HomeGrid Forum speaking at 2011 Smart Energy Summit, Austin TX

The HomeGrid Forum, speaking at today’s Smart Energy Summit in Austin, Texas, unveiled an exciting and ambitious roadmap towards the widespread adoption of G.hn as the de facto standard in wired home networking.

Speaking at the Summit, the Forum’s co-Chair of Marketing, Chano Gomez, said that first deployments of G.hn products will occur during 2011 and the organization’s Compliance & Interoperability (C&I) Roadmap outlines a range of practical steps for service providers and equipment manufacturers. This roadmap includes the appointment of accredited test houses, the first interoperability plugfests, and the first shipments of certified products.

There have been also key developments in G.hnem – the ITU-T standard for energy management – during 2011, enabling cost-effective SmartGrid applications such as smart meters, smart appliances and advanced re-charging systems for electric vehicles. While participating in a panel on home gateways, Gomez said that consent of G.hnem is expected during the first quarter of 2011 by the United Nations International Telecommunications Union (ITU-T).

At the Summit, Gomez also said: “This past year showed a remarkable growth in interest in G.hn and G.hnem, and looking back, 2010 will be remembered as the year that home networking took off. HomeGrid Forum membership more than doubled during the year: a clear indicator of the growth of home networking and the value the industry is placing on G.hn and G.hnem as the technologies of choice for the next generation of home networking and Smart Grid applications.”

Gomez is Director of Business Development at Lantiq North America and has more than 10 years of experience in home networking and SmartGrid applications semiconductor industry, with a special focus on powerline communications for voice, video and data transmission. Since 2008, Chano has been actively involved in the development of ITU-T standards G.9960 and G.9961 (G.hn). He currently serves as co-chair of HomeGrid Forum Marketing Working Group, and previously as chair of the HomeGrid Forum G.hn Contributions Working Group.

Calix counts on smart grid to feed fiber builds

Both the town of Concord and the city of Highland, Ill., are deploying the Calix Unified Access portfolio. The vendor claims that the $4.5 million Concord deployment, orchestrated by government utility Concord Municipal Light, is the first smart grid project in the U.S. that combines GPON and wireless technologies. The Calix E7 Ethernet Service Access Platform is being used to deliver GPON to the Calix 700GX/GE optical network terminals located at wireless collector sites attached to transformers in the network. The configuration will allow the utility to better manage peak energy demand and allow residents to monitor their own energy usage using tools like Google’s PowerMeter.

The revenue and cost savings angles mean that smart grid projects are becoming a significant contributor to the average fiber access business case. Municipalities deploying fiber on their own may look at the bottom line savings, while a telco or other service provider involved in such projects may focus more on how smart grid revenue can be added to the top line of their business cases.

Overall market conditions, including low interest rates, increasing competition, government subsidies and increasing demand for video, are helping to prime the pump for vendors like Calix.

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Parks Associates is proud to welcome Gigle Networks as a 2011 Smart Energy Summit sponsor

Gigle Networks provides System-on-Chip (SoC) integrated circuits and complete system solutions for multimedia home networking that can extend wired and wireless Ethernet everywhere in the home –without the need for new wires. Targeted for applications such as Internet Protocol Television (IPTV), broadband TV (BBTV), video on demand (VoD), and Voice over IP (VoIP), Gigle Networks' products offer superior performance, coverage and quality of service when compared to alternative communication technologies, and are designed to be easily integrated into consumer electronics and networked products.

For more information on the Smart Energy Summit, click here.

ZigBee and Wi-Fi Alliances to Collaborate on Smart Grid Wireless Networking

The ZigBee Alliance and the Wi-Fi Alliance announced an agreement to collaborate on wireless home area networks (HAN) for Smart Grid applications. The initial focus of the collaboration will be ZigBee Smart Energy 2.0, which is the next-generation energy management protocol for Smart Grid-enabled homes based on today's successful ZigBee Smart Energy Profile. The ZigBee Smart Energy 2.0 is expected to operate over Wi-Fi technology as a result of the collaboration.

The two organizations will identify opportunities to use ZigBee Smart Energy 2.0, capitalizing on the unique strengths and capabilities of their respective technologies. This will expand the utility of the HAN in the management of energy consuming or producing devices, a crucial part of Smart Grid efforts now underway. ZigBee Smart Energy 2.0 was selected last year by the U.S. Department of Energy and the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) as an initial interoperable standard for HAN devices.

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Xanboo Supports SES in 2010

Parks Associates welcomes Xanboo as a Smart Energy Summit sponsor in 2010.

Founded in 1999, Xanboo was an early pioneer in the development of Interactive services, remote access to video, as well as sensing and control devices over the Internet. Xanboo's self - provisioning gateway is the only "wireless, plug and play" system that allows streaming video over a customer's standard broadband connection regardless of their modem/router combination. Xanboo has been issues ten patents covering items such as system architecture, signaling technology and functional designs of its Interactive services platform.

For more information about Xanboo, please visit http://www.xanboo.com/.