Smart Grid Blog

Networking giant Cisco has pushed IBM off the top spot in the latest Greenpeace leader board of green IT companies.

The company's score on Greenpeace’s third Cool IT Leaderboard report almost doubled as its investment in areas such as smart grids and building automation began to impress the environmental NGO.

via Cisco tops Greenpeace green tech league – 04 May 2010 – BusinessGreen.com.

Is your company’s electrical energy usage important to you? Whether still feeling the results of the recession or looking forward to competing as the global marketplace moves ahead, businesses are looking for ways to cut costs and increase revenues.

Trends in energy show utility companies raising rates and introducing more tiered rate structures that penalize high-energy consumers. And with all the talk about carbon footprints and cap and trade, energy becomes an important place to look for both savings and revenues.

So perhaps you’ve been formally tasked with improving energy efficiency for your company. Or maybe you’ve heard about the “Smart Grid” and are wondering how it will—or won’t—impact your business. Perhaps you want to understand your corporate carbon footprint before regulatory pressures increase. Maybe you’re a business owner or financial officer who needs to cut fixed costs. All of these and more are good reasons for finding out more about how you use electrical energy.

via AutomatedBuildings.com Article – Automation and the Smart Grid.

A lot of the interest in the smart grid industry tends to swirl around consumers and home energy management. It can be fun to picture consumers one day buying gadgets at big box retailers that will let them micromanage their home heating, cooling and lighting, and it's an especially attractive venture option for investors and entrepreneurs who cut their teeth on Internet and telecom startups.

via New Opportunities in the Smart Grid — GigaOM Pro.

This power report gives a detailed account of the global market for IEC 61850 compliant routers and switches. The report covers the market elements related to IEC 61850 compliant routers and switches. The IEC 61850 routers and switches play a pivotal role in implementing smart grid norms through substation automation.

via IEC 61850 Routers and Switches in Smart Grids: Opportunity Analysis to 2015 – new report released.

What makes technology smart? My smart phone is a small, unobtrusive device, but it also helps me run my life more efficiently.

How essential have smart phones become? Try turning off your phone for two days and see what happens. If you can endure the withdrawal, you’ll likely have some interesting voicemails from co-workers who couldn’t reach you within five minutes. Smart technology has become engrained in our way of life.

The same principle applies to the smart grid.

via When it Comes to the Grid, it’s Time to Get Smart – Utility Automation/Electric Light & Power.

According a new report, a radical overhaul of policy and technology is needed for the USA to reap the benefits promised by the smart grid. Sean Ottewell reports.

The oversight policy of the US electrical grid has been described as a hodge podge in a new report published by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Industrial Performance Centre. In its report Electricity Transmission Policy for America: Enabling a Smart Grid, End-to-End, the Centre calls on the federal government to develop a coherent national policy on transmission upgrades and standards for the smart grid, and on the electricity to industry to develop a secure and sustainable approach to providing electric power (Fig.1).

The report stresses the importance of creating nationwide smart grid standards, backed up by legislation that clarifies that the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) has high voltage transmission planning authority over transmission owners, operators, developers as well as related local, state and federal agencies. FERC should also be empowered to set clear timelines for completing transmission planning, review, modification, and approval, it says.

via Advanced Automation Needed To Achieve Smart Grid Success – Engineer Live, For Engineers, By Engineers.

ABB, the leading power and automation technology company, and Trilliant Incorporated, a leader in delivering Smart Grid solutions that enhance energy efficiency, utility operations, and renewable resource integration, today announced successful interoperability of Trilliant’s SecureMesh™ communications network with ABB’s Station Automation and Protection products, enabling utilities to choose best-of-breed technologies for their Smart Grid rollouts. This announcement was made today as part of activities at GridWeek 2009, held in Washington, DC.

“The Smart Grid is moving into a phase where distribution automation is becoming critical, and this capability is largely dependent on the reliability of high-bandwidth, low-latency solutions,” said Gary Rackliffe, ABB Vice President, Smart Grids. “For this reason, we are particularly excited to be working with Trilliant to integrate our solutions and help deliver them to a growing market.”

via ABB and Trilliant Announce Interoperable Advanced Smart Grid Solutions.