March 20: How will most utilities be communicating with smart meters in 2015?

[Jesse Berst]

We often talk about which communications vendor will eventually lead the pack in the smart grid space. But with recent developments (you can find details in our Communications channel) – it may make as much sense to ask which technologies will take the lead. Where do you think the utility industry is heading when it comes to choosing technology to communicate with smart meters?

[Richard Damiano]

Hybrid for all but compact municipal systems. If a utilities service territory has anything more than just high density urban or suburban coverage than a hybrid system is likely needed. Our system has some very rural, low-density areas where power line carrier is cost prohibitive due to the head end costs, cellular would work well for these sparse meters. We also have some very dense suburban areas where RF Mesh is likely the lowest cost solution. Trying to force one solution to all situations is cost and time prohibitive. I sense the AMI suppliers know this as evidenced by recent acquisitions and partnerships so integrated hybrid solutions can be offered to utilities.

[Brian Young]

I agree with Richard. PG&E itself uses a combination of RF mesh and cellular to aggregate community data at an access point and send it off the PG&E quickly. This solution is efficient and self-optimizes the routing of smart meter data in the mesh.

[Len Hause]

The answer is the same as the answer to how people connect to the Internet. Clearly there will be a mix of technologies.

[David Green]

2015 may still be too near term for some cutting edge alternatives to take precedence, but one compelling option is the "LAN-to-WAN" gateway (one example is Zigbee to ethernet). These devices can offer much more than the traditional service of collecting metering data, such as providing an alternate channel for the utility to issue price information, demand response events, and messages. They can also offer much higher-bandwidth portals for the benefit of the customer, which can be used to push metering data directly to the web to create valuable energy usage analytics or even social applications. I believe we are headed into a supra-metering energy ecosystem. But how long it takes to get there is anyone's guess.

[James Ramsay]

My experience is that the technologies are always changing. Here even the near term horizon looks like hybrid systems to me.

[Kyle Cormier]

I believe hybrid solutions will still dominate in 2015. Assuming most deployments began around 2008-2010, I wouldn't expect any major technology transitions until the latter part of the decade.

If the FCC would assign utilities some broadband spectrum, or even work out a better sharing agreement for the 700MHz PS spectrum, utilities could have a clearer path in which to build upon. As it is now, there are very limited spectrum options.

[Mike McCrory]

I don't know the technology, but an RF network is the current thing for water meters (a daisy chain for transfer of information) from what I understand. Seems simple enough for most conditions and communication situations.