Smart city evolves from concept to product

Amsterdam has a leading example of the smart city ideal: transportation, distribution, utilities, consumers, water sources and renewables working together to create a cleaner, greener urban utopia. They’ve been working on this concept for years, bringing in researchers, utility experts, consultants and even the common man to contribute to the cause.

Over the last few years, other cities---mostly in Europe but also a handful in the Middle East---have been gathering behind the smart city piper, following that tune to its proper end. Of course, no one is quite sure what that proper end will be, but most agree that smart cities are about cooperation and good planning. Cooperation and good planning usually end pretty well.

As the journey progresses, though, every good idea eventually becomes both a catchphrase---like “smart grid”---and a product.

This week, the concept of smart cities has moved past catchphrase to product in my mind.

Schneider Electric and the IT company it recently acquired, Telvent, announced a joint “SmartCity” offering that comes complete with an integrated suite of solutions centered around efficiency, sustainability and ways to make “more livable cities,” according to the press release.

Their specific SmartCity offering combines areas they label “smart grid,” “smart mobility,” “smart water,” “smart public services,” and “smart buildings and homes.” While the grid part looks for inefficiencies over local distribution, the mobility checks in on traffic congestion and electric vehicle integration. While the water side looks to reduce losses, the public services side reviews safety, lighting, healthcare and even admin stuffs. Finally, the suite looks into creating brighter, cleaner, smart buildings which ties it right back to the grid portion of the collection.

Now, this isn’t the first collaborative offering in this arena, but it was the one that struck me as evidence that the smart city train is still on track. Once an idea becomes a serious, sellable product, we’ve moved from “maybe someday” to today.

It’s nice to see a smart city of today, even labeled SmartCity.

I pinged Telvent to know a bit more about their product and whether any utilities are just foaming at the mouth to use it. I got a very lovely---and very quick, thank you---response from Jon Reifschneider over there. He tells me there were a lot of people involved in planning their SmartCity suite, including utilities, city governments and urban planners.

He went on to comment that they’re seeing a lot of “activity currently in Brazil in preparation for the major events there (World Cup and Olympics) and, of course, in China, where new cities are being built and current cities enlarged at an incredible pace.”

Reifschneider also noted activity in the U.S. and Europe, with the U.S. focus on energy management and led by utilities.

“One particular example of a smart city initiative we have implemented very closely with a utility is the Malaga Smart City in Malaga, Spain with Endesa, and we are working with them to explore projects in additional cities,” he added.

Both he and the company see smart cities as the evolution of smart grid, which I cannot deny. It does seem that change is in the works. The final result of this smart city journey may be the bundling of smart grids into the smart city overall product, making interconnections and cooperation the most key element.

And, if that happens, the “smart grid” catchphrase may go the way of “Xerox.” When’s the last time you used that catchphrase---based on a company---to say you’re making copies?

Technology, it does one thing well: evolve.