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AT&T, Microsoft further grid plans

Tony Chan | June 27, 2009 | 0 Comments

Technology majors, AT&T and Microsoft, further their plans into the smart grid space last week with separate announcements on the emergence of M2M sensors and communications.

AT&T announced that it has entered into an agreement with Cooper Power Systems to jointly market smart grid sensor devices to electricity utilities. The two companies will bring to market Cooper Power Systems solutions that monitor grid faults – called OutageAdvisor – and equipment supplying voltages to consumers – called VARAdvisor. The two systems will leverage AT&T wireless network, including dedicated M2M pricing plans, to communicate data back to the utility companies.

“AT&T continues to focus its efforts in building out a robust set of smart grid capabilities for the global utility industry. By offering Cooper Power Systems’ smart grid sensors, we can now provide businesses the ability to monitor their distribution network in real-time,” said Chris Hill, vice president, mobility product management, AT&T Business Solutions. “AT&T’s suite of M2M pricing plans designed specifically for the advanced meter infrastructure (AMI) market, nationwide coverage, and dedicated M2M platform makes these wireless grid monitoring solutions an economical, secure, and rapidly deployable choice for utilities.”

Meanwhile, Microsoft announced that it is working with several utility companies in the Seattle area to advance the adoption of its Hohm platform – an online resource similar to Google’s PowerMeter currently in Beta.

According to this indepth article on Ars Technica, Microsoft’s Hohm platform will adopt a slightly different tactic than Google’s PowerMeter, which aims to be integrated with a power utility’s infrastructure to provide actual data for consumers. Instead Hohm will not only offer up data from the utility company, but will also work via consumer input.

With Hohm, users can actually submit data directly into the service and presumably set up their own account even if their utility is not offering an integrated Hohm service. According to the report, the service hopes to leverage a growing number of hardware and appliance makers’ attempts to integrate reporting capabilities into their products. In this way, the consumer can set the appliance to report directly to Hohm, bypassing the utility.

All that data will be stored and accessible to users from Microsoft’s cloud platform, Windows Azure. Microsoft also aims to put in interactivity (Web 2.0) into Hohm, which will offer up energy saving advice, as well as enable discussions among its users on energy saving tips, etc.

Lastly, the Hohm platform will use some technology licensed from the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory that models energy use, as well as Microsoft’s Bing search technology.

This is not the first time that Microsoft has entered the home energy use segment. In March last year, it joined up with Germany utility Yellow Strom to develop an online energy meter for consumers.

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