Smart Grid Goes Wireless

WiFi network technology originally developed to connect people to the internet are acquiring a green tinge as they are pressed into service as the backbone of the smart grid.

Cable, DSL, and cellular won the battle to deliver internet service for most people, but the physical network for the Internet-of-Things remains to be built. And some of the losers of that battle could end up being better a better match for the smart grid, which needs a different set of specs than cable and phone companies.

Thursday, Trilliant, a smart grid network builder, acquired Skypilot, a broadband wireless company that used to specialize in long-range, high-capacity WiFi for rural areas and cities.

“The unique technology in Skypilot was helpful in the municipal WiFi market but maybe not determinative,” said Eric Miller, senior VP at Trilliant. “But you take that technology and move into the utility market, and it’s a breakthrough technology.”

The acquisition follows a move by another former municipal WiFi player, Tropos, into smart grid networking. This month, Cisco started talking big about energy, too. It’s a natural area for these companies to expand their businesses because the smart grid is fundamentally about about networking the pieces of the energy system. Right now, the power plants, transmission machinery, and consumption spots are physically connected, but they can’t communicate. Your utility can’t tell you in real-time how much power you’re using. Their engineers just know they need to have X amount of power plants running the normal power needs of Y customers.

“Historically, power supply infrastructure has been created to serve load as a passive element of the system,” a Department of Energy report noted.

In other words, right now the grid is just a bunch of wires.

Without good information, utilities have to be very risk averse, and even so, brownouts and blackouts are estimated to cost the country $150 billion a year. Add in that it’s harder to incorporate renewable energy sources like wind and you can see why the Obama administration pumped at least $4.5 billion into upgrading the system.

Now, though, the real network solutions have to emerge. Utilities need bandwidth and sensors and standards for different pieces to interconnect.

“There’s a couple of challenges that aren’t met by most of today’s communications systems and one of them is bandwidth,” said Jesse Berst, a smart grid analyst with SmartGridNews.com. “Most of the systems being offered today have enough bandwidth for starter applications including smart metering, but the real power of the smart grid is when you have telemetry all up and down the system and every piece of the system is monitored.”

Finding really, really reliable bandwidth is tough enough, but unlike other communications networks, utilities don’t have the luxury of by-passing any consumers. They have to serve everyone, which means the network they deploy will have to hit every single customer. That’s one reason some utilities are looking to technologies like Sypilot’s instead of using previously existing infrastructure.

“Most utilities are going to choose a separate technology for that last mile rather than going over the internet connection that’s going into the house,” Berst predicted. “It’ll still use internet protocol, talk the same language, but it’ll be a separate connection because utilities don’t want to rely on Comcast if there is a problem.”