Data Centers
Utility networks generate enormous amounts of data. The more equipped a CSP is to store and process the vast amounts of usage, billing and network data, the more comprehensive their solution for SmartGrids are.
Cisco is one provider which is all-in on its bet on smart grid and has forecast that smart grid is a potential $10 billion market. Data center build-out, among other initiatives, is one of the cornerstones of Cisco's smart grid strategy.
“Securing information generated in a smart grid network requires that data center storage and access are secured and that diagnostics, telemetry, and control commands of intelligent devices in the utility control network are authenticated and protected,” Cisco says about its data center initiatives.
Analytics
After all of that data is sucked down from the network, secured and stored, someone needs to make sense out of it all for utilities.
Oracle is a good example of a solution provider looking at smart grid analytics as a strategy.
“Far too many so-called business intelligence products today provide little more than an additional analytic engine or reporting framework requiring months of consulting time to implement and extensive staff time and training to use and maintain,” Rodger Smith, senior vice president and general manager, Oracle Utilities says. “Oracle Utilities Meter Data Analytics is a major step beyond those costly halfway measures. It answers utilities’ most pressing metering questions at the click of a mouse. While others deliver ‘tools’ and ‘foundations,’ we deliver out-of-the-box results.”
Managed IT Security and Consulting
As utilities ramp up their technological know-how to work with CSPs, there will be big opportunities for consulting and managed IT services to bridge the knowledge gap. This is where companies like Telcordia are staking their claim with smart grid communications management, smart grid network and operations consulting, and smart grid security and reliability services.
Smart Grids and 'Social Capital'
Besides the increasingly obvious business proposition for CSPs to get on the smart grid bandwagon, there's a real “We Are the World,” “do it for your fellow man” case to be made here. Smart grids help the environment, our quality of life and are an increasing necessity in today's broadband economy.
Lou Zacharilla, co-founder of Intelligent Community, a New York-based think tank focused on supporting community innovation, points to communities like the 32,000 residents of Stratford, Ontario and Chattanooga, Tenn., which have decided to incubate smart grid technology as a means of creating what he calls, “social capital.”
“The Police commissioner of New York, where I live, attributed the fact that New York is the 'safest city' due to the ability of the police force to take in data and push it out to those who need it,” Zacharilla says. “Smarter cities where the private and public work together are retaining the best and brightest and support our digital media-based economy. There's real compelling logic there for the benefits of smart cities.”
