Smart grids, underpinned by smart meters, are designed to handle two-way flows of data and power.

Advocates say smart grids will pave the way for electricity customers to reap the full benefits of their capacity to also be small-scale generators (through technologies like cogeneration and solar PV) and from their ability to reduce power use at peak times.

Announced by Treasurer Wayne Swan in the May Budget, the project is currently the subject of a pre-deployment study that is due to be completed next month.

Marshall told a Melbourne seminar organised by the iGrid research collaboration that the project aimed to deliver “a truly commercial scale rollout – we don’t want this to be just another trial”.

Pilot projects carried out internationally and in Australia to date had suffered from being “partial” – for example, focusing only on smart meters, he said.

The Government expects to announce the winning bid early next year, Marshall said.

Race against the clock

Stuart White, director of the Institute of Sustainable Futures, told CE Daily work by the Australian Energy Regulator (AER) that will specify how much network providers in each state can spend made it crucial to get the message across quickly that smart grids can deliver huge cost savings through avoided expenditure on network expansion.

In NSW alone, the AER’s April determinations paved the way for up to $16.4 billion to be spent over the next five years on transmission and distribution networks.

The cost of the CPRS “is actually swamped, it’s dwarfed” by the potential spend on network expansion, said White, whose institute is spearheading the iGrid collaboration.

“There is a multimillion dollar bill on the pavement that is not being picked up” if Australia misses the chance to use smart grids and unleash their potential to take full advantage of energy efficiency and load-shifting efforts by consumers and small-scale, local-level generation, he said.

“It’s partly fragmentation,” White said.

“You’ve got a whole lot of activity around the CPRS and then you’ve got separate, relatively more obscure policy work and regulatory work around the network expenditure.

“Those two worlds do not seem to intersect … and that in itself is pretty scary.”

The timetable for the AER determinations – Queensland and South Australia are the next cabs off the rank – meant there was a chance “to start to get some of this right, to start to join some of these dots”, he said.

In the U.S., the Obama Administration has appointed a national coordinator to develop smart grid standards, while the UK low carbon transition plan released yesterday (see related article) says the Government will later this year publish a “high-level vision for a future smart grid and subsequently a plan for delivering this”.

Source:  www.cedaily.com.au

Cisco Systems calls the smart grid “1,000 times bigger than the Internet.” GE calls it “the biggest investment of the first half of the 21st century.” The Green Chip Review pushes its own reports about the small companies that are getting into the game.

Hype aside, the smart grid will help create realtime electricity markets where consumers can monitor their appliances’ energy consumption as well as electricity prices that change by the minute, depending on demand. Consumers will learn fast how to conserve energy with wiser appliance choices and how to save money by using power at off-peak periods. Costs will drop for utilities that won’t need expensive back-up plants.

According to one smart-grid start-up, investors’ interest is a sharp change from a few years ago, when venture firms laughed at them.

Source: World Business Academy – Currents in Commerce (June 18, 2009)

Telecom powerhouse Cisco Systems has staked its claim on the Smart Grid, and, trite as it may sound, the world may never be the same.  I’ll outline what Cisco is proposing, consider the implications for the electricity industry as a whole, and conclude by identifying who stands to lose from Cisco’s plans.

From Generation to Home and Everything in Between

Cisco Systems, the San Jose-based networking and communications giant, today revealed that it intends to provide “an end-to-end, highly secure network infrastructure solution” for the Smart Grid and everything it touches.

Cisco’s strategy is to ensure that there is one, consistent, IP-based infrastructure for the electric power industry – a standards-based foundation that will ultimately be able to connect any device to any other anywhere at anytime. In other words, an Internet for electricity. Cisco will provide some of the hardware, most of the networking software, and a few of the applications that run on top. It will turn to partners for the rest. Since Cisco intends to build on open standards, both vendors and customers will be free to build their own applications, just as they do today over the Internet.

The Cisco Approach

Cisco’s constellation of Smart Grid solutions consists of four parts: T&D automation, security, smart meter and endpoint communication, and business and home energy management.

• Transmission & distribution automation. Cisco will deliver substation-hardened routers and switches, embed legacy protocol translation, and work with equipment manufacturers to achieve interoperability based on Internet protocols.
• Smart Grid security. Cisco will provide the architectural framework for security as well as other security solutions such as firewalls, IPS, VPN, identity, access control. Physical security will include video surveillance, alarms, and hardened network devices. The system will feature real-time monitoring, management, and correlation.
• Smart meter / endpoint communication. Cisco partners will handle the smart metering technology itself with Cisco providing the backhauling communication infrastructure. Cisco pledges interoperability on both the software and protocol (IP) level.
• Business & home energy management. Cisco will promote IP as the standard for business and home energy management and work with equipment manufacturers to ensure interoperability with this standard. The company plans to develop a home energy control appliance and manage these services in conjunction with its partners.

Why Go Public Now?

In her briefing to SGN, Cisco VP of Network Systems and Security Marie Hattar identified utilities as the primary customer for the company’s Smart Grid solutions. A widely reported example is Cisco’s involvement with Florida Power & Light’s ambitious “Energy Smart Miami” project (see SGN News Roundup for April 21). Those utilities want Cisco to lay out its future vision to inform their own long-range planning.

So What?

As the company that gave us the tools for keeping hundreds of millions of people online at once, Cisco has the experiences and the resources to repeat that success in the Smart Grid world. Indeed, Cisco is promoting their Smart Grid role with an Internet analogy.  “It’s like building an Internet in the electrical system,” says Hattar. “We’ve been clear leaders in Internet and will do the same for Smart Grid.”  In the long run, Hattar expects Cisco’s Smart Grid business to eclipse the company’s Internet services in number of access points, since more people are tied to the electric power network than to the Internet.

And let’s not forget that Cisco has also built very strong businesses in the telecomm and cable industries as well. It has lots of practice remaking networks.

Implications

The entrance of Cisco, with its broad and ambitious vision, entering the Smart Grid space has several far-reaching possibilities:

• The dial tone effect. Today, grid connectivity is a patchwork cobbled together with a bunch of proprietary technology, each system different from the next. Tomorrow, we will see a true end-to-end “Internet for electricity,” where any device can talk to any other device at any location.  Thanks to Cisco and the competitors that will follow it, it will be as reliable and familiar as the dial tone: You pick up the phone and there it is.
• Calming and energizing. Such consistency and reliability will have a calming effect on customers, and “revving up” effect on entrepreneurs and innovators. It’s like when Microsoft announced Windows 95 or Apple opened up the iPhone for applications. Customers could feel more secure that they would have a robust solution with lots of choice. And entrepreneurs could see that they would soon have a standard platform. By writing for that platform they could reach tens of millions of customers.
• The electricity economy. As a result, the future of the electricity industry may look more like telecomm 2.0 (think iPhone) and Web 2.0 —a networking foundation that carries applications and services. Once this possibility exists, the Smart Grid turns into the next vast infrastructure for delivering products and services and conducting commerce anywhere on the planet. It is that vision/possibility that has Google salivating.
• Misunderstood. Some people think Cisco wants to run the Smart Grid over the public Internet. That will rarely be the case. Instead, you will probably not send the signal over the same line that brings in your broadband Internet. Most utilities will probably use a separate (usually wireless) connection. Using Internet protocol (IP) doesn’t mean using the Internet itself.

Winners and Losers

Cisco is exceptionally skilled at working with and manipulating the standards process. In the cable world, Cisco worked with partners to help establish the DOCSIS standard for carrying data over cable lines.  The move greatly benefitted Cisco, while companies that waited too long to get onboard went out of business. The same thing could happen to manufacturers of smart meters, substation equipment, and intelligent electronic devices. Although Cisco’s announcement specifically includes plans for legacy protocol translation, it’s unwise to bank on Cisco maintaining those indefinitely.

The message for vendors is clear:  Engineer your equipment to work over IP or risk being shut out of Smart Grid communications.  Similarly, utilities need to plan for an IP-based infrastructure. Any company who does not follow Cisco’s lead in communications protocols is putting their financial health at risk.

In addition, the list of losers could also include the following:

• Acatel and Cisco’s other networking competitors who may get to the party too late.
• Utilities who may be disintermediated once it becomes easier to reach around them and go directly to energy customers.
• Small companies attempting to create the platform in the center, because they won’t be able to match Cisco’s speed and strength.

Source:  http://www.smartgridnews.com/artman/publish/companies/Cisco_Certifies_Smart_Grid_as_the_Next_Big_Thing-583.html

The smart network would send its data through the power network

Global electricity networks could become smart grids that can help us monitor and control our energy usage, if plans from net firm Cisco take off.

The giant US firm, whose technology helps underpin the net, is building a two-way link into electricity grids.

Smart grids would allow devices to communicate with utility firms to give an accurate view of energy use that could cut CO2 emissions by 211m tonnes.

Cisco believes the market could be worth up to $20bn a year.

The basic premise is to link different parts of the electrical grid – from a single home to the largest of power stations – using a customised network based on internet protocol (IP).

Cisco says the proposal would be a “once in a generation capital investment”.

With the rising cost of electrical power and concerns about how that power is generated – especially when it comes to fossil fuels – a number of other firms are also making a bid to modernise the electrical networks.

IBM launched a range of embedded software applications, although these communicate through the regular internet, rather than via the mains; General Electric and a number of new start-up firms are also making bids to capture a slice of the market.

Cisco says its system is different, because it would send the IP data down the power lines themselves, rather than using the internet.

Shocking news

Security is also a factor. In April the Wall Street Journal reported that hackers had penetrated the “US electrical grid and left behind software programs that could be used to disrupt the system”.

Speaking to the BBC, Neil Harris – Cisco Europe’s head of green IT – said it would be harder for hackers to penetrate the new network.

“It won’t make it invulnerable, but as the network is separate from the net it adds a new layer of resilience,” he said.

“We expect to see a rise in micro-generation, not just in Europe, but round the world, and the smart grid would be able to handle the bi-directional flow of data and electricity.”

The UK gov wants a smart meter in every home by 2020

However, the existing grid is not exactly empty. Stewart Larque, a spokesman for the UK’s National Grid, said it already monitored the main power network. The problem, he said, arose when it came to dealing with individual streets.

“We have a lot of detailed information on what’s happening on our network at any given time,” he told the BBC.

“We can see everything down to the substations, after that it’s down to the distribution companies.

“And there is only so far they can see. Sometimes they won’t know that there has been a small power cut until the users phone them to say there is a problem.”

Mr Harris says the new system could address that issue.

“One of the aims is more agility in distribution. The packets would carry information on the health of the network – just as they currently do on the internet – and you could use this data to spot operational issues or even a malicious attack,” he said.

Cisco says that the network would not just benefit the utility companies.

“Ultimately, this can help users see where their power is being used and from that you can see where it is being wasted and thus save on your electricity bills.”

Source:  http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/8056083.stm