CES 2019: Flashnet – Smart Public Lighting

Q: Hello Lorand. Can you present Flashnet in a few words ?

Certainly. Flashnet is a technical R & D company specialising in hardware and software for Smart Energy management applications. We addressed the urban lighting market for the first time in 2007, and many cities already enjoy the benefits of our smart lighting systems.

What is special about our solutions is that we focus on interoperability and a co-operative business mode: our products work on a plug-and-play basis with the latest IoT connectivity technologies and high-level smart city management platforms. This puts us in a unique position on what is already a global market.

Q: Can you tell us your story with ENGIE?

We are a recent arrival in the ENGIE family: July this year! We had a number of offers, but ENGIE was by far the best fit in terms of vision; they have great Smart City ambitions – look at the Livin' platform, for example – and in fact ENGIE was originally a customer of ours, so we knew that we could work well together. And indeed, we only recently got back from Barcelona, where we were on the ENGIE stand at the Smart City Expo World Congress.

Q: What does it mean for you to participate in CES?

CES is the world's biggest showcase for consumer electronics, and a fabulous opportunity for us to show our latest innovations. And, of course, it's in the USA, which represents an enormous market for Flashnet.

Q: What will you showcase at CES and why?

There will be a live demo of all the hardware and software involved in IntelliLIGHT, our smart street-lighting control system, to show how we are currently moving in a 5G direction, towards even greater interconnectivity and increased simplicity. Smart lighting systems have usually been complicated and expensive. With IntelliLIGHT's 'plug and twist' installation, things are simpler - and cheaper. The existing photocell is replaced with a whole control system in seconds, which allows us to offer our customers a connectivity cost of 1 Euro per year.

Q: What would be the 'magic encounter' for you at CES?

I think the first 'magic encounter' will be with our new ENGIE colleagues! But beyond that, we hope to meet some big US players: firstly, streetlighting and grid operators, with whom we can work immediately; but also telecom companies. After making the most of connecting mobile phones, their next big thing will be connecting the massive IoT – including our smart street lighting devices.

Q: And how do you imagine connectivity in 2030?

First of all, I think absolutely everything will be interconnected. Back in 2007, people would say to us: "What? Communicate with a streetlight?!" And now it's already becoming standard procedure. And secondly, I think smart systems will have become universal. Parking, waste collection, pollution monitoring - just about everything - will work with high-level apps managed by AI systems, by using shared connectivity mediums between multiple verticals. It's a very exciting time to be a player in Smart Energy.