Smart Energy – Page 11 – Creative Connectivity

Smart Energy & Strange Alliances

It’s been an odd month for Smart Energy, or at least for the wireless standards that are tackling connectivity around the home. If you were to go back six months, then, at least in the U.S., the general consensus would have been that ZigBee had the market tied up. It had the only profile with “Smart Energy” in its name and was winning the PR battle hands down.

Within the major working groups, things weren’t quite so clear. NIST, which has been trying to herd the wireless cats into some semblance of order started a more thorough analysis of just what existed, which saw an increased emphasis on other members of the IEEE 802 standards family, bolstering the fortunes of Wi-Fi (in its 802.11 incarnation) and Bluetooth (in its 802.15.1-2005 form). And it made its preferences clear about a need for IP support. But the status quo didn’t seem to shift very much as a result.

Then, last month, Bluetooth emerged from its normal mode of PR silence to announce the formation of a Smart Energy Study Group. The fact that Emerson, one of the world’s leading manufacturers of home HVAC devices was one of the sponsors for the group caused some noticeable shivers in the Smart Energy marketplace.

This week, there were more ripples, when Wi-Fi and ZigBee announced their Alliance of Alliances to jointly provide an in-home solution for Smart Energy. The Twitterati thought it significant, but what was behind it? Is it deadly rivals joining forces against a common enemy, or is there more going on?

Smashing the Smart Grid. Hackers target ZigBee.

It’s been a good week for scare stories about Smart Energy. Whilst they’ve predictably generated some excellent headlines (and I can’t resist joining in), the facts behind them are very important. We’re rushing into a global energy monitoring and delivery system with little understanding of whether or not it is secure.

What we can predict is that as soon as Smart Meters are deployed, the first impulse of every neighbourhood hacker will be to take control of their school or local government’s heating and air conditioning, just to prove they can. At one level, that’s a local annoyance. If it affects our utility bills it becomes more than an annoyance. And if it were co-ordinated by someone with a more malicious intent, then turning everything on at a peak time would take the grid down. So it’s important that we make sure it is as secure as possible.

That makes the two pieces of news this week a lot more important than just providing the excuse for a good headline. The first announcement was that the Information Trust Institute at the University of Illinois has been granted $18.8 million for a five year research project on securing the Smart Grid. The second piece of good news is the release of a set of ZigBee hacking tools by Joshua Wright at ToorCon11. These will let developers discover what vulnerabilities exist within the ZigBee standard, which is vitally important if it wants to be selected for use in Smart Meters. Josh describes his work as “will hack for SUSHI“. As far as I know he’s not received any sushi for his efforts, let alone an $18.8 million grant. If the Government is serious about the security of the energy supply, they should consider diverting some of that funding in his direction.

So why should we be worried…?

Smart Meters and Stupid Governments – Time for Dedicated Spectrum

Are our governments really serious about Smart Metering, or are they just throwing money away as a political gesture? Increasingly it looks as if it’s the latter. Barack Obama just made a headline announcement that the U.S. Government is prepared to waste $3.4 billion putting smart meters into 13% of U.S. homes. The reason for my cynicism is a lack of standards, particularly with respect to the choice of a wireless specification to link the meters with each other and to appliances around the home. The current choices are not based on any understanding of technology, rather than lobbying by companies desperate for funding. As a result, there’s a strong chance that these meters will not work.

I was at the Wireless Congress in Munich last week and listened to at least four different wireless standards explain why they’re each the best choice for smart meters. Not one of them was really convincing. Most had slick marketing presentations, but underneath, there are some very good technical reasons as to why NONE of the current pretenders are the correct one to choose if we really want smart energy to work.

The critical problem is the choice of the 2.4GHz frequency band, which is where most of the contenders operate. Ten years ago that portion of spectrum, known as an Industrial Scientific and Medical band (ISM) was virtually empty. Microwave ovens used it, but only for a few minutes each day. Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and ZigBee were all still dreams. It was like a freeway built before cars arrived. Today it is already congested and each new evolution of Bluetooth and Wi-Fi eat up even more of it. In another ten years, which is before the Smart Meter rollouts will even have been completed, it is likely to be at a standstill.

Smart Metering is an initiative that will cost billions of euros / dollars to install and which needs to continue to work for a lifespan of twenty or more years. All of the prospective wireless technologies being considered for use in Smart Meters operate in open frequency bands that are likely to be heavily congested before the smart meter installation program is even started. To use this spectrum for something as critical as smart metering is folly.

If Smart Metering is going to provide benefits, it deserves its own wireless spectrum and standard. It’s not too late for regulators to set aside spectrum and for standards bodies to get together to produce an optimal standard. If they don’t, we risk wasting trillions of dollars and failing to achieve any reduction in energy consumption.