With the rapid advancement of the smart grid and smart meter deployment across the U.S. and globally, Smart Grid Forum has formed a string of smaller groups to deal with technical and business problems in the industry.

Each group, according to the Forum, will cover different smart grid topics such as security, infrastructure and network management, green energy, applications development, business intelligence, and Advanced Metering Infrastructure (AMI).

The new groups, according to Michael Khalilian (News - Alert), President, NGN Forum, will help bring the experience and expertise of the telecommunications and information technology industry to the utility industry.

"We believe that the Smart Grid Forum is a great mechanism for bringing interested communities together to help resolve the technical and business problems in deploying a Smart Grid," said Jose Iglesias, Vice President, Symantec (News - Alert) CTO Office, Sustainability and Green Technology.

The Smart Grid Forum is designed to bring together communications service providers, integrators and suppliers with utilities to discuss the building, monitoring and securing of utility networks as they pertain to Smart Grid.

The security group, according to the Forum, will develop best practices and standards for the security of customer information and the networks that manage information, as well as, the secure transmission and distribution of energy globally.

And the infrastructure/network management group will enable network equipment manufacturers (NEMs) to collectively meet and discuss best practices around the rollout of utility networks.

The green energy group will focus on innovation in the delivery of energy efficiency management, renewable energy solutions and best practices, while the application development group will identify and integrate applications to further smart grid technologies.

The important business intelligence/AMI group will concentrate on effective reading of AMI data and work with utilities on how to leverage that data intelligence for improved operational efficiency and customer experience.