While there may be some merit to a phased in approach, it is vital that the grid move toward open standards, especially IP protocols.  Achieving maximum efficiency across the national grid will only happen when the same ‘language’ is spoken from end to end.

I think that everyone looking at this from a big picture perspective realizes that open standards is the way to go.  The best example going is now the iPhone, whereby allowing 3rd parties to play, innovation happens exponentially faster, and the whole platform/system is the better for it.

http://www.businesswire.com/portal/site/google/?ndmViewId=news_view&newsId=20090203006512&newsLang=en

The Itron Digi partnership, I think speaks, to the last commentor’s question/concern.

Looks as Silver Springs Networks incorporates Elster, Landis & Gyr, Itron and GE ‘traditional meters’ into their product lineup. Very convienent.  The ‘traditional meter’ makers have had at least a decade to adopt IP protocols at the meter level. They did not. Why? Maybe the protocol required so much overhead compared to the low volume of data per meter that was being transceived? Maybe because Utility Executives pull these ‘traditional meter’ companies around by their noses while knowing little to nothing about what they request during those ‘business meetings’? ‘Ttraditional meter’ sales people having even less knowledge than executives?

If the so called ‘Smart Grid’ becomes reality, at least in terms of the meters on our homes registering the allocation of every watt to every appliance, it could have about as much impact as online banking had on conserving time, money and energy? Smart metering as a buzzword could easily be replaced with ’ Watt hour cash register”. Since when did the enormous network of IP based cash registers save anyone other than the proprietors money?

Elster has a super slow mesh network. Itron has a bit quicker mesh network and a little bit faster traditional network to handle power outage notification. So what? Just because you know your car (utility substation)  ran into a wall (substation flamed out) within a few seconds doesn’t get your car (or your substation) out of the body shop (power restored) much faster.

Silver Springs still has to solve all the problems Elster, Itron and many others have failed so far to do in the ‘Smart Grid’ networking problem space. Shlumberger’s CellNet electric metering enterprise was a failure and almost took Itron out as a consequence many years ago. Multiple technology based attempts at networking electrical power grids continually come up short, too. Why? One of many reasons could be the Electric, Water and Gas Utilites, Public Municipalities, property owners and others that have all been legally and otherwise incited to be uncooperative at the network and infrastrcuture level. Gas companies cannot rely much on the Electric Utilites aerial infrastructure to mount devices and Electric utilities cannot rely on Water or Gas utilites for much either. Property owners are stuck in the middle and have little knowledge on how to help or are paranoid or transient, exacerbating the probelem.

If the new administration was fully informed, he might see the sense in pushing reforms to have private and public consumers required to permit cooperative on-premise networking of their pre-existing equipment to flow over all those pre-exisitng IP network connections ALREADY in place with all those tens of millions of pre-exisitng smart-meters in a privacy respecting manner. Doing so might crush Silver Springs Network’s existing meter netwrk infrastructure sales forcecasts, but it would certainly eliminate developing and designing much of yet another bloated and largely ineefectual (utility centric) wireless network where the wired bandwidth and capacity already exist, are hot and most likely reside within a few feet of tens of millions of those so called ‘smart meters’

Do we really need a ‘New Cisco’ for the ‘Smart Grid’ ? The networking problem for the ‘Smart Grid’ has largely been available for years.  The coopetition between   the involved entities has not materialized. Maybe additional regulation is warranted?

FYI, not 100% sure but I believe that Itron calls their system “OpenWay” or something like that—which leads me to believe that they are for open standards.  Is this not correct ?

Itron’s system is based on a utility defined open network standard called c12.22.  C12.22 is application level standard that can support many transport layers including IP.  The new IP based providers can have proprietary applications running on an “open” IP transport layer.  It’s like saying the internet is open because its IP but html what if HTML is proprietary?