New Business Development Strategy of Telecommunication Operators Based on a Smart Energy System

This research studies the case of KT to see how a mobile operator expanded beyond its existing offerings to new smart energy business based on digital technology. Details were analysed specifically on how the business was developed, why the smart energy service was started, and what the success factors were. KT's smart energy business (KT-MEG: KT Micro Energy Grid) utilizes ICT to resolve energy issues such as global climate change and energy consumption growth. It also provides growth opportunities for KT with its KT-MEG platform. The authors analyze that KT was able to leverage sustainability as a new growth engine by developing new businesses to differentiate customer experience, create effective organization structure, and generate business impact in addition to application of latest ICT technologies such as artificial intelligence, IoT (internet of things), and big data. The results provide a good guideline for business transformation of ICT firms in the era of Industry 4.0.

A Model-Based and Goal-Oriented Approach for the Conceptual Design of Smart Grid Services

A solid demand to integrate energy consumption and co-generation emerged worldwide, motivated, on one hand, by the need to diversify and enhance energy supply, and, one the other hand, by the pressure to attend to the requirements of a heterogeneous class of users. The coupling between energy service provision and final users also includes balancing user needs, eliminating excesses, and optimizing energy supply while avoiding blackouts. Another motivation is the challenge of having sustainable sources and many adapted to the user ecosystem. Altogether, these motivations lead to more abstract design approaches to co-generation-distributed systems, such as those based on goal-oriented requirements used to model smart grids. This work considers the available design practices and its difficulties in proposing a new method capable of producing a flexible requirement model that could serve for design and maintenance purposes. We suggest coupling the approach based on goal-oriented requirements with model-based engineering to support such a model. The expected result is a sound and flexible requirements model, including a model for the interaction with the final user (now being considered a producer and consumer simultaneously). A case study is presented, wherein a small energy service system in an isolated community in the Amazon rain forest was designed.

The ESCO Formula as Support for Public and Commercial Energy Projects in Poland

The formula of engaging an energy service company (ESCO) in Poland is not a new form of accounting for investments in improving energy efficiency. The results of our survey confirm that many entities still lack sufficient knowledge about this subject. The research problem this paper is concerned with is the conditions of applying the ESCO formula (a model of investment financing with the participation of a specialised company) to support local government units and enterprises in energy-industry project development. For the purpose of this study, the research questions were formulated to analyse of the following issues: the reasons for interest in the ESCO formula and the sources of knowledge about this solution; activities and other factors that can increase or reduce interest in the ESCO formula; services in terms of ESCO formula implementation; the attractiveness of alternative instruments for financing energy industry projects, the benefits of using the ESCO formula and the influence of current and future target groups on ESCO formula development in Poland. This paper, therefore aims to recognise the conditions under which the ESCO formula can be applied by local government units and enterprises implementing energy industry projects in Poland. The research problem was solved using a triangulation of research methods: empirical qualitative research (desk research analysis, individual in-depth interviews, computer-assisted web interview (CAWI) survey, and focus group interviews) and one of the foresight methods (an expert panel). The research revealed that the lack of knowledge amongst local government units and enterprises with regard to the ESCO formula, although not unique to Poland, is insufficient to explain the low level of interest in this solution. One of the key conclusions is the need to educate local government units and enterprises on energy efficiency. This is vital to arouse their interest in the more complex ESCO implementation solutions that they have not yet investigated. Furthermore, by following and analysing the project implementation process in the ESCO formula, we can conclude that the risk generated is primarily on the part of the energy service company itself. For this reason, it is doubtful that energy service companies will invest the equity necessary to develop this challenging market. Based on the research conclusions, we indicate some recommendations that the government and related public institutions should consider in order to boost this market and support ESCO companies.

C3S Energy: an operational service to deliver power demand and supply for different electricity sources, time and spatial scales over Europe

The EU Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S) has produced an operational climate service, called C3S Energy, designed to enable the energy industry and policy makers to assess the impacts of climate variability and climate change on the energy sector in Europe. The C3S Energy service covers different time horizons, for the past forty years and the future. It provides time series of electricity demand and supply from wind, solar photovoltaic and hydro power, and can be used for recent trends analysis, seasonal outlooks or the assessment of climate change impacts on energy mixes in the long-term.This paper introduces this dataset, with a focus on the design and validation of the energy conversion models, based on ENTSO-E energy data and the ERA5 climate reanalysis. Flexibility and coherence across all countries have been privileged upon models’ accuracy. However, the comparison with ENTSO-E data shows that the models provide plausible energy indicators and, in particular, allow to compare climate variability effects on power demand and generation in an homogenous approach all over Europe.