News

Ariston : lower consumption and an easier life for consumers

Positive initial results by two new EU funded research projects

Fabriano, 18th January 2008 – Ariston, in collaboration with a pool of European companies and universities and with co-financing from the European Union, is engaged on two important new research projects: Promise and Comanche.
The two projects, costing over €20 million, have made it possible to develop technologies capable of further reducing consumption of energy and ensuring consumers get improved performance through technology that’s intuitively easy, clear and immediately accessible, above all for the elderly and disabled.
The aim of Promise is to study and monitor product life cycle management to provide end users with preventive maintenance services. The aim of Comanche is to develop software architecture to help consumers with the configurability and interoperability of various domestic appliances, thus appreciably simplifying their use and reducing electricity consumption.
Thanks to innovations developed by Ariston, new generation domestic appliances will be able to send their operating data to a remote site. Here, the data will be stored on a server and processed by an expert system that can tell whether the appliance is working properly or is malfunctioning. This process will make it possible to remotely monitor an appliance’s operation and warn the consumer in advance in the case of malfunctioning. Once alerted, Ariston’s customer service can then call the user about the anomaly and adjust the appliance before anything breaks.
Collaboration with the European Union is a feature of Ariston’s innovation model, which is based on an extended network including suppliers, companies, universities and research organizations. Indesit thus establishes co-operation relationships right from the initial phases of concept design and development. This open innovation model has produced important results in terms of developing products with high energy efficiency that can also appreciably reduce water consumption.
The Aqualtis washing machine is a fine example of Indesit’s commitment to developing increasingly eco-compatible products. Designed using the most advanced innovation criteria and to the best eco-design standards, the Aqualtis in 2006 won an Ecohitech Award, the most important in the field of eco-compatible, low energy consumption technology, as the best product in the “environmentally friendly products” category. Also in 2006, it was the first washing machine to pass the Australian Standard Tests with flying colours, wining five stars in the water rating category and proving itself the washing machine most focused on water saving, a problem the Australian government has been grappling with for years.
The environmental performance characteristics of new generation domestic appliances have brought considerable advantages: A, A and A class appliances consume less electricity and therefore reduce emissions of gases that cause the greenhouse effect. Last year alone, replacement of obsolete fridges and freezers with ones in higher energy efficiency classes took 27,700 tonnes of climate-changing CO2 out of the air. In Italy, there are still some 20 million domestic appliances to replace: changing them would prevent 2.3 million tonnes of CO2 being released into the atmosphere. Which would be like taking 900,000 cars off the road in one go. Indesit Company A class fridges use R600 gas (HydroCarbon), a natural gas that doesn’t have negative effects on the environment or the ozone and which makes it possible to save up to 70% in electricity compared to obsolete models.