One hot topic was the fact that GE and Whirlpool plan on adding communications modules in their appliances to give utilities the ability to turn them down during peak power demand times. According to GE Consumer & Industrial vice president Kevin Nolan in a May press release, “GE will help consumers significantly decrease power usage during peak demand periods, which will help the utilities reduce the need for more power generation and help consumers save on their energy bills.” This sounds great, but a major stumbling block remains –what communication standard will be used to get everyone talking in the same language? Will it be ZigBee, WiFi, cellular, a powerline signal, or something else entirely?

It sounds like it’s anyone’s guess. At ConnectivityWeek, GE’s David Najewicz noted that “Some of the early hardware we’re building has three radios in it.”

Obviously, the smart home appliance is on its way, and it’s going to be interesting to watch the different communications technologies jockey for position. With Whirlpool committing to smart appliances by the year 2015, and other manufacturers also jumping on board, a winning standard should emerge soon. We’ll keep watching!

This week, Trilliant (Redwood, CA based smart meter solution provider) announced its purchase of SkyPilot which develops long-range, broadband wireless mesh technology based on a longer-range application of WiFi (up to ten miles).

According to the company’s release “SkyPilot has redefined broadband wireless through a patented system that achieves high bandwidth and 100% coverage at breakthrough economics using an innovative, standards-based, wireless architecture. Utilities, service providers, public service agencies and municipalities have used SkyPilot solutions to cost-effectively deploy wireless broadband applications in challenging environments worldwide. The SkyPilot technology delivers over 10x the bandwidth of cellular, millisecond latency, standard Ethernet IP connectivity, end-to-end security, automatic adaptation to variable topography and density — all at a low cost point with proven technology.”

Jeff St. John on the GreenTechGrid blog quotes Eric Miller, Trilliant’s chief solutions officer as saying “U.S. smart meter deployments have primarily used lower-power, lower-bandwidth (and lower cost) wireless or powerline carrier technologies to link smart meters to each other in a neighborhood area network. Trilliant and rival startup Silver Spring Networks, as well as proprietary systems from meter makers like Itron and Landis+Gyr, fit that bill. Those networks are typically connected to collection points that use a variety of higher-bandwidth communications – fiber, cellular, satellite, WiMax – provided by a different set of companies. The Trilliant-SkyPilot combination will bring both into one integrated architecture, soon to be supported by an integrated network management system and user interface.”

According the Jesse Berst, founding editor of SmartGridNews.com, “With this acquisition, Trilliant becomes the only company that can promise high-bandwidth coverage to every customer and substation in the territory as well as a single view of the entire network.”

Who will win the communications race to provide seamless, scalable, and affordable smart grid? It’s anyone’s guess now, but these companies will be among the ones to watch.

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.

For more information see:

http://www.trilliantinc.com