Samsung Presents Smart, Low-Power House of Future
By Kim Tong-hyung
Staff Reporter
The much-talked-about smart grid is finally preparing to enter the home. And Samsung C&T, a leading innovator in the construction and housing industry, is offering a picture of what the intelligent, energy-efficient houses of the near future may look like.
The possibilities enabled by the smart grid, which is achieved by giving the current analog electricity network a jolt of information technology, seem limitless. The sophisticated power network will allow electricity to flow out from homes and offices as well as into them, better balancing the supply and demand for power, while the batteries of electric cars will serve as backup power supplies when needed.
For home builders like Samsung C&T, the ultimate goal is to provide green, low-power housing units with high-levels of energy independency, by having solar panels and other self-reliant sources provide a chunk of electricity and letting the smart grid systems take care of the rest.
By enabling a two-way communication between electricity providers and consumers, smart grids could shave electricity bills. Rather than being charged a flat-rate for every kilowatt-hour used, smart grids would allow home owners to pay the market price for electricity that fluctuates by the minute, with the ``smart'' meters in their living rooms indicating the peak and off-peak hours.
Samsung C&T provided a glimpse of this future in November when it opened its ``Green Tomorrow'' model house in Yongin, Gyeonggi Province, which the company claimed as a fully energy-independent housing unit with ``zero'' greenhouse gas emission.
Built around a heavily-insulated roof installed with solar panels and triple-glazed, low-emissivity glass throughout, Green Tomorrow is designed to consume 56 percent less electricity than average apartment units, which use more than 33,000 kilowatt-hours a year.
The power generated by Green Tomorrow's solar panels, wind-power equipment and other independent energy sources is more than enough to cover the remaining 44 percent, Samsung C&T officials say, which, at least on paper, would make the house fully energy independent. Regardless of such claims, the house is equipped with a smart grid system that allows home owners to reduce their electricity bills by paying different rates for different hours of the day.
Green Tomorrow is a product of a wide range of cutting-edge technologies, including solar and wind power generating equipment, low-power light-emitting diode (LED) lighting, a radio frequency identification-based management program for monitoring food, clothes, other items, the smart grid system and information systems for cars.
Samsung C&T said it will start applying the technologies used for Green Tomorrow in its Raemian apartment units built from 2013.
Some of the technologies, including the solar power equipment, new heat insulation materials and geothermal heating systems for car roads, are already applied to the Raemian Dongcheon apartment complex in Yongin, where the first residents are expected to move in during May.
``Every building built by Samsung C&T will be equipped with some kind of technology developed and tested through our Green Tomorrow model house, or an upgraded version of it,'' said Samsung C&T Vice President Lee Gyu-jae.
``We may be able to limit the increase in construction costs by 10 percent from the current level by 2015, should a market for environment-friendly housing units take shape.''
Samsung's Smart Grid Involvement
Korea expects to establish a national smart grid by 2030, but transforming the country's old and mechanical power grid into a digital, networked infrastructure would require a Herculean effort. It would be up to the companies to provide most of the money and technologies to enable the transition, and the Samsung Group, the undisputed kingpin of Korea Inc., is destined to have a significant role.
The massiveness of the Samsung empire has it braided deep into the fabric of its home country ― the mega-conglomerate now provides the hospitals where people are born, the apartments they live in, the televisions they watch, the mobile phones they talk on, the malls they go to shop, the credit cards they use there and then the funeral halls where they die.
Needless to say, no national effort for the smart grid, which could dramatically change everyday life, business and public services by doing to the electricity network what the Internet did for communication, would be possible without Samsung's involvement.
Key Samsung affiliates are already involved in advancing technologies and services at the country's smart grid test bed on Jeju Island. Samsung C&T is collaborating with Korea Electric Power Corp. (KEPCO) and KT to develop ``smart place'' solutions for buildings and homes. Samsung Electronics, the world's largest electronics maker, Samsung SDI and Samsung Electro-Mechanics are some of the other companies involved in the efforts on Jeju.