In another setback for smart grid, the Ohio Public Utilities Commission issued a decision yesterday that approved First Energy’s “Smart Grid Modernization Initiative”, but deferred from approving cost recovery until the PUC rules on a separate proceeding.

Reportedly, it could take months before the PUC renders a decision on cost recovery, and First Energy has reportedly halted its deployment temporarily, until the matter of cost recovery is resolved. The issue could also threaten $36 million in DOE smart grid grants, which First Energy just signed onto at the beginning of June. The Ohio PUC decision comes a week after the Maryland PSC issued a decision rejecting Baltimore Gas & Electric’s smart grid deployment plan.

In a decision that runs contrary to industry expectations, the FCC today granted in part and denied in part a petition filed by the National Public Safety Telecommunications Council (NPSTC) requesting a stay of the January 1, 2011 interim deadlines associated with the narrowbanding of private land mobile radio (PLMR) licensees in the 150-174 MHz and 421-512 MHz bands. No new 25 kHz systems that provide only one voice channel, or major modifications to such systems, will be permitted after 2011. Read more »

The Oklahoma Corporation Commission has authorized Oklahoma Gas and Electric Co. to expand its smart grid program statewide by investing up to $366 million during the next three years, $127 million of which will be paid from federal stimulus funding. Company officials said they expect to save about $22 million in operational costs through the program, a savings that will be returned to consumers.

This smart-grid project approval is a good sign following decisions by MD and OH PUCs, which had declined or deferred from providing cost recovery for smart grid deployments by Baltimore Gas & Electric and First Energy, respectively.

Citing unnamed government and industry sources, the Wall Street Journal reported that the US Department of Defense's National Security Agency (NSA) is embarking on a secret domestic surveillance project called "Perfect Citizen", with the intention of monitoring and protecting important national infrastructure such as power grids and transport systems. Read more »

IEEE is holding an 802 Plenary meeting this week in San Diego. The IEEE 802 LAN/MAN Standards Committee develops Local Area Network standards and Metropolitan Area Network standards. At this meeting, the IEEE802.11 WiFi standards group submitted a Project Authorization Request(PAR) to reband the popular 802.11 WiFi standard to license exempt bands below 1 GHz, with the exception of the TV white spaces band. Currently, 802.11 only operates at 2.4 and 5 GHz. The proposal was not well received by the IEEE802.15.4g group currently developing smart utility network (SUN) standards for these bands, specifically 902 - 928 MHz. Read more »

Today, UTC filed comments in response to the Department of Energy’s request for information on the communications needs of utilities and other critical infrastructure industries (CII) for smart grid and other CII communications. In its comments, UTC concluded that utilities and other CII would need access to 30 MHz of spectrum in a frequency range below 2 GHz to meet their current and future communications needs. These conclusions were based upon data from utilities collected by UTC in response to the RFI. UTC explained that this spectrum would accelerate the deployment of smart grid and other CII communications by enabling utilities to deploy wireless systems that are a key technology option, particularly for their Tier 2 distribution and Tier 3 access layers of their communications networks. UTC further explained that commercial telecommunications service providers would be able to support some applications, but that the majority of utilities would rely on their own private internal communications systems to support mission-critical applications, such as teleprotection systems. Finally, UTC emphasized that the need for access to spectrum is urgent, now that utilities are in the process of deploying smart grid and otherwise upgrading their communications in order to meet increasing demand and promote infrastructure security. For further information, contact the UTC Legal/Regulatory Department.

Balancing benefits of consumer access to their own consumption data with the costs anticipated by the various approaches was stressed by UTC comments filed in DOE’s request for information on data access, third party use, and privacy. UTC noted that the innovative deployment by energy utilities of smart meters and smart control systems will create a smart energy grid that will unlock the value of what has been called the Energy Information Economy. Smart energy grids will create an environment in which consumers will have greater abilities to manage their own energy usage and utilities will have new tools to affect grid-wide energy efficiencies never before possible. The key to all this is data. How to provide secure access to it for customers and their agents is the crux of this RFI’s questions and the focus of UTC’s responses. Read more »

Utilities seeking to deploy next generation smart grid products that uses FCC-licensed spectrum, and open, standard-based technologies, have few options available to them. An IEEE working group developing the smart utility network (SUN) standard titled 802.15.4g is considering the addition of licensed channels to their draft document. But the effort is getting opposition from vendors that feel these narrow band channels cannot meet data throughput requirements being developed by NIST and other agencies. The 802.15.4g working group is wading through thousands of comments on the standard seeking to resolve conflicts between vendors that seek to ensure their products meet the standard while excluding others. Read more »

Public comments filed with the Department of Energy(DOE) in response to their two Requests for Information (RFI) that were issued in May 2010 are available at http://gc.energy.gov/1592.htm. UTC was one of the groups that filed comments in response the two RFIs. You can find these links and more information at www.utc.org/doe. Read more »

Version 1 of the NIST Cybersecurity Requirements for the Smart Grid was released by the standard organization this week. While the document is still listed as a draft, it represents on the most comprehensive analysis of smart grid security available today. The document is available for download here:

  Read more »