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How Broadband Helps Smart Grid according to FCC

Zen Kishimoto — Fri, 02 Jul 2010 23:52:37 +0000

It is often said that smart grid is the power grid superimposed on information and communications technology (ICT). To support smart grid, it is imperative that communications be improved and used for smart grid.

At ConnectivityWeek several weeks ago, a representative from the Federal Communications Commissions (FCC) explained that their broadband plan includes a section on energy and the environment. More specifically, it considers smart grid from the communications perspective. The entire plan can be downloaded from here.

Chapter 12 (pp. 245–262) of the plan contains a section on how communications and broadband can help smart grid.

The entire plan is 376 pages long; I will only discuss chapter 12, which relates to the theme of my blog.

Chapter 12 has four subsections:

Section 12.1 discusses how smart grid is implemented and reinforced with the application of broadband communications technologies. It gives a good overview of smart grid 101. If you want to get a glimpse of what smart grid is, especially from the communications perspective, this is a good section to read.

It recommends:

Enhancing the communications infrastructure.
Using commercial service providers (who are often considered not reliable enough for this crucial infrastructure).
Strengthening communications security.
Opening up the 700 MHz Public Safety Band for utilities to use.
Further opening up the Public Safety spectrum for smart grid.
Studying the requirements of utilities for smart grid.

Section 12.2 covers home and building aspects of smart grid from the communications point of view. Smart meters installed at homes and other buildings would make power consumption information readily available for utilities and consumers. This section recommends:

Mandating utilities to provide consumers’ use data and maintain the privacy of this data at the state level.
Doing the same for the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission.
Doing the same for the Department of Energy.
That the Rural Utilities Service provide loans to rural utilities to implement smart grid in rural areas of the United States.

Section 12.3 considers ICT as a whole in regard to power consumption and greenhouse gas emissions. It discusses PCs as well as data centers. This section recommends that:

The FCC start working on the communication industry’s energy efficiency and environmental impacts.
The federal government start working on the energy efficiency of data centers.

Section 12.4 is about smart transportation. Since this is a report on broadband, rather than electric vehicles (EVs), this section is about how smart communications technologies can help reduce gas consumption by providing appropriate information, such as how to reroute to avoid traffic congestion.

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		Making Large UPS Systems More Efficient
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If you have time to read the entire report, it would certainly help you grasp what the FCC is considering in the way of improving the nation’s communications infrastructure. But if you are daunted by the length, chapter 12 alone would give you a good glimpse of how ICT could benefit smart grid. I have not seen any article or report discussing smart grid from the communications perspective before.

By the way, my friend in Saratoga, CA (which is pretty affluent), still complains of the lack of broadband services to his city. Saratoga is the community next to mine, but we have a choice of DSL and cable. My friend often tweets and expresses his opinion on the sad status of broadband services in the U.S. I just cannot imagine that that status is caused by the lack of technologies. It must be something to do with policies and politics. But it must be frustrating not to have broadband services at home.

I can relate to the frustration. Incidentally, my wireless router is acting up and drops the Internet connection sporadically. When I am not at home to fix it (cycle the power?), my wife gets angrier by the day. It is about time for me to consider a new router with 802.11n, which is somewhat pricey compared with the one with 802.11g. But again, this is a good excuse for me to purchase one.

ZigBee Does Smart Grid Communication

Zen Kishimoto — Mon, 21 Jun 2010 16:47:33 +0000

I remember when ZigBee was first officially announced in San Francisco. I was researching wireless mesh networking and attended the TinyOS workshop, which was hosted by Professor David Culler at UC Berkeley. The workshop was in 2005, and the ZigBee meeting was right after that, so it must have been in 2005 too. At that time, Dr. Culler’s team had their own protocol for mesh networking. Fast-forward to the present, his company, Arch Rock, has adopted ZigBee for their communications protocol.

Arch Rock is not alone. Many leading vendors have embedded a ZigBee chip into their smart meters. Such a vendor, Itron, had a booth at the recent ConnectivityWeek 2010 show.

Itron showed meters with ZigBee chips in them at ConnectivityWeek

At the same conference, Bob Heile, chairman of the ZigBee Alliance, presented that group’s most recent developments.

Bob Heile

I videotaped his talk (40 minutes long) in the following videos.

The current status of ZigBee by Bob Heile-1

The current status of ZigBee by Bob Heile-2

The current status of ZigBee by Bob Heile-3

The current status of ZigBee by Bob Heile-4

The current status of ZigBee by Bob Heile-5

Heile made several noteworthy points:

The ZigBee Alliance is not a vendor organization but an international nonprofit organization to promote the ZigBee specification (low-power wireless and mesh networking). It consists of 360 companies worldwide.

The membership spread is North America 40%, Europe 30%, and Asia 30%.
The applicable markets include Consumer Electronics, Energy Management and Efficiency, Health Care, Home Automation, Telecommunication Services, Building Automation, and Industrial Automation.
As for smart grid and energy concerns, 40million ZigBee smart meters have been contracted so far and are being installed at a rate of of over 20,000 meters/day.
Most notably for me, working at the intersection of IT and energy, is their announcement of ZigBee Green Power, which obtains the necessary energy to fuel a ZigBee-supported device without wires or batteries. One of the concerns, from the capacity and e-waste points of view, about using a wireless sensor is its power source, a battery. ZigBee Green Power appears to solve this problem.

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		Energy Impact of Increased Server Inlet Temperature
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You can find more information in the videos. Later, I sat down with Bob to ask some questions that are usually not found anywhere else. What I learned will appear shortly.　

Advantages of Managed Security Services

MegaPath — Thu, 20 May 2010 23:20:31 +0000

Cloud services via MPLS networks provide high security at low cost. Learn how today’s distributed organizations are struggling with the increasing sophistication, proliferation and severity of network security threats. With security protection from MPLS-based Managed Security Services, companies can have cloud-based network protection around-the-clock against individual and blended threats without incurring the distraction, expense, and complexity of in-house systems and support staff investment. Discover why cloud-based MSS effectively stops malicious traffic before it consumes the bandwidth of a network’s last mile circuit, a job that can’t be done with a premise-based solution alone.

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The MPLS Network: A Future-Proof Engine for Voice-Data Convergence

MegaPath — Thu, 20 May 2010 23:09:19 +0000

Addressing network traffic trends with new opportunities for business communications. The convergence of voice and data on a single wire is perhaps the most exciting network development since the invention of the private branch exchange (PBX). Over the past decade, Multi Protocol Label Switching (MPLS) technology, which enables voice and data to be transported together on WANs, has matured to provide a platform for almost unimaginable communications and cloud computing possibilities. Learn how this new standard in smart network traffic engineering will allow you to combine the performance of high-speed lgeacy WANs with the flexibility and cost advantages of an all-IP network.

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Sorting Out the Alphabet Soup of VPN Solutions

MegaPath — Thu, 20 May 2010 23:07:40 +0000

A practical approach to assessing WAN technologies that support your distributed organization’s diverse needs. Distributed organizations are facing the challenge of finding VPN WAN solutions that support the proliferation of branch offices and mobile workers along with the successful deployment of demanding, critical and converged applications like video, VoIP, payment processing, storage, CRM and ERP. MPLS-based IP VPN technology has become the leading WAN solution for connectivity, minimal capex and advantageous pay-for-use pricing. But it’s a cloudy alphabet soup of VPN acronyms: IP. MPLS. CoS. QoS. FR and ATM. IPSec. SSL. VoMPLS. Learn more today.

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How to Choose a Managed Network Services Provider

MegaPath — Thu, 20 May 2010 23:00:31 +0000

6 Best Practices to Ensure a Thorough Evaluation. There comes a point when every organization must make a decision. For small and midsize businesses: should we really be managing our network ourselves? For larger enterprises: what aspects of managing the network should be outsourced? Read this white paper to learn 6 key situations that demonstrate when it’s time to consider managed network services, plus 6 best practices to ensure your evaluation of managed network service providers is thorough enough to support your decision.

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Smart Phones In The Enterprise

Tek-Tips — Wed, 06 Jan 2010 19:28:58 +0000

Smart phones for the enterprise are multiplying faster than even the Wall Street pundits can come up with reasons to proclaim a winner. Though the consumer markets around the world provide the stimulus for wide-ranging offers from the different players, piercing the corporate enterprise is a different game. For our audience, we want to know what exactly corporations look for and what users find most valuable for getting their jobs done.

Over on CNBC, Mad Money’s Jim Cramer is squawking about the smart phone competition as if it were as simple as who has the catchiest graphics. We’re not really interested in which of the players Wall Street likes, but it serves as a benchmark for how the winners will be chosen to serve IT users and their business responsibilities. As we all know, technologies aren’t always chosen because of their "value" to the business enterprise making the choice. Help us out with your comments on how these products serve the enterprise and what the limitations are for them.

On Jim Cramer’s list of players he mentions the top guys, Blackberry, Apple and now, of course, Google. He fails to even mention Nokia who already owns a lion’s share of the market but goes on to discuss app suppliers and bandwidth providers. This is interesting and should be at the top of the list for businesses as alliances will determine how services are accessed. It is also interesting as we see major player Nokia shopping the vertical approach by possibly acquiring network giants like Ciena to help clear the network path.

Another article I came across off the beaten IT path, is from Peter Z. Scheer over at www.truthdig.org on the recent offer from Google. Here Peter correctly points out that while this is not Google’s first venture into the smart phone market, it is their first branded attempt and being Google, all eyes will be watching. Unlike Mr. Softy whose attempts to be all things to all people may be on the wane.

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		PBX Buyers Guide - Mid to Enterprise Company Edition
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Google’s NexusOne is using Android, which is the search giant’s mobile operating system. Far as the NexusOne goes, sans the much desired multitouch screen feature, Peter notes, "Google refuses to explain why." He does also note that Google has decimated the GPS market by including that service free with the phone.

Will Google decimate all the other smart phones out there by also including lots of other freebies and render others bankrupt before the funs starts? Will Google’s place in the enterprise put Apple back down on earth as margins will drop because of the need to compete? How will the enterprise evolve with the ubiquitous smart phones replacing all sorts of gadgets from pagers to pc’s? Share your thoughts and become the top blogger for the Tips sites this year. We eagerly await your contributions.