Smart gridSmart grid gold rush

Competition among companies that can provide reliable, scalable, and secure smart meters, automation, and control systems has grown to be pretty fierce in recent years, even more so lately given the $11 billion allocated in the federal government’s American Reinvestment and Recovery Act. Youngish, entrepreneurial IT-driven companies such as Echelon, Itron, and Silver Spring Networks are now battling it out, competing and, at times, working in conjunction with such IT and power industry equipment heavyweights as IBM, SAP, and Landis & Gyr.

Triplepundit’s Andrew Burger writes that the latest potential coup is a long-term contract awarded by Duke Energy, the third-largest utility in the United States, to Echelon Corp. An initial order that calls for San Jose, California-based Echelon to supply Duke with $15.8 million worth of its two-way smart meters has the potential to grow to as much as $150 million in revenue, according to news reports. Echelon shares jumped 40 percent right off the back of the news being released.

Burger says that the smart grid marketplace was already getting frothy without the large-scale federal stimulus. Now it may be boiling over. As promising as the potential benefits-more efficient use/less waste of electrical power, more flexibility and greater control of grid flows for utilities, incentives for home, building owners and businesses to invest in renewable power systems, and savings to consumers as well as power producers-big questions about the readiness of smart grid technology remain. The apparent  lack of strong security measures designed into increasingly IP-based smart grid networks ranks up at the top of the list.