UtilityAMI group approves new home networking specifications

UtilityAMI group approves new home networking specifications. UtilityAMI is a task force for the development of open standards for advanced metering. Supported by the California Energy Commission and others, it builds high-level guidelines that can become the basis of open standards. The group has now approved specifications for home area networks (HANs). Those specifications help answer the question of how advanced meters should connect to the home networks of the future. If utilities and vendors can target an open standard, they don’t have to write their own interfaces for each different flavor of HAN, thereby lowering both the cost and the risk.

   QuickTake: At first glance, a technical standards announcement might not seem like big news. Until you realize that the electric power industry is transforming to open standards. For both utilities and vendors, it is crucial to monitor standards as they gel over the next 18 months and to get on board early. For an object lesson, look at the traction Silver Spring has gotten by virtue of its early support for Internet protocols.

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