The new dumb smart meter model from PG&E

Just as the battle was starting up again for wireless dominance within the smart meter industry, Californian utility Pacific Gas & Energy (PG&E) may have come up with the ultimate answer – don’t turn on the radio in the meter.  It’s one of those cunning plans which will have the various standards body queuing up to make sure they’re responsible for the chip which is never connected.

This bizarre situation arises from the decision back in March this year, when PG&E worked out what to do with their electro-sensitive customers who were demanding that they weren’t radiated with emissions emanating from their smart meters.  PG&E put forward a proposal to make customers pay for non-smart meters, charging somewhere between $135 and $270 a year for the privilege of having a good old-fashioned meter reader come round and leave them a note to say they were out when he called.  The double whammy benefit that none of the media appeared to pick up is that the $270 charge would eat into these user’s mobile phone bill, so they’d have less money to spend on getting radiated by phoning their local papers to campaign against smart meters.  More affluent customers could have the gold plated option of paying several thousand dollars to have their meters moved to the top of local telegraph poles, or buried underground.

PG&E reckoned that this option would be taken up by 185,400 customers.  (I don’t know how they got to that precise figure. Although by a strange coincidence, 1854 is the year that Texas was connected by telegraph to the rest of the US, putting in place the telecoms network that Enron would use so effectively 150 years later.)  Anyway, this number presented PG&E with a problem.  185,400 is not a lot in terms of commissioning a special non-wireless meter.  So they were faced with the prospect of having to pay more for a non-smart meter, wiping out a substantial part of that $50 million annual windfall from their more sensitive customers.  Today they announced a solution – they’d supply the same wireless smart meter, but turn the radio off.  Enter the wirelessless meter.

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Smart Home Standards go wild at Amsterdam

The Smart Metering and Smart Homes exhibition in Amsterdam is Europe’s largest show for this industry, so it’s a good reflection of where things are at.  Given the amount of noise that’s been generated around ZigBee and its Smart Energy Profile, I’d expected to see most of the other wireless contenders to be absent or skulking in their cages.  However, someone walking around without those preconceptions might have gone home with a rather different view of the state of play.

There’s no doubt that ZigBee is well placed in current smart meter deployments.  Although there are quite a limited number of real ZigBee deployments in Europe, the UK has more or less committed to SEP 1.2 for its foundation phase of national deployment and most meter and IHD suppliers were showing ZigBee products, albeit with not very many sporting a ZigBee certified logo.

Despite that, a significant number of suppliers were also highlighting support for the new Wireless M-Bus standard, which has slithered down the spectrum to its new resting point of 169 MHz.  Wireless M-Bus has always had a popular following within Germany, with an implementation based on a radio running at 868 MHz.  The shift to the lower frequency acknowledges one of the enduring complaints which the 868MHz camp has levelled at 2.4GHz solutions, which is their potentially limited range. 

Whilst 2.4GHz is a frequency that’s fine for most houses, it faces challenges with blocks of flats.  Up until now, the 868 MHz triumvirate of Wireless M-Bus, Z-Wave and wireless KNX had always given the impression that they could achieve adequate range at 868 MHz.  This break in the 868 MHz ranks does not augur well for a reasoned debate, but just increases the in-fighting and paranoia about whether any radio standard works or is ready for deployment.  That’s not what Smart Metering needs. 

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Will Google kill ZigBee?

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.

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

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…

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Smart Meters and IP – an Inconvenient Truth

Around a hundred years ago, George Bernard Shaw quipped that England and America were two countries divided by a common language.  Today there is a similar, very evident gulf growing between them in their attitude to smart metering standards.  That gulf is increasingly becoming an ideological one, with the difference focussing on whether to take IP to the meter.  It’s a difference of opinion that has little to do with those involved in metering or even the grid itself, but by others who want to impose their vision and their technologies upon its future.

The whole concept of bringing Internet Protocol to battery powered devices in this new era of the Internet of Things is not confined to smart metering – it’s a question that is being wrestled with by many standards groups who are trying to balance issues of accessibility, interoperability and power consumption.  In general, the closer a product is to commercial deployment, the less sway the IP proponents have.  But they have the US power industry in their sights.

I don’t believe that their arguments add up.  If smart metering is to work it needs to look at the whole picture and make pragmatic decisions.  The UK approach seems far more sensible, which may be why it’s making far better progress.  In contrast, there’s a distinct feeling of banana skin about the IP advocates and their promotion of ZigBee Smart Energy Profile 2.0.  As time goes on it looks like an approach that is having to conceal more and more inconvenient truths behind a veil of smoke and mirrors.

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Let the Wireless Wars Begin

It’s been an interesting week for the short range wireless standards.  The two terrible teenagers, ANT and ZigBee have both shown signs of their growing maturity, starting to position themselves as far more serious contenders in the market place.  In the wake of their move from adolescence, a new toddler has emerged in the form of Toumaz, with their announcement of their Telran chip.

What has been missing is any reaction, or in fact much sign of any action from their elder siblings – Bluetooth and Wi-Fi.  As large manufacturers continue to tighten their belts, one of the less noticed effects has been a steady withdrawal of engineering support from standards organisations.  In the past, many of these have been staffed with seconded experts from the big names in industry.  Increasingly those big names are withdrawing, relying largely on chip vendors to push their interests within the standards organisations.  That’s left Wi-Fi and Bluetooth battling to persuade industry members that either standard has a development future, with certain of their members considering that the job has been done.

Which opens up the field for the former competitors to claim some potentially interesting parts of the market.

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