UTC believes that the Department of Energy (DOE) Request for Information (RFI) for its study of the communications needs of utilities will be published in the Federal Register tomorrow.

Based on UTC’s understanding of the RFI, the DOE wants utilities to quantify their communications requirements to the extent possible. The DOE wants information on the current and future communications needs of utilities, including for smart grid. It also wants to know the basic requirements, such as coverage, latency, throughput, for smart grid and electric utility communications in general. It also wants to know about other factors, such as terrain, foliage, customer density and size of service territory, to consider. Using these requirements and factors, it asks for use cases and technology options for smart grid and other utility communications; and it seeks recommendations for solutions to meet these use cases. Finally, the DOE asks various questions about the use of commercial networks, including improvements that would be necessary to meet utilities’ requirements; and it asks utilities to predict how they will meet their future communications requirements.

The comment cycle will be short (60 days for initial comments and 75 days for reply comments). UTC will provide more details on the UTC Insight, as they become available. Stay tuned!