OREANDA-NEWS. May 15, 2012. Fujitsu today announced the immediate release of SSPF v01 ("smart sensing platform"), software that facilitates the construction of energy-management systems for homes and shops by simplifying the operation of network controls for power-related devices, such as appliances and solar panels, that are connected in a network.

This software uses a proprietary architecture developed at Fujitsu that efficiently ties together numerous network standards involved in collecting data from the home or building, such as power-usage levels, and controlling household appliances, solar panels and other power-related equipment, even though their specifications often vary from vendor to vendor. The result is a process of developing energy-management systems for the smart-home and smart-community market that is dramatically more efficient.

In recent years, a variety of low-energy devices, such as smart appliances that control power consumption, and energy-storage devices, such as solar panels, fuel cells, and fixed storage batteries, have become increasingly common in homes and shops as well as other buildings in the community. Tying together these devices and ICT would promote the aim of energy conservation with the expansion of the smart home market. Residences would be able to visualize their power usage volumes, which can guide behavior to conserve energy, and it is envisioned that new services would emerge to optimize control over energy usage and improve the comfort of living spaces.

To optimally control these appliances and power-related devices, it is essential that they be connected in a network and that the network can be used to control their operation. To enable remote control of these appliances and devices, however, it is necessary to thoroughly deal with all of the different industry standards and communications specifications in an integrated way, including the industry standards for each different type of appliance or device, the communications standards for home networks, and communications standards for wide-area networks, such as the Internet. The complexity of the designed network that would be needed has been an obstacle preventing service providers and device makers from quickly building management systems.

Fujitsu developed SSPF v01, which is being released today, to solve this problem, with the goal of dramatically improving the efficiency of building management systems for smart homes and smart communities.