smart meter – Page 8 – Creative Connectivity

GE – The Appliance of Ignorance

Back in the 1980’s when they were trying to establish themselves in the British market, Zanussi ran a campaign for their products using the advertising strapline “the Appliance of Science“. I was reminded of it this week when I was reading a white paper from another appliance manufacturer – GE. Not because it had anything to do with science; in fact just the opposite – it was about the most unscientific paper I’ve ever come across.

It was written to promote GE’s view on which wireless standard should be chosen for the Home Area Network (HAN). These are designed to connect devices around the home to a smart meter or a home gateway that has access to information about your current energy tariffs. GE thinks the best choice should be ZigBee because “ZigBee is better than Wi-Fi”. One of the paper’s authors is an active editor for the ZigBee Alliance Smart Energy Profile, so that’s not surprising – he’s entitled to be enthusiastic about the technology he’s part of. And it may be that ZigBee is a good choice. But GE’s analysis doesn’t provide any evidence as to why it might be. Instead it provides an evidence-free quasi-analysis that does ZigBee more harm than good.

We’ve had a year of hype as different wireless standards vie for the crown of being chosen as the de facto one for smart metering. Much of that obscured the facts which need to be considered to make that choice. In the last few months I thought the industry had settled down and was beginning to a bit more logical. This rant from GE suggests that some of those involved in the debate still have a lot to learn. If you want to see how not to make a reasoned argument, download and read the GE white paper. I’ll highlight what is so wrong about it.

The Evolution of Interoperability. Making the Dream a Reality.

I’ve been attending a lot of Smart Energy meetings recently and listening to industry experts talking about the need for interoperability in the connections between smart meters and appliances around the home. I’ve also been hearing a number of standards organisations trying to promote the message that the concepts of interoperability and a standard are synonymous. That’s a very dangerous message, because the two are only very loosely related. Just because you have a standard, it does not mean that products which use it are, or will become interoperable.

To understand why equating a standard with interoperability is a fallacy, let’s start with an analogy. In many ways, a standard is like a language. So we could define English, or French or Russian as standards. The standards bodies would then claim that everyone who speaks the same language is interoperable. I’d disagree. The language defines the grammar and the vocabulary, but you only have to listen to a Democrat and Republican senator debating health reforms to understand that speaking the same language does nothing to promote interoperability. If anything, a standard provides the tools to ensure that conflict is more, rather than less likely to occur.

Interoperability is about working together seamlessly. To achieve that requires more than just a standard. It needs a set of interoperability tests and the testing tools to confirm compliance with those tests. These don’t generally come with a standard – they need to be put in place to support it. That entails time and money, which means most standards can’t support them until they’re already fairly well established. Industries like Smart Energy demand interoperability, as they want the meters they install today to work with devices that customers may install in ten or twenty years’ time. But if they want to achieve it, they, need to understand how this process works.

Patent Trolls anticipate Smart Metering Bonanza

Over the last year, different groups have been beavering away to decide on a wireless standard for smart meters. It’s been interesting to observe the ways that different countries have approached this. There’s been the pragmatic approach of going with what’s available today, but with the understanding that it might need to be changed, so that everything currently being installed is at risk of needing replacement. That’s the UK approach of DECC. Then there’s the academic approach which is favoured by SGIP in the US, which entails producing a giant matrix of the vital (and not so vital) statistics of every possible wireless standard. At which point there will presumably be a flash of smoke, a glamorous assistant and a magician will be brought on stage to perform the conjuring trick of comparing apples, lobsters and elephants and deciding which is most appropriate of them for the smart energy feast. Or we have the slightly nepotistic ETSI approach over in Europe, which seems to be one of giving EU funding to all of their consultant or professor friends, who in return for this largesse promise to write their own, brand new wireless specification in time for the party.

Whilst some of these approaches consider cost in terms of the price of silicon, or even the opportunity cost in terms of time to market, one significant cost has been missing from their calculations – the cost of choosing a standard that opens up Intellectual Property disputes. That’s a real risk. The only place I’ve seen it publicly stated is in a briefing document from the Bluetooth SIG, which points out that from the IP viewpoint, wireless standards are far from equal. It’s a very valid concern. We’re already seeing the patent trolls coming out and attacking ZigBee and Wi-Fi. As volumes start to increase, so will their determination to make a fast buck. As soon as that happens, deployment could grind to a halt.

All I want for Christmas is Smart Energy

Have the girls and boys who have been working hard to make Smart Energy happen been good this year? Will Santa bring them what they want? It’s looking less than likely. Despite promises that specifications would be complete, progress has inevitably slipped. What’s worse, the elves in some of the utilities didn’t pay attention to the lists the boys and girls stuck up their chimneys last year, and instead of sending them energy savings, it turns out that they actually sent them higher utility bills.

Of course, things were never going to happen as quickly as projected, even with the amount of stimulus money being thrown at the companies involved. If anything that’s resulted in things slowing down as everyone has concentrated on scrabbling around for a part of the pie, insisting that their toys are better than anyone else’s, and that they deserves the biggest box under the tree.

However, the story of the year is probably the level of consumer resentment that has built up towards smart metering deployments. Much of that seems to have been unnecessarily self-inflicted. In the Netherlands we’ve seen programs delayed because of privacy issues, and in the US there has been major customer resentment at higher bills. And that’s before we get into the ridiculous paranoia about the meters irradiating the population.

It’s interesting to contrast what’s happening within the UK. Not only are they taking a lead in deployment of real smart metering, with British Gas’ decision to roll out 2 million gas and electricity meters. There’s also the UK Government’s highly detailed consultation and a growing level of consumer education. It will be interesting to see whether that results in more customer satisfaction, and a bigger change in energy usage? That level of up-front education may be the most significant initiative of all the Smart Energy deployments that are happening around the world.

Ten Wireless Standards, Sitting on the Wall…

The Smart Metering industry is deperate to decide on a standard for short range communication. The UK Goverment has rushed through its consultation with a deadline for a technical standard by the end of next year, and in the US, SGIP’s PAP02 group wants to do it even faster. Whilst we need to start deploying devices, it concerns me that there’s a rush to make decisions with very little consideration of the relative merits of the different contenders.

There’s no shortage of contenders. At the last count I came across ten short range wireless standards that all think they should be the winner. Those include Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, ZigBee, Wavenis, Dash7, wireless MBUS, wireless KNX, DECT, Z-Wave and Bluetooth low energy. And they’re just the industry developed standards.

What worried me even more than the obvious rush was a off-hand comment made in a European standards meeting that I attended earlier this year. One of the people responsible for deciding on a common standard for Europe made the comment that “we’re not going to give any time to industry standards”. The subject of her venom was ZigBee, but it’s a charge that I’m increasingly hearing levelled at all of the “industry” standards. It appears there’s a perception amongst members of the older established Standards Development Organisations (SDOs) that because industry standards have not been produced by their traditional specification process, they’re not as good. That’s a very dangerous approach to take.

Bluetooth low energy – aiming for the trillions

Today the Bluetooth SIG formally adopted the full specification for Bluetooth low energy and made it available for public download. It’s exciting – they’re firing the starting pistol for a new ecosystem of innovative products and applications that will change the way we think about the things around us.

Bluetooth low energy is not just a variant of the existing Bluetooth specification – it’s an entirely new standard that’s been optimised for low power and internet connectivity. It marks a step change in short range wireless, providing a new short range connection for a new decade.