News Releases

Toshiba to Enter Smart Home Business in the U.S.

To develop Smart Home solutions in cooperation with Landis+Gyr
10 Jan, 2012

 

LAS VEGAS, January 8, 2012— Toshiba Corporation (TOKYO:6502) today announced that the company will bring to the U.S. market smart home energy management products and services that enhance power consumption efficiency and lower costs. Working with Landis+Gyr, a Toshiba Group company and world leader in smart metering, Toshiba will promote sales to electric power utilities from the end of 2012, targeting sales of 10 billion yen in fiscal year 2015.

Advances in energy generation, transmission and management, combined with state-of-the art information and communication technology (ICT), are bringing power saving innovations into the home, spurring utility and consumer interest in enhanced energy management for individual households. Technologies now support power shifting to cut consumption of electricity during periods of peak demand and the visualization of consumption through smart metering, allowing for optimization of consumption.

Toshiba will take this to the next stage by introducing to the U.S. its Life Design Box as a home gateway and Home Energy Management Cloud service by the end of this year. These form the core of a total home energy management system that can include a comprehensive range of products and systems, among them photovoltaic power generation, fuel cells, storage batteries, electric and plug-in hybrid vehicles charging systems. Toshiba’s home energy management system can also support a range of other services, including home automation, remote health care and home security.

The system will support such functions as peak shift. This allows home appliances running during peak demand times to be powered by less expensive stored electricity, cutting the cost to the consumer and reducing the demand load on the utility. This enhances the energy efficiency not only in the home but the wider community.

In the period up to 2015, utilities are expected to install smart meters in approximately half of the 96 million homes in the U.S., and 5 million homes are expected to install other smart home products. In the same period Toshiba aims to introduce smart home products into 1 million homes, in cooperation with Landis+Gyr, the U.S. and global market leader in smart meters.

Toshiba has brought together world-leading capabilities in power generation, transmission and in ICT to develop its Smart Community concept, a model for next generation integrated power systems that bring enhanced levels of operating and cost efficiency to all levels of society: from the grid to the home. Looking ahead, Toshiba expects its Smart Community business to generate revenues of 900 billion yen by fiscal year 2015, with sales of 140 billion yen in the U.S.  The smart home business is an integral part of this overall strategy, and is expected to enhance energy efficiency in the home while contributing to more comfortable lifestyles.