The UTILTEC project was a research project co-financed by the Lombardy region within the “Metadistretto ICT” program.
The main purpose was the developments at a pre-competitive level of an innovative solution to effectively manage the power flow through an energy network by means of a distributed intelligent infrastructure.
The goal was to obtain a more efficient distribution and usage of the energy, with resulting advantages for all the actors in the energy supply chain. In particular, on the one side the solution addressed the utilities’ problems to better manage and control their power distribution network by providing a detailed view of consumptions of their customers. On the other side, the end users could increase their energy efficiency by better controlling the energy loads, possibly deciding a suitable combination of comfort and consumption criteria.
The need covered by Utiltec project was expressed by the middle-sized utilities to provide additional services to their customers, in order to gain competitive advantages with respect to competitors, but also by business consumers to reduce energy wastes stimulate the development of new solutions capable to monitor and control the energy loads through the network, and last but not least by final residential users who wanted to reduce energy costs. To this purpose, industrial research had to focus on ICT-based technologies and distributed intelligence architectures capable to control the loads by connecting in real time the final users to the provider companies. In this framework, the UTILTEC project provided major contributions in the development of qualifying technologies in the energy management area. The project is ended.