Smart grid is evolving rapidly, and the need for market knowledge has never been greater. A new market study has just been launched this week, and to showcase it, ICP's Jon Arnold (News - Alert) conducted this interview with one of the report's lead authors. Mead Eblan is the Senior Analyst & Strategist - Smart Grid with Maravedis, the firm that produced this report. He shares his thoughts with Jon below about the focus of the report along with some key findings.

Mead Eblan: Maravedis is a leading research and analysis firm focusing primarily on broadband wireless technologies and markets worldwide. Maravedis often works with equipment vendors, service providers, regulators and the investment community to produce market analysis, research reports and consulting.

Over the past couple of years, Maravedis has witnessed an increasing number of its customers peeking under the utility hood to get better involved in emerging smart grid initiatives. Hence, we've saddled up with graduate students at the University of Maryland University College to canvas the smart grid landscape, talk to industry leaders and get a clear understanding of what 'smart grid' means to the utility and the community of interested parties - particularly carriers and telecom vendors.

ME: During the late eighties, when talk of how to deploy an 'information superhighway' across the United States began to bubble up, many pundits believed that utilities were in the best position to create this new fabric. The Internet was yet to be commercialized, HTML or the web wasn't invented yet, and the recently deregulated telecom industry was still battling over equal access. At the time the first nationwide fiber network was being deployed by United Telecommunications (now Sprint (News - Alert)) but consumer data connectivity services were being handled by a handful of niche service providers (e.g. Telenet, Infranet). Wireless communications hadn't arrived, and all eyes were on the electrical grid as the most likely conveyer of data connectivity to households across the U.S.

When we first engaged this study, what piqued our interest was the fundamental question: with smart grid done right, could the utility emerge as a new communications provider to break the current cableco/telco duopoly serving high-speed bandwidth to most homes today? Newer technologies - such as wireless access, spectrum reassignments and especially IP, have all re-irrigated the landscape. But after concluding the study we realized that - at this point - the duopoly need not worry.

ME: Maravedis was particularly interested in how WiMAX is currently being deployed within smart grid initiatives, notably for Smart metering connectivity and data backhaul. Utilities are recalcitrant about utilizing unlicensed mobile access (UMA), such as Wi-Fi, for security reasons, and LTE is still largely on the horizon. Our findings validated this.

ME: Despite a common 'grid' and the fact that electricity pouring out every socket across North America is 110 volt/60 hertz, the industry itself is highly fragmented. This is a very fragmented market with over 4,000 electrical distribution utilities in the U.S. alone! Not only are there essentially 3 different types of utilities each with their own regulatory universe (IOU, Muni and Coop), but smart grid efforts today are literally islands of activities. We see BPL still out there, landlines sometimes required, WiMAX or Zigbee being built into meters and examples where 3G is used. And even with 3G you have CDMA versus GSM. So at the distribution point, it's still a cacophony.

ME: Initially, wireless operators are bringing connectivity to the grid table. Beyond that, the utilities can learn much from the wireless operators with respect to deregulation, capex, solutions/applications partnering, customer messaging and especially possible new services and electricity rate plans modeled after telecom pricing.

ME: There are several players out front - all with their own flavor of leading edge solutions. Out front, or course, are the usual round-up of solutions-providers: IBM (notable for its participation in the world's first smart grid country - Malta), Google (Power Meter), and Microsoft (News - Alert) (Hohm). The most interesting space is actually in the manufacturing sector, whether in utility meters or wireless components.

Here is where players are wedged between the risk in betting on the wrong technology and the rewards of selling a whole new universe of devices. Various specialty WiMAX vendors such as Redline or Alvarion (News - Alert) have invested time and money adapting their solutions to utilities requirements. Here again, returns on their investments are still waiting larger scale deployments.

ME: There is a lot of misunderstanding, FUD and populist politics clotting the mind-space of anyone remotely conscious about smart grid efforts. Unfortunately; 1) most people think smart grid is just about the meter, and 2) even more have no clue regarding any smart meter efforts. A lot of this has to do with how well the utilities position their value-add to the end-using public. Regardless, once two-way, IP-enabled metering allow consumers (and appliances) the ability to 'time-shift' usage to off-peak hours, and especially conserve on electricity usage - then utilities get creative in crafting new solutions to replace revenues lost from energy conservation.

ME: We were actually dismayed at the level of willingness on the part of utilities to participate. They may have high-voltage lines, but the industry is cluttered with low-voltage people just content on toeing the line. Carriers and wireless vendors, on the other hand, were much more receptive and willing to talk with the research students

ME: Well, your readers can review the report synopsis here at our website. From there, they can also download a research summary as well as get details about how to purchase the report in full.