Ray Bell, the entrepreneur, former Cisco networking executive and founder of San Francisco smart meter software company Grid Net is clearly betting on WiMax as the best wireless answer to building out the smart grid.
The bottomline is to replace a passive, analog electricity delivery system with one that is two-way and aware of what is happening to it at any moment. In other words, a smart grid. There are 1.4 billion of these meters in the world but many are the electromechanical type that hasn’t changed since 1888. Bell made a better one, able to monitor energy usage remotely and communicate wirelessly with both the utility and the end user and he has some important backers involved. General Electric is manufacturing the devices and selling them to utilities. American Electric Power, which has five million customers in 11 states, and EnergyAustralia, a large utility based in Sydney, have already agreed to test GE/Grid Net’s smart meter.
But Bell system has another much more interesting feature to me, his smart meters communicate using WiMax. Intel has invested (along with GE) in Bell’s startup and builds WiMax chip sets. In other terms, GE makes the smart meter, and Intel the WiMAX chip. The main advantage of focusing solely on WiMax is that the technology has already proven its reliability and has drawn the support of a many industry leaders : Sprint and Clearwire are building out a nationwide WiMAX network, Google have invested, and Motorola and Samsung have bet heavily on the technology too.
Some questions remain, and Bell’s business perspectives are obviously reliant on the efforts of the WiMax industry. On the other hand, Clearwire would see Bell’s venture succeed as a great opportunity too. An electric meter with WiMax built in could be just the thing to bring Clearwire’s wireless Internet into homes, if not through the back door then perhaps through the basement.
The Obama administration is calling for the installation of an additional 40 million smart meter. If just a small percent of those meters use Grid Net’s software, it’ll be a success for both Grid Net and WiMax Technology.… Read the rest
