Huawei Eyeing Opportunities with Smart Energy Technology

Source: Business News Americas

Chinese technology firm Huawei sees opportunities in Chile to implement its smart city technology given the energy supply problems the country currently faces, Huawei Chile's sales VP for enterprise solutions, Victor Espinoza, told BNamericas.

A power outage on September 24 affected all of Santiago and several regions outside the capital, home to a total 11mn people, or two-thirds of the country's population.

“All of these things represent opportunities for the network to be smarter... and to be able to leverage telecommunications and IT infrastructure to make those processes smarter,” Espinoza said.

The executive said that in Chile, it is typical for consumers to be charged winter rates and summer rates when they should really be charged according to the real energy use.

“When you have a smart grid you can differentiate between rates in a much more detailed and efficient way,” Espinoza said.

“Homes could generate energy through solar panels or other technologies. Often they could capture more energy than the home can consume, and that could be injected back into the grid, therefore optimizing the whole process,” Espinoza said.

The executive said that most of Huawei’s examples of smart city infrastructure have been deployed in China.

In Chile, the company has worked mostly partnering with operators but is starting to focus more on developing alliances with local distributors that can provide more complex solutions. Huawei is working with Universidad de Chile to implement a certification process.

“Here we lack development of commercial models. Huawei has experience in Asia with this type of technology and how to implement it. There are business cases of companies saving 60% of their energy consumption, which pays for any investment.”

“We're not thinking at the moment of doing that in a direct way. The partners we end up selecting will have to be very aligned with that objective,” he said.