What is smart energy?

Scarce energy resources are driving lower powered appliances, particularly in the home. As a result, equipment manufacturers are looking at ways of saving energy for everyday appliances. However in order for this to universally take off, standards have to be adopted… Enter Smart Energy.

The Smart Energy standard allows for manufacturers to adopt a common platform for their devices to communicate with each other. The standard accommodates the various requirements of product manufacturers, utilities, governments and regulatory bodies to plan to meet the future requirements of energy and water requirements.

ZigBee modules are low powered, very small radio transceivers. These operate on the globally, licence exempt 2.4GHz frequency and allow for small amounts of data known as packets to be transmitted or received at distances of up to 1 Kilometre. These radio transceiver modules are ideally suited to Smart Energy devices as they can be easily configured into a local network of up to 400 nodes per network without interference to each other. They are low powered, efficient at sending small amounts of data (such as a temperature or power reading) and low cost.

Therefore, ZigBee Wireless products with the Smart Energy profile on board meet a common criteria to ensure they can operate with other parties products with a ZigBee Smart Energy profile regardless of manufacturer. This allows for utilities and consumers to purchase with confidence.

Many of the worlds leading utilities and manufactures have adopted ZigBee Smart Energy to prepare for regulatory requirements (governments too have seen and are reacting to the drive to control the use of energy) and to ensure their products are ready to network with other ZigBee Smart Energy devices when another device comes into or added to the network.

Several examples of this have been aimed at one of the market drivers - Smart Metering. Not surprisingly, there is much interest in the utility sector because of the millions of users with meters. The new opportunities present equipment suppliers with a huge Total Available Market or TAM. It is this which is driving the investment into Research and Development of better solutions which are lower powered and lower cost.

Metering support covers electricity, water and gas users. In addition to the standard dial information present on todays meters, historical information and status information including tampering is also supported on the Smart Energy profiles. Multiple units of measurement are available to address individual country requirements as are different types of information including load profile, power used. Demand at various pricing tiers is also provided.

The latter not only help the utility provider plan for user demand, giving the ability to individually target specific groups of devices including air conditioning or heating units, lighting or generation systems. This can also allow for better planning of start and end times to minimise or avoid spikes on the networks.

As ZigBee operates on the globally licence free 2.4GHz band, one common type of product will cover requirements worldwide. ZigBee allows for up to 400 devices to be networked via nodes at ranges of up to 1 KM. The range of ZigBee means that it has a very low data rate, so only small amounts of data are suitable for transmission or reception.

This allows for ZigBee Smart Energy devices to be connected up wirelessly over a much longer range than traditional, cabled solutions. Therefore in addition to devices integrated in a standalone meter or automatic meter reading gateway, they can appear in In home displays, white goods fitted with smart appliances in the plug. Outdoor equipment such as lights and pool pumps can also be addressed.

To address security concerns over tapping into a wireless network, enhanced data encryption is used which allows support either consumer only, utility only or shared networks. In a similar way as WiFi connectivity can be interfaced to, automatic, secured network registration can be adopted using either pre installed or publicly available keys.

Wireless technology continues to move at a fast moving pace as it provides a genuinely useful tool in making our lives easier and cheaper. Many examples are testament to this, including Bluetooth, WiFi, GSM and GPS. ZigBee is a good bet to be next.