Cisco is also declared in this area
http://www.smartgridnews.com/artman/publish/companies/Cisco_Certifies_Smart_Grid_as_the_Next_Big_Thing-583.html

Trilliant has also expanded its consumer offerings lately.

Most utilities have a clear incentive program in place for power conservation and peak levelling, which is much easier to achieve if all AC devices are participating in a common network. The SCADA information is only a start, true demand side management (DSM) is no doubt coming with capabilities similar to those EnerNOC/Comverge offer now. Wireless is not the long term solution for anyone, it’ll probably become the backup when the wires are down.

The case for rolling out consumer broadband using the ITU-T G.hn standard over AC power lines is compelling. First there are minor savings like integrating G.hn gateways (to more than one network, possibly, overcoming objection to mixing consumer and utility bits) and ANSI-standard smart meters into one device per transformer (BPL can’t get past the transformer). More economically significant, electric companies can justify subsidiing massive over-provisioning with DSM and grid monitoring, paying for those expensive initial bits with watts and negawatts, and later passing the savings on to the customer – neither a telco nor a cableco can do that.

Here’s an outline of the business case for home BPL, with fibre coming no closer to the premises than the transformer, it’s much more compelling than pure fibre
http://policywiki.theglobeandmail.com/tiki-index.php?page=BPL+and+smart+grid+briefing+note

Gigabit AC outlets only seems natural to people already recharging phones and cameras with USB and plugging in their WiFi transceivers and so on to powered Ethernet. Once we combine data and power, we’ll wonder why they were ever separate. Combine G.hn over AC with 802.3at to replace “wall warts” and you’ve got the AC and DC devices all co-operating, every appliance with an iSCSI address – and a level playing field for all home control, security, fire safety, medical monitoring and resilience services. Could be pretty vulnerable unless PKI is everywhere also.

From the utility’s perspective, selling voice/data/TV to the public over the same wires is the easiest way to pay for the network rollout, since consumer services require a lesser degree of reliability and monitoring and backup than the utility itself. A 100 megabit network could be upgraded to a gigabit and the entire thing paid for by the consumer subscribers. Some of this is already going on in Atlantic Canada. Two case studies were published by Aliant XWave, which serves a lot of Canadian utilities
http://xwave.com/key_industries/industry.aspx?IdKey=7&IdPage=89

In New Brunswick, XWave put a 100 megabit network up on the poles to improve NB Power monitoring and maintenance. In Newfoundland and Labrador, NL Hydro is rolling out voice and data to its customers on its poles.

Maybe the more remote areas will pioneer this technology as they have the worst power grid monitoring and outage problems and their customers have poor broadband access and often rely on expensive satellite TV and Internet. They also often have champions such as the CEO above, who are aware of the issues with Motorola Canopy and so on.

Learn to check what you are talking about before you post. This is an old, solved, problem. Finished. Done with. Fixed.

Modern G.hn BPL detects the actual spectrum in use around the powerline and avoids interfering with any of it, which is a far superior and more reliable approach than any other networking technology.

Interesting article at Wisconsin Technology Network about IBEC and IBM working to provide Broadband over Powerlines services and Smart Grid technology in Washington Island, VA: Washington Island is home to Wisconsin’s first known example of “broadba…