Burlington Electric Department (BED) in Burlington, Vermont has chosen RuggedCom for smart grid implementation.

RuggedCom is a designer and manufacturer of industrial strength networks for mission-critical applications in harsh environments.

Burlington Electric Department is the municipal utility for the city of Burlington, Vermont serving 16,000 residential and 3,600 commercial customers.

In its role as a supplier for the smart grid deployment at BED RuggedCom will deliver a communication solution that will support BED's objective of improving and enhancing their SCADA network.

This communication solution comprises wireline devices from the RuggedSwitch and RuggedBackbone families of products, complemented by RuggedCom's network management software, RuggedNMS, and RuggedSolutions' CrossBow security software.

According to a release, the RuggedSwitch and RuggedBackbone devices will be located in the substation, recloser and capacitor bank enclosures, as well as in BED's primary and backup SCADA control centers.

The RuggedSwitch and RuggedBackbone devices will allow device polling and reporting, configuration updates and record retrieval. BED will leverage the gigabit capacity of this Ethernet network to add services like video, VoIP or other SCADA related data.

The municipal utility will also use RuggedNMS to monitor the health and status of BED's fiber network and Ethernet switches. This network management tool will also allow BED to gather network performance information, manage device configurations and provide bulk upload of software and firmware to the RuggedCom network devices.

"Burlington Electric Department has taken advantage of RuggedCom's broad portfolio of distribution and substation automation products to efficiently implement an advanced smart grid communications network," said Jim Slinowsky, vice president of Marketing for RuggedCom.

Read a related article at TMCnet “Cinterion (News - Alert) Receives "2011 Smart Grid Excellence" Award.”

Want to learn more about the latest in communications and technology? Then be sure to attend ITEXPO East 2012, taking place Jan. 31-Feb. 3 2012, in Miami, FL. ITEXPO (News - Alert) offers an educational program to help corporate decision makers select the right IP-based voice, video, fax and unified communications solutions to improve their operations. It's also where service providers learn how to profitably roll out the services their subscribers are clamoring for – and where resellers can learn about new growth opportunities. For more information on registering for ITEXPO registration click here.

Stay in touch with everything happening at ITEXPO. Follow us on Twitter.