Smart grid runs into trouble over powerline standard, I
href=”http://collaborate.nist.gov/twiki-sggrid/bin/view/SmartGrid/PAP15PLCForLowBitRates”>PAP-15 group focused on powerline home networks, the national coordinator of smart grid standards at NIST, George Arnold, gave the group his ultimatum. “It was a pretty competitive group to put in one room,” quipped Arnold. “I almost thought I would have to hire a security guard.”
In the meeting Arnold said NIST could use its experience selecting the AES security standard as a model for creating a technology bake-off for a low cost powerline standard for smart appliances.
“The moment where he most needed a security guard was when he said if you guys can’t get together [on a standard], NIST will decide,” said Stefano Galli, a lead scientist at Panasonic R&D Co. of America who attended the meeting. “There was an uproar.”
“Big companies feel this weight of a government decision is not beneficial,” said Galli who also co-chairs an IEEE task force exploring communications standards for the smart grid. “A premature convergence of the home network could create more problems than it solves,” he added.
“I would rather let the market decide, and I think the 70 companies in the HomePlug Alliance would rather have the market decide, too,” said Rob Ranck, president of HomePlug which has released multiple generations of home powerline networking standards. “We’ve met with [regulators], the Department of Energy and Congressional staff members and there doesn’t seem to be a clear consensus that [picking a standard] is NIST’s role,” he said. “If you go back to the legislation that supports NIST, it talks about interoperability, but it’s not clear whether it sets up the federal government to pick a single winner,” Ranck added.
Merritt notes that the industry has tried and failed for years to set a single powerline home networking standard. After four years of work, the IEEE 1901 group is about to finalize a standard that essentially blesses multiple powerline physical layers and media access controllers.
The stakes are as high as the difficulties. The government is keen to ensure its $4 billion in recent smart grid grants is money well spent. Many of the projects include pilot projects in demand response systems.
White goods giant Whirlpool Corp. made a high-profile promise last fall that it will ship in 2011 a million dryers ready to plug into the smart grid — if there is a suitable networking standard the company can use. “The last thing I want to see is a Wall Street Journal article a year from now saying Whirlpool had to renege on its promise because of the lack of a standard,” said Arnold.
From NIST’s perspective, “the ideal would be to have one wired and one wireless standard,” Arnold told EE Times.
Members of competing Wi-Fi and Zigbee trade groups also attended the meetings in Denver. Some expressed they disagreed with the idea of a single wireless standard—even if their approach was picked.
Tomorrow: Many imperfect options
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