De-Mystifying Smart Grid Standards - Introduction to IEC 61968 - ArchRock

If a utility Common Information Model (CIM) is essential for guaranteeing true end-to-end open standards-based Smart Grid communications, a major challenge is the requirement that it cover all domains and data exchanges in electrical networks.  (Similar challenges exist for water and gas networks.)

The disparate and distributed applications a utility runs to manage electrical distribution networks range from distribution management to system outage-management, planning, metering, work management, geographic information, asset management, customer information and enterprise resource planning systems.  Obviously a set of interfaces and a common language must be defined under a Distribution Management System (DMS) framework.

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DASH7 Alliance Announces Updated Standard For Wireless Sensor Networks

San Ramon, CA, USA – July 20, 2010. The DASH7 Alliance (http://www.dash7.org), a non-profit industry consortium that promotes the use of the ISO 18000-7 standard for wireless sensor networking, today announced the release of an updated specification for the ISO 18000-7 standard for wireless sensor networking that enables tag-to-tag communications, improved location precision, over-the-air configuration, and higher data rates.

The Mode 2 specification was submitted as a new work item to the ISO 18000-7 standards committee following approval by the DASH7 Alliance, which today includes more than 50 participants from 23 countries.  The full Mode 2 spec is available today to DASH7 Alliance members and will be available to the public in ISO in mid-2011.

More: Dash7 Alliance

De-Mystifying Smart Grid Standards - Common Information Model (CIM)

"The “De-mystifying Smart Grid Standards” series started by reviewing new networking specifications - IEEE 802.15.4g, 15.4e, RoLL - part of the end-to-end Smart Grid communications architecture. The adoption of a TCP/IP-based framework for network communications enables Smart Grid applications to develop independently of the lower layers’ evolution and to leverage the standards-based two-way communications capabilities for important benefits such as:

• Load control
• Dynamic pricing
• Outage detection
• Distributed energy resource (DER) control signals
• On-demand read

But TCP/IP does not address the challenges of data representation and exchange within and between Distribution Management Systems such as these Smart Grid domain/sub-domain examples:

• Customer domains
  
  • Business/building Area Networks (BAN)
  • Home Area Networks (HAN)
  • Industrial Area Networks (IAN)
• Operation domains
  
  • Monitoring
  • Control
  • Fault management"

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CouchDB 1.0 Released

"As in our project we needed a (quickly setup, reliable, and flexible) backend system to store sensor data, I played around with CouchDB as I wanted to explore a RESTful data store. As a matter of fact, the version 1.0 was released just a few minutes before I installed it. First impression, wow. Sleek, pretty fast, damn easy to use, flexible as any software should be (not the conventional click and run install, but damn well documented installation). I have to admit I’m impressed by the quality of this release, just as much as by the documentation.

I think this is the best option out there to store relatively low-frequency changing data, such as device metadata, information about locations, etc, but I really wonder how it performs for high-frequency data, such as sensor samples. Considering that it is a document store (for JSON data for example), I wondering how it handles the storage of thousands of incoming “documents” per second. This question is certainly worth exploring and I will hopefully be able to share some insights on this question soon.

In the meanwhile, we are looking forward to hear about your experiences with Web-oriented datastores."

Source: webofthings.com

Interviews at Career Development Conference by SmartGridCareers

Some interesting interviews on Smart Grid Industry Trends by SmartGridCareers.com

Link: here

De-Mystifying Smart Grid Standards – IETF RoLL overview

An excellent overview of what's happening at IETF RoLL WG

"At the upcoming IETF 78 meeting, the Routing over Low power and Lossy Networks (RoLL) Working Group – co-chaired by Arch Rock CTO Dr. David Culler – will review the IPv6 Routing Protocol for Low power and Lossy Networks (RPL) core draft prior to an expected “last call.” Acceptance – after potential modifications – will mean the protocol specifications would be published as a Request for Comment (RFC) and be implemented by vendors.


IP routing is a key feature for the Smart Grid industry. By implementing RPL, the Advanced Metering Infrastructure (AMI) will benefit from basic IP routing characteristics such as:

• Dynamic discovery of network paths and destination “reachability”
• Ability to adapt to logical network topology changes, equipment failures or network outages “on the fly”
• Independence from data-link-layer technologies
• Different AMI networks’ exit paths through multiple edge routers for high availability and load balancing"

Read More: Archrock Blog

Web Services for Smart Objects- Part 3 available now

The last part, A real-world web service system for smart objects, is also available now.

Web Services for Smart Objects - EE Times
 The following excerpt from the book "Interconnecting Smart Objects with IP: The Next Internet", by Jean-Philippe Vasseur and Adam Dunkels, offers an overview of web services and how they can enable smart objects to be efficiently integrated into existing IT and enterprise business systems.

Web Services for Smart Objects -Part 1: Overview
Web Services for Smart Objects - Part 2: Performance considerations
Web Services for Smart Objects -Part 3: A real-world web service system for smart objects.

Source: EmbeddedInternetDesign - EETimes