Saturday, July 18, 2009
News about Smart Grids and Smart Kitchens
Duke Energy has established a Smart Grid in one of the neighborhoods in Charlotte, N.C. So what exactly does a Smart Grid look like? Take a look at the following slideshow:
So what exactly is a Smart Grid? It is a system to support "smarter" ways to manage and use energy, and utilizes intelligent sensors along power lines, communication nodes on utility poles, and Smart Meters at customers' homes. Duke Power has provided customers with home management systems to provide them with "timely energy usage information".
Here's the video:
Smart Grid: Virtual Power Plant
You can have a Smart Grid Kitchen along with your Smart Grid energy service, at least sometime in the near future. The pictures below are from CNET News:
It is networked via WiMax:
It comes with a lot of "stuff", hopefully it can be tastefully hidden or decorated:
I don't see a single woman in the GE Smart Grid Kitchen pictures.
Related:
GE SmartGrid Website
GE appliances to connect to smart grid via Tendril
Martin LaMonica, CNET News, 7/8/09
"The integration will allow consumers to control their appliances from different points, such a Web browser, iPhone, or in-home display."
Cisco to Use Its Own Home Energy Gear for Duke Smart Grid Rollout
Katie Fehrenbacher, Earth2tech 6/11/09
"The networking giant unveiled a deal this week that will see it lead a $1 billion smart grid infrastructure buildout for Duke Energy and Cisco tells us that for the consumer portion, it will largely be deploying its own smart energy home hardware, which includes Linksys products and “homeplug” devices that transfer data via power lines."
Privacy Challenges Could Stall Smart Grid
Susan L. Lyon, MatteRNetwork 6/1/09
Friday, July 17, 2009
LTE vs WiMax: Trying my best to understand emerging technologies....
There have been debates about technology for a long time. I recently came across Mike Demler's blog, The World is Analog. Demler attended the IEEE Mobile WiMax Symposium and shared what he learned on his post, "IEEE Mobile WiMax Symposium, Part I". In this post, Demler points out that the concept of the "internet of things" was a reoccuring theme during the symposium, and mentioned that there are many issues related to the future growth of the mobile internet.
Demler makes some good points. Capped data plans didn't work very well during the '90's. Demler gives the example of the old AOL dial-up plans, where people paid by the minute, often running up huge bills in AOL chat rooms. 3G networks lack the capacity to keep up with the growing demand for higher-bandwidth communication. At this time, there is no certain solution, as some predict that WiMax is the wave of the future, and others feel that LTE will be here to stay.
So what is LTE?
A quick look at a Wikipedia entry on the subject doesn't do a very good job of explaining things clearly. LTE stands for Long Term Evolution, but what is that, really? It you want to know more about the alphabet soup related to LTE, click on the following links: FDD (Frequency Division Duplexing), TDD (Time Division Duplex), GSM, cdmaOne, W-CDMA (UMTS), 3GPP, PU2RC, MU-MIMO, HSDPA, Single Carrier Frequency Division Multiple Access (SC-FDMA), QPSK, 16QAM, 64QAM, MIMO
The Wikipedia entry about LTE comes with the following warning:This article is written like an advertisement. Please help rewrite this article from a neutral point of view. For blatantadvertising that would require a fundamental rewrite to become encyclopedic, use {{db-spam}} to mark for speedy deletion. (April 2009)
What is WiMax?
You can find out more via Wikipedia.
 | This article contains too much jargon and may need simplification or further explanation. Please discuss this issue on the talk page, and/or remove or explain jargon terms used in the article. Editing help is available. (June 2009) |
LTE vs WiMAX: The 4G Wireless War
Afzal Bajwa, Technologizer (5/20/09)
10 Things You Need to Know About LTE
Stacey Higginbotham, GigaOM, (2/26/09)
Note:
