SMART Grid Power Jobs Cloud Computing & Intelligent Gateways

2009-12-17T07:20:00.000-08:00

By James Rickman, SVS

In 2009, over $1.3 billion was invested in the SMART Grid sector power management and energy efficiency involving cloud computing solutions. The information technology and devices used include desktop PCs, enterprise networking, and electric vehicle charging meters, mobile wireless and hard wired telecommunications innovations making up the end-to-end SMART Grid information technologies, power and energy network solutions underway that will generate an estimated 280,000 new high wage jobs by 2016.

The cost to build the U.S. SMART Grid network totals $165 billion over the next decade, installing an estimated 60 million SMART Grid meters by 2015. This commitment is critical for SMART Grid investment to develop the infrastructure, renewable energy and technologies necessary for proper power delivery, scaling, domestic job creation and environmental conservation. Much of the initial funds necessary for development efforts will come from the Department of Energy (DOE) grants and stimulus ($10 billion or more) money.

Key companies leading the U.S. SMART Grid industry include ABB, Aclara Software, AT&T, CISCO, Comverge, Control4, Current Group, Echelon, Eka Systems, Elster, Ember, eMeter, EnerNoc, GainSpain, General Electric, Google, Greenbox, GridNet, GridPoint, IBM, Itron, Landis+Gyr, Microsoft, Onzo, Oracle, OSlsoft, SEL, Sensus, Silver, SpringNetwork, SmartSynch, Tendril, Trilliant, and Ventryx, among others.

For example, primary systems monitor more than 1,100 units in GE Energy’s wind power turbine fleet (PRC) in Atlanta, Georgia and provide customers with real-time data on impending failures and performance diagnostics. The legacy system utilized an Oracle based relational database architecture that consumed more than 50 terabytes of storage across four database instances.

Over time, the legacy solution has become costly to maintain and support and was not sufficiently extensible to sustain future growth. Intelligent platforms deliver a solution that is flexible and scalable while lowering ongoing maintenance costs through simplified IT infrastructure and reduced storage demands. The goal is to improve availability and access to fleet data while leveraging diagnostic workflow capabilities will drive improved productivity of subject matter experts.

The new SMART systems will enhance the focus on delivering customer value, applying advanced Monitoring and Diagnostics solutions, while proactively managing the performance and reliability of turbines and other assets.

Next generation software products are achieving best in class performance for data acquisition and storage designed to handle time sequence data at speeds significantly faster than traditional relational databases algorithms that simply aren’t available in relational models, while also supporting a range of data compression. The result is better performance with lower disk utilization without any loss of data resolution.

Such architecture sets the standard inside for remote monitoring and diagnostics platforms and the power management stands as a shining example of how companies are leveraging domain expertise into Knowledge Service (SaaS) offerings. The solution allows SMART Grid companies to further expand its robust state-of-the art services allowing customers to tap into their deep domain expertise in an efficient and effective way.

Also key to these solutions is the breakthrough work process management backbone for application development using highly scalable software solution due to efficient storage models. Now a client/server based visualization and control solution that helps clients visualize their operations, perform supervisory automation and deliver reliable information to higher-level analytic applications resulting in faster responsiveness, reduced costs and increased profitability.

Today’s, SMART Grid power technologies has proven its seamless integrated capability to collect, organize, analyze, and drive work processes around massive volumes of real-time data to meet the cost control needs of competitive global economics in the future. Most importantly the power management related sectors will generate an estimated 280,000 of high paying jobs for Americans.

About Author
Mr. Rickman is a respected analyst, innovative expert in business content and web development services with over 30-years experience, published worldwide. He is also the author of several books including Eight Billion People. Mr. Rickman holds advanced business and technical degrees from Boston University. For more information visit : http://www.sustainablevirtualbiz.com/ or call (503) 621-4953.