More WiMax for Smart Grid

By Jeff St. John

San Diego Gas & Electric is the latest utility to look to WiMax as a piece of its smart grid plans.

SDG&E will look to use the open standard, high-speed wireless technology as part of a larger-scale project that it's asking the Department of Energy to support with $30 million in smart grid stimulus funds, Earth2Tech reported Friday.

IBM (IBM), Cisco (CSCO) and Arcadian Networks are companies the utility wants as partners for the project, the report said. As for WiMax, the utility hasn't selected a vendor or officially decided it will play a role in the proposed project, Jeff Nichols, the utility's director of network and communication services, said.

But the advantages WiMax could offer in smart grid projects have been noted by other utilities, notably Texas-based CenterPoint Energy (CNP), which was among the first to say it would use WiMax radios made by General Electric (GE) as part of its smart grid plans.

The idea is a "backhaul" communications network for CenterPoint's smart meters that could also manage distribution grid controls, switches and other smart grid functions that require faster, more reliable and data-rich communications than simply reading meters every 15 minutes or so (see GE Offers WiMax Smart Meter Solution).

CenterPoint will own its own WiMax network. But San Francisco-based startup Grid Net is hoping to ride broader WiMax networks to link smart meters themselves. The WiMax modems it makes, contained in GE meters, are being tested by Australian utilities SP AusNet and Energy Australia, where WiMax coverage is more pervasive.

Sprint (S) and Clearwire (CLWR) are rolling out a WiMax network in the United States, and while it's only in four major cities, the two have said they plan to expand it to cover 120 million people in 80 markets by 2010.

Sprint said this week that it will look to that broader coverage to support a new raft of smart grid projects it hopes to land with utilities and their partners (see Sprint Staked Smart Grid Claim).

SDG&E's $30-million stimulus application is just one of dozens being submitted by utilities across the country, so it's unclear whether the money will be coming (see Green Light post).

But Nichols told Earth2Tech the wireless project will go on with or without stimulus funding, though its proposed 2012 completion date might be pushed several years out without it.

Comments

[TinyTim:]

WiMax is a good alternative to Zigbee.
A major advantage of WiMax is utilities could use it to expand into broadband like many municipalities are doing.

Aug 16 08:47 PM

[Geddy:]

Utilities are already using broadband to do this in a lot of major markets. It doesn't take WiMax to provide.


On Aug 16 08:47 PM TinyTim wrote:

> WiMax is a good alternative to Zigbee.
> A major advantage of WiMax is utilities could use it to expand into
> broadband like many municipalities are doing.

Aug 21 02:14 PM