DS2 Blog

Reactions to NIST's endorsement of G.hn for Smart Grid

Last week's publication of the latest draft of the "NIST Framework and Roadmap for Smart Grid Interoperability Standards", which included G.hn in the list of "standards identified for implementation" has had a significant impact on the industry.

Brian Santo at CED Magazine has a good story on the long term implications of this decision::

Thinking several moves ahead of the game, the HomeGrid Forum is on the verge of getting the new G.hn standard approved for use in Smart Grid applications by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). [...]

G.hn becomes one of the Smart Grid "standards identified for implementation" by US Department of Commerce's NIST

Everybody involved in the Smart Grid industry was yesterday paying close attention to the expected publication of the "NIST Framework and Roadmap for Smart Grid Interoperability Standards" draft. This document includes the standards that NIST (an agency of the US Department of Commerce) has identified as key elements of the Smart Grid Initiative.

The NIST report presented by US Commerce Secretary Gary Locke validates many of the ideas that DS2 has championed during the last months: that the Smart Grid should be based on IP standards, and that G.hn is the best standard for powerline communications for Smart Grid applications.

IP for Smart Objects shows future of Smart Grid

A few weeks ago, the IPSO Alliance (Internet for Smart Objects) conducted an interesting demonstration at the NetWorld+Interop 2009 show in Las Vegas. The demonstration showed a network of IP-enabled sensors that "collected over 100,000 temperature, humidity and light readings from the sensors spread over the three continents."

DS2 participates in Smart Grid industry events

The last couple of weeks have been packed with a number of events focused on the Smart Grid industry. As one of the leaders in this space, DS2 has been invited to participate in these events and share our vision of the Smart Grid (see "Why the Smart Grid must be based on IP standards" and "Bringing IP technology to the Smart Grid".

On June 2nd DS2 participated in the panel "Next Generation IP Communications to Substations" at UTC 2009, in Las Vegas, Nevada.

Why the Smart Grid must be based on IP standards

Image by Ian Muttoo via Flickr

The debate on what technologies and standards should be used as the foundation for the future Smart Grid is heating up. Multiple vendors and industry organizations are pushing their own (often incompatible) views of the Smart Grid.

Even if we focus only in the area of communications standards for Smart Grid, we find different options being proposed: high-speed and low-speed powerline technology, IEEE 802.15.4, cellular networks, WiMAX and many others.

Smart Grid networks will be hybrid networks

Although at DS2 we think that high-speed powerline networking technology is the best positioned to deliver a scalable platform for SmartGrid, other technologies also provide benefits in specific scenarios (for example, in cases where a utility wants to manage water or gas meters that don't have a power connection), so many utilities may need to use a combination of multiple technologies to build their Smart Grid.

Top Ten Things You Need to Know About the New G.hn Standard

Readers of this blog already know that G.hn (also known as G.9960) is the new standard developed by ITU (the same group of experts that developed the highly succesful ADSL, VDSL and VDSL2 standards) for high-speed networking over existing home wiring (power lines, phone lines and coaxial cable). We have written about how fast G.hn is, about the various organizations that support G.hn, and about the major applications targeted by G.hn.

What we have not done before is providing a comprehensive overview of the most important advantages provided by the standard. So, that's the goal of this post.

#1: G.hn is faster than any existing wired home networking technology

G.hn will be fast. As we detailed in this post ("How fast can G.hn be?"), with its default setting G.hn can provide a line data rate over coaxial cable of up to 843.75 Mbps (with actual Ethernet throughput at 762.05 Mbps), and includes optimizations that can support line data rates up to 1.02 Gbit/s.

Can we really predict our future Smart Grid communication needs?

The very simple answer to this question is "NO, we cannot predict what we'll need for the Smart Grid", at least in terms of communications capabilities. We may know what is required TODAY to support some applications like Automatic Metering Infrastructure (AMI) or Distribution Automation, but we don't know what we'll need a few years from now. (And the communications network is not a small part of the Smart Grid; quite the opposite, as stated in this article by Cap Gemini "Why Your Smart Grid Must Start with Communications".

This is obviously a problem for utilities planning Smart Grid deployments.

Licensed or Unlicensed bands for Smart Grid?.... Neither of them!

An article at Earth2Tech illustrates some of the problems that utilities face when using wireless technology for Smart Grid applications. Although utilities can choose between licensed and unlicensed bands, both have problems:

Using DS2 chips to participate in DoE Smart Grid programs

Smart Grid is one of the hot topics lately (with articles in EE Times, Ars Technica, GigaOm or CNET) in part because of the $4.5B for Smart Grid projects allocated to the Office of Electricity Delivery and Energy Reliability (part of the US Department of Energy) by the US government stimulus package.

The DoE expects to award the first round of funds during 4Q2009.

Bringing IP technology to the Smart Grid

Very interesting post at Earth2tech titled "A Dozen Things the Smart Grid Can Learn from the Internet" and authored by Balaji Natarajan at CapGemini. We agree with most of the ideas listed by the author, specially these two: