Welcome to the week in review for the smart grid market. Below are some of the top stories that came across the TMCnet news wires this week.

To start, Shidan Gouran, co-founder of Intelligent Communications Partners (News - Alert), discussed that, beyond smart meters and AMI networks, there is another, and very real, consumer face to the smart grid. Gouran discussed how, on college campuses and many other commercial buildings, two-way communications between consumers and utilities is the norm. And, real-time price signaling, automated Demand Response and most importantly, true consumer participation in the electricity market are all there. Unlike AMI networks, this system runs on the public Internet itself.

 

Goudan also discussed his believes on the smart grid and how it will not be the consumer revolution being marketed as today until an open programming interface to utilities, including the residential sector, exists together with a competitive landscape of third party service providers and the option of consumers participating fully in the energy market themselves.

 

On Wednesday, a report was released by NanoMarkets that discussed how – and why – the smart grid movement will potentially create opportunities for advanced materials suppliers as well.

 

Ranging from new compound semiconductors to the latest nanomaterials, the report, titled, “Opportunities for New Materials and Devices in the Smart Grid: 2010 to 2017,” highlights the fact that this trend is rounding the bends of the smart grid infrastructure. The report also claims that the new smart grid products will create $12 billion in revenue opportunity for suppliers of components, wires, cables, storage devices and insulators.

 

And, in keeping up with the research side of the smart grid world, again on Wednesday, a recent survey completed by Chartwell stated that most utility customers have never even heard of a smart meter and those who have, barely half can identify the correct definition when it is presented to them. Another 10 percent believe it is a device that allows utilities to monitor customer movements inside their homes.

The Smart Grid Survey of 1,500 utility customers from the United States and Canada marks the launch of Chartwell’s Smart Grid Customer Engagement Research Council. This utility-only group focuses on helping utilities to better understand their customers as they implement behind-the-meter smart grid applications.

 

That’s the top smart grid news for this week. Check back next week on TMCnet for more breaking news in the smart grid space.

Learn more about Smart Grid technology at the Smart Grid Summit, an event collocated with ITEXPO East 2010, to be held Jan. 20 to 22 in Miami. This is the event you need to attend if you want to understand the role that IP communications technologies will play in how the Smart Grid evolves – not just for making utilities more efficient, but also for enabling the Smart Home and a new generation of communications innovations. Register now.