from taking ac on. Lifestyle We are looking at how we can combine other areas such as insurance, health, mobility to provide an increasingly personalised service to make a