This morning’s news from Trilliant regarding its acquisition of SkyPilot Networks combines two of our areas of interest here at SVM: broadband wireless and green technologies! We find the deal particularly interesting as the acquisition of SkyPilot will allow Trilliant to bring broadband wireless networking to utility smart-grid programs. Trilliant provides intelligent network solutions and software to utilities for advanced metering, demand response, and Smart Grid management, and SkyPilot Networks is primarily in the municipal Wi-Fi systems market.
According to a story published on CNET Green Tech, citing comments provided by Trilliant senior vice president of marketing Eric Miller, here’s how the deal breaks down: “smart meters” have a communications link to utilities, which use the information to get a better understanding of changes in demand in order to run the transmission grid more efficiently. Trilliant currently supplies the radio communications cards that go into meters and software for the utility companies to run these networks.
The route to carry this information from home meters back to the utilities’ data centers is combination of networks. Trilliant products can create a mesh network among different homes where information can be transferred to an aggregation point such as a substation. Utility companies typically rely on digital cellular networks as the backhaul network used to reach their data centers but with SkyPilot’s base stations, utilities can now do backhaul using long-range Wi-Fi. With the signal range as much as ten miles, Trilliant predicts that SkyPilot’s gear will be used to aggregate smart meter information in one city for transmission back to utilities or to be used to reach rural places that don’t have adequate cellular coverage.
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