Overheard in the tech blogosphere » smart grid

Overheard talking about smart meter hacks and PKI

Margaret Rouse — Wed, 18 Apr 2012 20:21:07 +0000

“Advanced metering infrastructure (AMI) components — in particular, the smart meters that are responsible for measuring and managing the delivery of electricity use for more than 110 million households and companies in the United States — rely on secure communications channels in order to transmit usage data. Many AMI equipment manufacturers rely on PKI for identification, authentication and establishment of secure communications channels.” – Seth Bromberger

Today’s WhatIs.com Word of the Day is smart meter hack. If you live way out in the country, you may still have an old-fashioned spinning mechanical electrical meter, but you are fast becoming the exception. Ironically, the very features that motivate power companies to install smart meters also make them vulnerable to new kinds of attacks. According to an FBI bulletin, smart meter hacks may end up costing utility companies about $400 million per year.

Keep your eye out for a new kind of service provider who will independently verify the security of AMI components and the smart networks they use.

Overheard talking about rugged IT

Margaret Rouse — Wed, 26 May 2010 11:56:16 +0000

Cisco says the new smart grid products are “ruggedized” for the electrical network, can tolerate higher and lower temperatures than its traditional network gear, include a high level of security, and can help integrate renewables, detect network outages and migrate older proprietary gear to IP network gear.

Katie Fehrenbacher, The Sleeping Giant Awakes: Cisco Launches First Smart Grid Products

Today’s WhatIs.com Word of the Day is rugged IT.

If you’ve been wondering (like we have) what exactly networking giant Cisco planned to sell to utilities for the smart grid, ponder no longer. Cisco announced its first smart grid-specific products on Tuesday, including a router and grid switch, which are based on its traditional networking products but have been built specifically for the utility environment.

Overheard talking about MultiSpeak

Margaret Rouse — Mon, 12 Apr 2010 11:26:54 +0000

MultiSpeak is a schema that establishes a set of standard interface specifications and defines data entities and their attributes. For example, the “Customer” entity has 14 attributes, including: customer first name, last name, home phone number, billing address, and customer id number.

Greg Wolven, WIN Energy: A Case Study in using MultiSpeak to Enable Best of Breed Software Selection

Today’s WhatIs.com Word of the Day is MultiSpeak.

WIN Energy chose MultiSpeak as the vehicle to enable a Best of Breed strategy and optimize the way the cooperative does business. WIN Energy can now select the various software technologies that are the best fit for the utility and, as long as the software packages are MultiSpeak compliant, they will function together regardless of software version upgrades. WIN Energy’s first MultiSpeak implementation between its accounting system, NISC’s CAPSXL+, and its automated field staking package, MiniMax’s StakeOut, was both highly successful and its first step towards a truly system-wide approach.

Overheard talking about compressed air energy storage

Margaret Rouse — Tue, 30 Mar 2010 17:21:10 +0000

If stored wind or solar energy instead of natural gas plants can be used to generate power when the wind is not blowing or the sun is not shining, less natural gas will be burned to provide dispatchable power.

Dr. Joseph Romm, The Holy Grail of clean energy economy is in sight: Affordable storage for wind and solar

Today’s WhatIs.com Word of the Day is compressed air energy storage. The definition is adopted from a blog post by Dr. Joseph Romm called “The Holy Grail of clean energy economy is in sight: Affordable storage for wind and solar.”