June 19 – How can electricity supply become more efficient in a big city, reducing environmental damage, all the while increasing the company’s market share also in nearby towns? The University of Trento takes on this innovation challenge. “Our idea is a smartphone app that helps users distribute their electricity consumption, lowering peak usage and ensuring a more continuous supply.” Four students of the Department of Economics and Management of the University are the winners of the national round of the European Best Engineering Competition (Ebec), organized by the Board of European Students of Technology (Best). Soon, the Trentino team will compete for the title against the best national European teams in Riga, Latvia. “The most appreciated part of our proposal – comment Luigi Mattiazzi, Nicola Toselli, Giovanni Barbarisi and Edilio Canepa, members of the ‘Economics’ Maki’ team – was the economic and financial analysis on which we based our strategy. If peak daily consumption is much higher than average consumption, the company is less efficient. But it’s enough to make spread consumption more evenly throughout the day to improve the situation. We preferred presenting something that is feasible given the economic situation, without bringing to the table something more technical and complex, but also more expensive. There are already discount mechanisms in place for those who use their appliances at certain times of the day; the novelty of our proposal is to give users an idea of their consumption pattern from day to day, so they can know how they’re consuming and make their habits more efficient and sustainable.”
