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.

 

On Monday, co-founder of Intelligent Communication Partners Shidan Gouran discussed the mobile M2M and the smart grid.

 

“Next week I will be at the Mobile World Congress (News - Alert) to demonstrate some of the technologies my company, Home Jinni, has developed for connected consumer electronics,” Gouran said, adding that he will also be taking this opportunity to speak with pioneers on the cutting edge of the cellular M2M industry, an area which according to the GSMA, is expected to bring connectivity to fifty billion “things” by 2025.

 

Even though Cellular M2M is quickly being adopted for many applications that need device to device communications, one sector that the established M2M providers and their underlying carriers have failed to gain traction in, is the utility AMI network. The few companies which have successfully partnered with utilities, like SmartSynch with AT&T (News - Alert), have for the most part provided AMI networks for industrial customers.

 

On Wednesday, Jon Arnold (News - Alert), the other co-founder of Intelligent Communication Partners talked about the Product of the Year, or “POTY,” awards announced on TMCnet. These awards are a long-standing element of TMC’s flagship ITEXPO (News - Alert) event, and are one of the ways we are differentiating the Smart Grid Summit from other industry events. As outlined in the press release, the winners were ADTRAN, Control4, EnerNOC, Gemalto, nlyte Software, SmartSynch, Synapse Wireless, Telvent, Trilliant and Tropos Networks (News - Alert).

 

“I’ll briefly touch on each of these, and will further highlight specific companies and their smart grid offerings in upcoming articles,” Arnold said.

ADTRAN: this was for their OPTI-6100 series of multi-service provisioning platforms – particularly modules that support the IEEE (News - Alert) 1613 standard for communications equipment used in utility substations.

Control4: their energy management system is an integral piece of the smart home by connecting the smart meter to the smart thermostat, and tying that together with a HAN-based touchscreen energy controller.

EnerNOC: the first of two awards is MBCx – monitoring-based commissioning energy efficiency solution, which identifies and prioritizes various ways for building to optimize their energy consumption.

 

On Thursday, an opposition stemming from the United States’ attempts to link three power grids to open up the renewable energy market was the latest news hitting the industry.

 

Phil Harris, CEO of Tres Amigas, of which owns the three power grid Tres Amigas SuperStation, apparently isn’t worried about the flak the project is catching from opponents who are claiming the project may cost consumers more and stifle the competition.

 

The evolution of the three powered station is essential in the development process of bringing renewable energy to the smart grid. If the United States continues to run into potholes and problems of this nature, it won’t be long before China and Europe are more than just a few steps ahead of our country’s smart grid efforts.

 

In October 2009, plans for the superstation were announced, and subsequently after Tres Amigas filed from regulatory approval from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, or “FERC,” in December.

 

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.