KT to Turn Its Branches, Data Centers as Energy Production Bases

The smart energy business is one of the five future convergence services the company designated as future growth engines last May. (image: KT)

SEOUL, July 19 (Korea Bizwire) – KT will advance into the “smart” energy market by transforming its 400 branch offices and data centers into advanced energy centers, which, according to KT’s plan, will offer EV (electric vehicle) charging services, recycle wasted heat gathered from data centers, provide integrated ESS-EMS service and manage electric demand intelligently.

The smart energy business is one of the five future convergence services the company designated as future growth engines last May. Taking advantage of its high customer accessibility, KT will install electric vehicle charging infrastructures such as regular-speed and high-speed chargers and service platforms in its 400 offices nationwide and expand the EV charging infrastructure in cooperation with public agencies and local governments in the future.

“KT has secured lots of capabilities in the smart energy sector through numerous experiments and achievements. By coming up with a variety of solutions taking advantage of our capabilities, we will try to respond proactively to the shift of the future energy market.”

An official at KT responsible for KT’s planned smart energy project

The telecommunication brand will further expand its service range by providing Internet of Things technology; managing the remote EV charging infrastructure effectively and connecting all the EVs in an expansive network to offer battery check, locate charging stations and manage vehicle log, diagnosis and repair.

KT plans to reuse the wasted heat, by recycling it from air-conditioners at the data centers which require huge amount of energy to cool the highly-concentrated telecom and computer equipment in operation. The company reckons the recycling of the wasted heat from its data centers can be the energy equivalent of heating some 15,000 households in the city.

Based on its smart grid technology which enables the integrated management of energy storage system (ESS) and energy management system (EMS), KT is now developing the optimized control engine for ESS in estimating the demand in advance by borrowing the big data analysis algorithm.

With the state-of-the-art technology, it also plans to construct an ESS targeting industrial complexes and helps them reduce 15 percent of their electric power bills from 2015 by supplying optimized electricity management service.

Meanwhile, for the forthcoming “Negawatt Power Market” which can save electricity by using consumer-site energy-saving devices and reward companies that install such devices, KT will offer optimized electricity management services by automatic control of demand linked to IoT and securing on-site solutions.

An official at KT said, “KT has secured lots of capabilities in the smart energy sector through numerous experiments and achievements. By coming up with a variety of solutions taking advantage of our capabilities, we will try to respond proactively to the shift of the future energy market.”

By John Choi (johnchoi@koreabizwire.com)