Smart grid technology is passing through a revolutionary period. A new survey from Microsoft
reveals that there are a number of challenges ranging from financial and regulatory to technology and return on investment for utilities providers already unsure of the right path to building the smart grid.
The survey highlighted the fact that information technologies available today are not sufficient to address future challenges in smart grid deployments.
According to Bob Gohn, senior analyst with Pike Research, future smart grid technology is all about offering unified connectivity, service guarantees, and end-to-end security common in today’s converged enterprise networks.
In an effort to address these challenges,
Trilliant, a provider of advanced metering and smart grid solutions, announced new products that integrate a Wide Area Network or “WAN” for distribution and a Neighborhood Area Network or “NAN” for metering.
The new “SecureMesh Bridge” products are the results of Trilliant's strategic acquisition of broadband wireless equipment provider SkyPilot Networks in Q2 2009.
SecureMesh Bridge, according to company officials, is the smart grid industry's first fully-integrated private WAN/NAN solution. It provides a dedicated private network without leased cellular costs and extends connectivity to distribution, metering, and consumer applications.
In addition, integrated WAN/NAN communications provides support for multi-application partitioning for application security and Quality-of-Service or “QoS” guarantees, the company said.
SecureMesh Bridge series includes two products – the SecureMesh Extender Bridge and the SecureMesh Connector Bridge. Both include the long-range, high-capacity backhaul of a wireless WAN mesh network with an integrated advanced metering infrastructure or “AMI” collector that aggregates metering communications across a NAN mesh network.
“The scope of Smart Grid network deployments continue to expand as utilities focus on the benefits of leveraging multiple applications across a converged infrastructure,” Rob Conant, senior vice president Network Products at Trilliant, said in a statement. “Realizing these benefits, though, requires an integrated multi-tier network that scales across multiple grid operation tiers.”
Trilliant’s solutions addresses the security and performance challenges associated with supporting multiple applications on a converged infrastructure. This is achieved by segmenting an integrated multi-tier communications network into multiple virtual network domains to ensure end-to-end security and guarantee traffic for each Smart Grid application.
Application domain partitioning allows utilities to have a single investment in a private network, giving greater control of their operations in a way that still provides security on all levels -- from distribution to metering to consumer, the company said.
Rajani Baburajan is a contributing editor for IoTevolutionworld. To read more of Rajani's articles, please visit her columnist page.Edited by
Marisa Torrieri
