Smart Grid Blog

Labor and environmental groups joined with the U.S. government on Thursday to promote high speed Internet access and related technologies to create green jobs and help lift the United States out of recession.

“In the same way that building the interstate freeway system brought the United States out of the post-World War Two recession … a clean energy economy is exactly what we need in recession-bound America to put people back to work,” said David Foster, executive director of Blue Green Alliance, an organization of unions and environmental groups.

via Labor, environment groups push ‘green’ broadband | Reuters.

A federal plan to wire the entire United States with high-speed Internet access will be key to creating a nationwide “smart” power grid for reducing wasted electricity, according to the Federal Communications Commission (FCC).

FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski recently provided a preview of the National Purposes Update, a document that identifies opportunities for broadband deployment to improve health care, education, employment and energy efficiency.

via National Broadband Plan Crucial For ‘Smart’ Power Grids.

A Federal Communications Commission director suggested the agency is exploring new ways to use a swath of spectrum to serve multiple users including utilities building smart electric grids as part of a national broadband plan the FCC will release March 17.

“Just looking at data growth for iPhones and other devices, you can see broadband in America will increasingly be a wireless solution, so spectrum will be a core issue we will be handling in the national broadband plan,” said Nick Sinai, director of energy and environment on the National Broadband Task Force at the FCC.

via Embedded.com – NEWS – FCC may redraw spectrum allocations in broadband plan.

The communications revolution is shifting the national and global focus towards e-health, e-education and smart grids. Increasingly we are seeing governments around the world undertaking national broadband initiatives as awareness grows that broadband infrastructure can also be used by other sectors such as healthcare, education and government services as well as by smart grids and digital media. Another key reason is that, in the context of the recent economic crisis, they see this development as a new method of economic innovation.

via OfficialWire: USA And Australia Leading The World In Smart Grid Development.

The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has taken an active and financial role in plans for both the smart grid and broadband development, and it’s now encouraging the two industries to use one another. Speaking Thursday to attendees of the Cleantech Investor Summit, FCC energy and environmental director Nick Sinai said that the FCC will make specific recommendations on how to bring broadband to the smart grid through the National Broadband plan due to Congress in March.

via FCC encourages cooperation between broadband, smart grid.

There are a lot of similarities between the build out of telecom and Internet infrastructure, and the current rollout of the smart grid. But here’s one major, and very important, difference between the construction of communications and energy networking, which the President and Chief Operating Officer of utility ComEd, Anne Pramaggiore, mentioned on a panel at the Cleantech Investor Summit last week: unlike broadband and telecom service providers, utilities are very risk averse.

via Smart Grid 101: Utilities Are Very Risk Averse.

As the FCC gets ready to finally turn in its broadband plan to Congress in March, the agency has asked service providers and the utility industry to find a way to collaborate on how they can leverage their expertise to create the smart electrical grid.

via FCC hones its broadband, smart grid vision – FierceTelecom.

On March 17, the United States’ Federal Communications Commission will present recommendations to Congress on how to bring broadband to the smart grid through the National Broadband Plan. The recommendations will include suggestions on promoting open standards and commercial networks, how to use policies to encourage utilities to provide their customers with real-time open access to energy data and ways to use federal spectrum bands for utilities’ smart grid deployments.

via FCC Looks to Oversee Smart Grid Industry.

We just got the first glimpse into how the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) will work with and oversee the smart grid industry. On Thursday afternoon at the Cleantech Investor Summit, Nick Sinai, the FCC’s new Energy and Environmental Director, said that the FCC will make specific recommendations for how to bring broadband to the smart grid through the National Broadband Plan due to the U.S. Congress on March 17 (it was delayed by a month).

via How the FCC Will Promote Open Smart Grid Networks & Real Time Energy Data.

Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Chairman Julius Genachowski did an hour-long Q&A at GigaOM HQ with GigaOM founder Om Malik and senior writer Stacey Higginbotham, in which they tackled issues like the lack of telecom competition and how to foster innovation in the broadband ecosystem. While Genachowski only briefly touched on the electric grid during his talk, after the session I asked him what the FCC would be doing when it comes to the smart grid.

via FCC Chairman on Smart Grid: Stay Tuned.

The Obama administration begins dispensing $7.2 billion in grants and loans, funded by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, to expand broadband access and adoption across the country.

Vice President Joe Biden announced Dec. 17 an initial $183 million investment in 18 broadband projects benefiting 17 states to lay a new foundation for high-speed Internet economic growth. Over the next 75 days, another $2 billion will be made available on a rolling basis to communities that currently have little or no access to the technology.

via Feds Open Broadband Cash Pipeline – Government IT from eWeek.

The FCC is exploring how broadband technologies can help the nation become more energy independent and efficient and be a key factor in the evolution to a smart electrical grid. During a field hearing Monday at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, Mass., FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski, Rep. Edward Markey, D-Mass., and others discussed the role of broadband and the agency’s development of a national broadband plan in the nation’s quest for energy efficiency and independence.

via National Journal Online — Tech Daily Dose — Broadband and the Smart Electrical Grid.

U.S. energy objectives are closely intertwined with–and in many cases, rely upon–the country's broadband infrastructure, government officials and smart-grid company executives say.

The Federal Communications Commission on Monday held a “field hearing” at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology on the role of communications in energy and environment. It was an information-gathering session designed to help set a national broadband strategy.

via Smart grid potential gated by broadband | Green Tech – CNET News.

Country Energy has foreshadowed a significant body of work ahead between the electricity sector and the Government to work through overlaps between smart grids and the national broadband network.

The utility’s general manager for strategy, Ben Hamilton, told an Australian Information Industry Association lunch today that connectivity alternatives for Country Energy’s intelligent network project had been assessed.

He said it was likely the network backbone would be a mix of technologies.

“Given the geographic spread of locations, in all likelihood there’ll be a mix of our own assets for network control as well as existing carrier assets,” Hamilton said.

“The NBN also becomes a consideration now. It’s likely the NBN will give us some backhaul capability between some towns [we service].”

Country Energy’s project has been running for about 18 months. At its heart is a residential smart grid trial and a “demonstration house” in Queanbeyan, a suburb outside Canberra.

via Country Energy adds NBN to smart grid thinking – Networking – Technology – News – iTnews.com.au.

While broadband service provider networks and utilities’ two-way smart grids belong together, the utilities are acting like a reluctant bride in an arranged marriage. Reasonable adults can see that combining the two is a good idea, but utilities and communications companies are oftentimes miles apart over standards, access and security. As a result, utilities are resisting any forced union that would involve hooking up their meters to customers’ broadband connections rather than a private network.

And that’s a shame, given how combining broadband and utility-provided smart meters could help consumers access web-based applications from Google’s PowerMeter to Microsoft’s Hohm, and to deliver innovative services such as tweets about home energy consumption. It’s also cheaper to use a home’s broadband than for a utility to build its own network. And data can be displayed to the customer a lot faster, too, because the speed of a normal broadband connection is generally faster than a utility’s private network. It can take as long as 24 hours to display the info back to the consumer on utility networks.

After reading about innovation in Germany where an electric company uses a customer’s broadband connection to help deliver intelligence about power use, I called my local utility, Austin Energy, which is considered an innovator in green energy. I wanted to find out how broadband and utility companies would deliver such services without using the same network, and why Austin Energy isn’t eager for any marriage of networks.

via Should We Force Marriage Between Broadband and Power Cos?.