Ensto specializes in electrical solutions, and wants to improve the safety, functionality, reliability, and efficiency of smart grids, buildings and transportation. The company’s goal is to respond to the challenges and opportunities of global megatrends, and to improve everyday life through smart electrical solutions.
Ensto’s CEO, Ari Virtanen, wants to make a move from technology-centric planning to human-centric planning. Behind this new strategy are five megatrends: urbanization, digitalization, sustainability, social change and the shift of economic power to Asia.
All of these combine into the characteristics for what is known as a smart city, a place where the future of Ensto’s success is hidden. In Virtanen’s vision, Ensto is the provider of electrical solutions for smart cities.
“When our strategy has been implemented and we have reached our goals, we will see that our innovative smart solutions genuinely make for an easier life,” he concludes.
Smart ecosystems
Ensto will play a part in the three primary ecosystems of smart cities; smart grids, buildings and transportation. Thus, many of their business activities are especially focused on the intersections of these.
“Charging stations for electrical vehicles can be part of a smart building, or EV batteries can serve as a power supply for a smart grid,” he explains.
Sustainable electrical solutions for better living
Additionally, a smart city’s electric traffic will decrease small-particle emissions, as well as the health hazards and premature deaths that they can bring. As another example, Virtanen mentions the future potential of the utilization of growing local power generation.
“Many consumers are also wind and solar power producers who can sell surplus electricity to the grid. This trend should be sped up, since the sun is the cleanest source of producing energy, and electricity is the cleanest way to consume it.”
“We are developing the technology for local production to be connected to the electricity distribution grid. There are already 1.5 million local electricity production units in Germany,” he says, “significantly less in Finland.”
Text: Eila Lokka
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Ensto was founded in 1958. It employs approximately 1 600 people in Europe, America, and Asia.
Turnover: approximately 260 million euros.
Divisions:
- Ensto Utility Networks
- Ensto Electrification
- Ensto Lighting
- Ensto Solutions
