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11.10

Smart Grid Needs More Broadband Spectrum, Researchers Contend

By Chris McManes

For the Smart Grid to work as touted, a constant stream of online communications is necessary between customers’ electric appliances and electric utilities. To increase the flow of information, more broadband spectrum is going to have to be allocated to the utilities.

Or so says Brett Kilbourne and Klaus Bender of the Washington, D.C.-based Utilities Telecom Council (UTC) in a paper presented at the IEEE SmartGridComm conference in October, “Spectrum for Smart Grid: Policy Recommendations Enabling Current and Future Applications.”

Smart Grid envisions a new generation of “smart” appliances — e.g. dishwashers, refrigerators, washers and dryers — engaging in real-time, two-way communications with the owner’s power company.

“There is a spectrum crisis for utility communications,” Kilbourne and Bender wrote, “and the federal government should make an additional 30 MHz of spectrum available below 2 GHz to support smart grid and other utility communications.”

Kilbourne is UTC’s director of regulatory services and associate counsel, and Bender its director of standards and engineering. Kilbourne presented the paper on 6 October at the National Institute of Standards and Technology in Gaithersburg, Md.

“The networks must have sufficient capacity to ensure effective communications,” they wrote. “The narrowband communications systems that utilities have used to support voice communications simply won’t support additional demand from certain new applications, such as video surveillance and broadband mobile data. However, these systems do not need to be designed to the same capacity requirements as commercial systems. There must be a balance between capacity and cost-effectiveness.”

Eric Burger, chair of IEEE-USA’s Committee on Communications policy, said electricity companies’ desire for more spectrum is very controversial.

“Wireless providers have paid billions of dollars for spectrum, and they already have an operating network,” Burger said. “One option could be for electric utilities to get their services from wireless providers. The Smart Grid should be a public good, just as wireless communications is, but spectrum is valuable real estate that does have significant costs associated with it.

“Clearly, it is in the national interest to connect energy consumers to their energy companies. However, there may be benefit to using spectrum for multiple uses over the long run. In addition, with ubiquitous broadband access, dedicated spectrum may not be necessary at all.”

The worldwide Smart Grid effort is basically the melding of the electric grid with modern computer-controlled communications systems. This will enable customers in their homes, businesses and industries to, among other things, control their energy usage and see how much their electricity costs at any time during the day. Thus, for example, a business could choose to run an electric machine at a time when electricity is cheaper. Likewise, a homeowner could choose to run his or her dishwasher when it is cheaper to operate.

Kilbourne and Bender further recommend that federal policymakers allow utilities to share the 700 MHz public safety spectrum and federal spectrum such as the 1800-1830 MHz band that the Canadian government currently allocates for utility communications.

“Utilities are increasingly dependent on their wireless communications networks to support the safe, reliable and efficient delivery of essential services to the public at large,” they wrote. “They use wireless for voice services, such as the routine dispatch of emergency response, and the bandwidth requirements for these services is increasing. At the same time, they use wireless for data services, including smart grid, and the bandwidth requirements for these services is increasing even more.”

Reps. Doris Matsui and Anna Eshoo, California Democrats, agree that more broadband spectrum should be allocated for Smart Grid applications. In a 21 September letter to Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Chairman Julius Genachowski, they suggested allowing utilities to utilize unused airwaves between TV channels, or white spaces.

“Utilities will be able to better manage outages, reduce peak demand, and gain more control over the decisions concerning resources,”  Matsui and Eshoo wrote. “It will also give utilities new capabilities, such as automated meter reading, voltage monitoring, and notification of outages to provide customers with timely notifications about power outages and service-restoration estimates, all [the] while making [the] electricity grid more efficient.”

Two days later the FCC agreed to free up the TV white spaces. While not specifically reserving the space for Smart Grid technologies, the FCC cited the possibility:

“Access to this spectrum could enable more powerful public Internet connections — super Wi-Fi hot spots — with extended range, fewer dead spots, and improved individual speeds as a result of reduced congestion on existing networks,” the FCC order said. “Many other applications are possible, such as broadband access to schools, particularly in rural areas, campus networks that are better able to keep pace with user’s increasing demands for bandwidth, home networks that are better able to support real time streaming video applications, remote sensing of water supplies by municipalities and support for the smart grid.

“The potential uses of this spectrum are limited only by the imagination.”

Chris McManes is IEEE-USA’s public relations manager.

Comments may be submitted to todaysengineer@ieee.org.