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. More than a year ago, I gave you an early warning of Cisco’s end-to-end smart grid strategy. Later in 2009, Tulane professor Geoffrey Parker stopped by with an important survival guide to the impending smart grid platform.
In this article, I’ll quickly review the home energy offering. Elsewhere in this issue, I discuss what it reveals -- in particular, the good news and bad news about Cisco’s smart grid strategy for utilities.
Cisco Home Energy Overview
In its briefings, Cisco stressed three things, which I might describe as 1) yawn… 2) huh? and 3) finally!
Yawn… the same home energy promises as everyone else. Cisco has created a Linux-based, touch-screen home energy controller. The device has multiple connectivity options, including Ethernet, WiFi, ZigBee, USB 2.0 and ERT (Itron’s legacy protocol).
Coupled with Cisco's own applications for utilities (see below), the devices will let customers connect (to smart meters and appliances), monitor, and control (energy use). It will launch with consumption monitoring along with "cruise control" set-and-forget capabilities. Future versions will have bill prediction, energy saving tips, and OPOWER-style comparisons to neighbors.
Nothing wrong with any of that. But nothing that we haven’t heard from dozens of others.
· Devices: Provision, configure and remotely manage devices such as the home energy controller
· Demand response: Pass along demand response requests, store customer preferences, react to customer overrides
· Data: Securely store large amounts of data and pass it along to utility back office applications
Finally! An end-to-end operating system. The most important point is the imminent arrival of an IP-based, end-to-end “innovation platform.” Open APIs let others tap into the Cisco home controller or build on top of its various cloud services. Security, scalability and network management are built in.
Other vendors are starting to let others build on top of their core applications. But they are doing it in one or two areas. Cisco wants to be pervasive across the entire Smart Grid -- and that is what causes me to term this initiative as the grid’s first operating system. Cisco includes the following areas under its end-to-end umbrella:
· Operations Center
· Data Center
· Utility and Regional Network
· Substation Network
· Field Area Network
· Premise Area Network
Hidden Implications
There are many implications hidden inside the simple list above. Consider the operations center, for example. Cisco hopes to play a central role there, as it does today in telecommunications. Now consider the data center. Cisco intends to converge operations and back office, so that utilities are running both areas on the same Cisco platform.
Now consider the utility and regional network. Cisco wants a role in the emerging "air traffic control" system for the grid. Over the next few years, you will see new applications to exploit the data now starting to pour in from synchrophasors. Coupled with next-generation visualization, those new applications will eventually allow near real-time control of transmission and distribution. You have to wonder whether companies such as Siemens, ABB and the former Areva T&D will agree to build on top of Cisco standards or whether they will emerge as rivals.
As for the substation network, Cisco has already started to compete with its own brand of hardened routers. As for field area networks, Cisco doesn't care whether a utility uses mesh, powerline, WiFi or any other method, as long as Cisco manages everything. And that brings us to the “premise-area network.” Notice that the company does not say just “home-area network” even though its current announcement deals with residential customers. Cisco already has several products for commercial buildings. I predict the company will soon announce an initiative that ties those products closely to its overall Connected Grid initiative.
Cisco admits that it is currently in proof-of-concept phase. It will be 12-24 months before it will have all the pieces in place -- and before it has results back from its initial pilots, the first of which is with Duke Energy. But when that day arrives, the grid will have its first operating system.
· Utilities: Read the good news and bad news about Cisco’s Smart Grid strategy
· Vendors: Read about the challenges Cisco must solve to roll out its grid operating system. And about the company that threw away this billion-dollar Smart Grid opportunity
· Strategists: Read Geoffrey Parker’s survival guide to smart grid platforms
· Technologists: Visit Cisco’s Web site for descriptions of home energy management
What others are saying …
Forbes: Cisco Builds An iPad For Your Electric Bill
Itbusiness.ca: Cisco aims to shrink energy costs with Connected Grid
ZDNet: Go home to go big: Cisco stakes claim in home energy management
TCPmag: Analysis - Cisco Fleshes Out its Connected Grid Vision
Related SGN resources …
Cisco Certifies Smart Grid as the Next Big Thing
Cisco Connected Grid Solutions (video)
Duke Energy Signs Agreement with Cisco to Deliver Smart Grid-Enabled Home Energy Management Solution (press release/pdf)
Smart Grid Futures: Why Failing to Create a Shared Long-Term Vision Is Already Costing Us
Stay connected with SGN …
Smart Grid Discussions: Get LinkedIn with Jesse
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