Background

Smart Grid and Smart Energy Efficiency, jointly addressed as Smart Energy evolves as top of mind in most modern economies and gradually gains higher national priorities and massive investments with already over $15B allocated as stimulus funding by different countries. The potential of smart energy solutions in cost savings are expected to reach a yearly pace of over a trillion dollars within a decade.

Smart Grid is an important corner stone on the path to improve energy efficiency, enabling flexibility in energy generation sources, changing the legacy transmission hierarchy, while using bi-directional communication to control energy consumption of consumer appliances and industrial machines. The fully deployed Smart Grid will enable effective, real time supply and demand coordination between the various manufacturers and consumers to reach energy saving, pollution reduction, and cost savings.

Additional areas new processes, different planning, and new products, evolve quickly and are expected to contribute significantly to energy usage optimization and to integrate well with the Smart Grid.

The Israeli government and the Israel Electric Corporation have already launched pilots and are looking at plans for rapid implementation of Smart Energy solutions and are very positive of engaging the association with the relevant discussions.

Goals

The association goal is to establish a national platform to promote and accelerate the implementation and development of Smart Grid and Smart Energy Efficiency solutions in Israel through cooperation between public and private stakeholders.

The association will strive to accelerate implementation plans, encourage the development of relevant local industry, create awareness of the importance and benefits of smart energy, and promote cooperation and involvement between the utility, the relevant manufacturers, the customers, the government, and the academy.

To achieve its goals, the association, will:

• Increase the awareness of the smart energy potential

• Initiate discussions with policy makers to drive regulatory issues and accompanied incentives

• Expose leading Israeli customers to existing and potential solutions for immediate implementation

• Build relevant local knowledge center

• Establish joint working groups for customers, government, manufacturers, and other stakeholders around specific areas of interest

• Encourage live dialogue and cooperation with relevant organizations in other countries

• Encourage knowledge sharing between the academy, the industry, and energy providers from Israel and the world

• Establish an arena to encourage entrepreneurs to enter the field

• Help to ensure the formation of trials and pilots opportunities