Part 6: Your nominations are in – smart grid companies to watch in 2011

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Whew! We have arrived at the sixth and final installment highlighting the smart grid companies readers nominated as ones to watch in 2011. Thank you to everyone for participating and we hope you'll return to the site next week to vote on our 11 finalists for 2011. We'll also be opening a Companies to Watch discussion forum so you can do some campaigning on behalf of companies you believe should make our  top 11. (If you missed any of the previous nominations, they are all linked below. )

Here’s how this countdown works: You sent in your nominations. Our team reviewed all them and did a preliminary sort. Posted below is the final set of smart grid companies that made the cut.  Next week we'll open the polls and you'll be able to vote for the company you think most belongs in the final 11. What you see below are abbreviated versions of the text provided by the person who nominated the company. Note we have not verified the information for accuracy. Typically we do that but in this case we wanted you to see what readers had to say. You'll see I've added my own comments – and of course we encourage you to add yours using the Talk Back comment form below.

IPKeys provides advanced communications design, implementation and security services that enable Smart Grid applications (AMI, DR, DA, etc.) to run faster and more efficiently. The company is listed as one of Inc. Magazine's fastest-growing companies in 2010. Recently, IPKeys has successfully designed and implemented hybrid infrastructure at Burbank Water and Power, Glendale Water and Power, MCI West and more. The company is currently contracted with NIST to provide the Smart Grid 2.0 framework guidelines relating to AMI, EV, syncrophasor and open ADR.

[Note from Jesse: While most of the world pays attention to the consumer-touching technologies, a few crafty firms will get rich building the backend infrastructure.]

Powersense seems to have a lot of momentum with their monitoring and control technology based on optical sensors. They are a part of many pilots worldwide and have a full commercial rollout coming online in Australia. They have also been recognized by the Cleantech Group and GP Bullhound as an up and coming company and it is rumored that they are about to close a financing round allowing them to scale faster.

[Note from Jesse: Optical sensors have been around for at least a decade, but have never been able to overcome utility skepticism and caution, despite proven benefits. Will this be the year they go mainstream?]

RuggedCom.  As distribution automation vendors continue to ignore basic functions to allow their systems to be secured "because other customers are not asking for it" workarounds must be established to account for their reticence. Have yet to implement this tool, added to RuggedCom's quiver with their acquisition of Bow Networks this fall, but am very impressed with both companies. I'm convinced Crossbow and like tools can mitigate the inherent risk of centrally managed electric distribution switching and voltage control systems and allow us to more radically lock down the networks they communicate on while giving users easier management of the system. These are all basic flaws in available smart grid control systems.

[Note from Jesse: Can RuggedCom integrate last fall’s Bow Networks acquisition? More importantly, can it find new features and functions to differentiate itself and withstand the new competition from deep-pocket competitors such as Cisco and Juniper Networks?]

Tropos Networks. Based on the industry’s smart grid experience to date, it’s becoming very apparent that the communications infrastructure is the most important critical success factor to any smart grid deployment.  There are unfortunately a lot of vendors out there with solutions that are still maturing.  Tropos Networks is, however, in a class of its own.  Tropos Networks technology is definitely something to watch in 2011: their wireless broadband network technology provides the resiliency and high performance/low latency needed for demanding smart grid applications such as distribution automation, AMI, and other critical smart grid applications. 

[Note from Jesse: Tropos takes a slightly different approach to smart grid communications. They use WiFi  (and a few other technologies) to create community-wide wireless that can be used for metering, grid applications, emergency response, community WiFi and more. Will multi-purpose networks catch on?]

Don't miss these   

Part 1: Your nominations are in – smart grid companies to watch in 2011

Part 2: Your nominations are in – smart grid companies to watch in 2011

Part 3: Your nominations are in – smart grid companies to watch in 2011

Part 4: Your nominations are in – smart grid companies to watch in 2011

Part 5: Your nominations are in – smart grid companies to watch in 2011

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