May 2011 – Creative Connectivity

Or will it main Bluetooth? Or Wi-Fi? Or maybe Z-Wave? Or any of the multitude of other short range wireless standards. It’s a question that was raised last week when Google did a keynote presentation on Android@Home at their I/O Conference where they announced a wireless light bulb which could be turned on and off from a mobile phone. The technical details are very sketchy – much of it coming from Lighting Sciences Group, who did the accompanying demonstration. It’s unclear whether it’s a new radio, a new protocol, a new standard or even what frequency it’s running at. But you don’t expect the absence of little details like that to stop speculation.

The greatest level of speculation has come from the smart energy industry, who are suggesting that ZigBee could be the main casualty. Jesse Best at Smart Grid News asks whether this will take away ZigBee’s momentum. And there’s an interesting range of comments about that on his site about that, which are worth reading. Throughout the industry, Google’s announcement is making people question whether they’ve made the right choice?

I’m not sure that anything Google does will displace ZigBee from its place in smart meters. That’s actually quite a closed market, as most utilities don’t really want to share that data with consumer devices. Where it is a threat is in home automation. Home Automation is still a very nascent market and Bluetooth, Wi-Fi and ZigBee are all pitching to own it. The reason I think they are at risk is because of what Google can bring, which is an API (Application Programming Interface). Google has succeeded in areas like mapping because it makes it easy for developers to access and mash up data. In contrast, wireless standards shy away from making their stacks easy to use, particularly for embedded designs. If Google can make it easy, thousands of garage and backroom developers will take it and innovate with it, and the existing standards may all find themselves left behind.

Just when you though Smart Energy was settling down, and it was going to be smart meters all round, the smart grid movement is getting its knickers in a twist. It’s not a problem about what needs to be done, but about the standards, what goes into the standards and who is responsible for them? In the past few weeks both NIST and the ZigBee Alliance have had some major tantrums, which raises questions about the speed and degree of technology push that is being forced on the industry.

There is no lack of agreement about the need to improve the grid and the way that we consume energy. Growing demand, political concern over the stability of supplies, climate change worries, new challenges in the form of electric vehicles and decades of underinvestment in generating capacity and the grid have persuaded Governments around the world to support and mandate investment in new “smart” technology from smart meters in homes to intelligence in the grid. The last time the world saw a similar level of stimulus was in the 1930s, during the great depression. So this really is likely to be a once in a lifetime event. The political will is there, the question is who decides how it is going to be done? Groups like NIST in the US are pushing hard to put things in place, but are groups like this too academic in their approach? Over the last year they’ve set up eighteen Priority Action Plans or PAPs to oversee development. (A potentially unfortunate acronym as my dictionary defines pap as “worthless or oversimplified ideas”). And according to a recent pronouncement they obviously don’t think the industry is doing enough to meet the challenge. But before we look at that, let me share a quote with you:

“I hate those guys. I hate those legislators and politicians – not because they restrict business and screw up the markets, even though they do and it does. I hate governments because I know those guys. I went to school with them. And let me tell you, the weakest, most ignorant, most drunken incompetents work for the US government. And the bottom of the barrel, know-nothing dicks design the regulations for a market they know nothing about. Why should we look at the regulations they’ve put in place by committee and go “Yeah, you suck at your jobs, fine, we’ll ignore that and suck at ours too?”

Not my words, but those of Lucy Prebble from her brilliant play “Enron“. It’s a diatribe that she gives to Jeffrey Skilling – Enron’s President, as his empire starts to crumble. Strangely, from a character that has little to commend himself throughout the rest of the play, it’s a dramatic moment where you suddenly start to feel sympathy with him, particularly if you’ve ever worked in a regulated industry. Of course, that speech is just fiction and has nothing to do with the current situation…

Month: May 2011

Will Google kill ZigBee?

Smart Energy Profile 2.0 – a case of too much PAP?