By Rafi Zauer, Head of Marketing, Essence

With smart technologies, you are never too far from home, even if you travel to the other side of the globe. All it takes is a glance at your smartphone to monitor and manage your house, which is highly convenient now that you are about to start your vacation.

Here are five ways in which your smart home will help hold the fort while you bask in the sun and enjoy a mojito or begin your autumn travels, knowing that all your belongings are well cared for.

The current KOF Index of Globalization reflects the extent of economic, social and political globalization in 2014. According to the KOF Globalization Index, the degree of globalization was higher in 2014 than in the preceding year, and the rise was the most significant since 2007.

The largest increase was measured in the economic globalization dimension. Political globalization also progressed, while social globalization, the third dimension of the Index, stagnated. Pursuant to the KOF Index of Globalization, the Netherlands are still the most globalized country in the world, followed by Ireland and Belgium. Switzerland is in 5th place.

Delta-ee's latest European State of the Market Report has found 3M homes in Europe are equipped with smart thermostats or connected room heating controls and that number is set to grow to 9M by the end of 2019.

The connected home market is developing very rapidly.

"There are two key trends in this space today," explains Arthur Jouannic, Senior Analyst and Connected Home expert at Delta-ee.

"Firstly, the market has clearly taken off with over 50 players offering connected heating controls in Europe, with those like Centrica, Eneco, Bosch and EQ-3 securing more than 100,000 new customers a year. Some companies have already equipped 20% of their customers with smart thermostats.

Offshore wind in Europe saw a net 1,558 MW of additional installed grid-connected capacity in 2016. This was 48% less than in 2015. A net addition of 338 new offshore wind turbines across six wind farms were grid-connected from 1 January to 31 December 2016.

The industry announced a record €18.2 billion of investments in new wind farms to be built in the coming years.  This represents a further 4.9 GW of new capacity across five countries, half of it in the UK.

Giles Dickson, Chief Executive Officer of WindEurope, said: “It's good to see the high level of investments in offshore wind - up 40% year on year.  The new installations are in line with trend rate of the last 5 years after a spike in 2015. This was due to a backlog of grid connections."

Very soon all our home equipment will be connected to Internet. Don´t be surprised, when Your "smart" home, for instance, rises inside temperature to 1000 degrees, writes Slon.ru.

Fire alarm will start at three o´clock in the middle of night. You know, that this is not possible, but this sound is made by all kitchen and living room devices together. At that time, TV will start to show raw porn, water flows and so on. What´s going on? Read more here.

Group of Estonian designers and engineers constructed simple house, what uses solar energy and can move with You.

Small house is built ecologically. Air in a KODA house is cleaned and keeps right level of humidity. Vacuum-insulated concrete walls keep warmth and stop noise, with solar panels on the roof You can be almost energy independent. Usually KODA returns more power to the grid than it uses. Features like these mean that little or no energy is wasted:

• use of smart systems
• thin but well-insulated walls (with a U value of 0.1 W/m²K)
• quadruple glazing (with a U value of 0.3 W/m²K) and
• innovative LED lighting and architecture (which makes maximum use of sun).

The new platform is a unique system combining battery energy storage with Power-to-Heat technology. Solution targets the primary control reserve power reducing capital expenditure by 30 % and possibly more, depending on installation.

AEG Power Solutions has developed a Hybrid Energy Storage System which combines standard battery storage with power-to-heat technology to reduce the total cost of energy storage operation.

The solution can be installed in any type of facility which uses thermal processes, including local heat networks in combination with an electrical distribution network.