ITRON INC NPV : Itron sélectionne la solution sur une puce unique d'Accent pour ses applications de comptage intelligent

Accent S.p.A., l'un des premiers fournisseurs « fabless » (non fabricants) de solutions hautement personnalisées de systèmes sur une puce (SoC) à base de plates-formes, et Itron (Nasdaq : ITRI), leader sur le marché des technologies de comptage avancé, ont annoncé aujourd'hui la sélection par Itron d'une puce récemment développée par Accent pour sa ligne de compteurs intelligents OpenWay® CENTRON®. Le nouveau modèle intégrera la toute dernière technologie de processeur ARM, une solution sans fil complète ZigBee (RF, bande de base et pile de protocoles), ainsi qu'un pilote de LCD et une mémoire flash embarquée sur une puce pour offrir les meilleures performances, une nomenclature très réduite et un coût de système minimisé.

Cette puissante capacité de traitement alliée à des périphériques analogiques, numériques et RF en large bande crée une solution de traitement unique et centrale pour la communication, le contrôle et l'exécution des logiciels d'application utilisateurs. Cette solution élimine ainsi le besoin de multiples processeurs tout en réduisant nettement la consommation électrique. Pour répondre aux besoins de traitement du secteur des infrastructures de comptage avancées (Advanced Metering Infrastructure - AMI), cette offre de produit utilisera le processeur Cortex-M3 CPU d'ARM. Le nouveau composant intégrera également la solution complète ZigBee PRO composée d'un émetteur-récepteur RF IEEE 802.15.4, d'un PHY, d'un MAC et d'une pile de protocoles de communication formant le profil d'énergie intelligente (Smart Energy) sur lequel reposent les applications AMI. ZigBee PRO propose aux services publics une norme ouverte globale pour la mise en place de réseaux nationaux sécurisés, simples d'emploi et offrant aux usagers le choix de produits interopérables afin de gérer avec précision leur consommation d'énergie. Le circuit intégré incorporera également une mémoire flash embarquée afin de disposer d'une solution sur une puce offrant un niveau d'intégration sans précédent. Accent à travaillé sur les caractéristiques des produits et systèmes Itron pour réaliser la conception de ce circuit intégré, et fournira tout le logiciel nécessaire jusqu'à la couche des applications utilisateur. Le semi-conducteur sera disponible au quatrième trimestre 2009 et Itron projette de démarrer le déploiement en masse de la puce d'Accent à partir de 2010.

« En cherchant à améliorer les capacités de fonctionnement de nos produits de la prochaine génération, nous avons commencé par envisager toutes sortes de solutions standard provenant de divers fournisseurs de semi-conducteurs », a relaté Simon Pontin, vice-président d'AMI Development. « Accent nous a permis de disposer d'une solution de niveau système unique en son genre, dans laquelle nous avons pu intégrer quatre circuits intégrés dans un même système sur une puce, soit un niveau d'intégration supérieur, tout en améliorant le rendement du système. Accent a des capacités et des antécédents incontestés dans la fourniture de solutions sur une puce complètes et reposant sur un ensemble de technologies complexe tels des RFCMOS, des circuits mixtes et des processeurs embarqués, tout en respectant des délais de mise sur le marché extrêmement courts. En s'appuyant sur Accent pour produire son circuit intégré, Itron reste centré sur sa principale compétence qui est de fournir des solutions de comptage avancées et des logiciels utilitaires pour les secteurs de l'énergie et de l'eau. »

« Nous sommes heureux de travailler avec un leader mondial tel Itron sur un composant crucial de leurs lignes de produits OpenWay CENTRON », a déclaré Federico Arcelli, PDG d'Accent. « Cet engagement stratégique démontre également l'intérêt d'Accent en ce qu'il propose des solutions hautement optimisées qui peuvent répondre aux besoins des équipementiers et des fabricants OEM. »

À propos d'Accent

Fondée en 1993, Accent est l'un des premiers fournisseurs « fabless » (non fabricants) d'ASIC personnalisés et de services clés en mains destinés à la création de solutions à semi-conducteurs sur une puce (SoC) de pointe. Son expérience unique de la conception et son catalogue de blocs d'IP de circuits mixtes et RF, ainsi que ses capacités inégalées d'intégration de niveau système, permettent aux fabricants OEM, « fabless » et IDM de bénéficier de solutions sur une puce personnalisées et économiques. Accent s'est constitué un palmarès, au fil des années, de plus de 300 projets de circuits intégrés parvenus à bon terme, de plus de 98 % de semi-conducteurs produits du premier coup, et de dizaines de millions d'unités livrées par Accent sur le marché. Pour de plus amples informations, consultez le site : www.accent-soc.com.

À propos d'Itron

Itron, Inc. est un leader sur le marché des technologies de comptage avancé destinées aux secteurs de l'énergie et de l'eau. C'est le premier fournisseur mondial de solutions de comptage intelligent, de collecte de données et de solutions de logiciels pour les services publics, avec près de 8 000 entreprises des services publics, dans le monde entier, qui exploitent sa technologie pour optimiser la distribution et la consommation d'énergie et d'eau. Ses produits sont des compteurs d'électricité, de gaz, d'eau et des sondes de température, ainsi que des systèmes de collecte de données et de communications couvrant les applications de lecture automatique des compteurs (Automated Meter Reading) et d'infrastructure de comptage avancé (Advanced Metering Infrastructure - AMI) ; les applications de gestion des données des compteurs et les applications logicielles associées ; ainsi que des services de gestion de projets, d'installation et de conseil. Pour de plus amples informations, conseillez le site :www.itron.com.

Photos/Galerie multimédia disponibles: http://www.businesswire.com/cgi-bin/mmg.cgi?eid=6071284&lang=fr

Accent
Tim Hurd, +1 978-793-2857
Accent North America, Inc.
Directeur des ventes
tim.hurd@accent-soc.com
ou
Itron
Kim Papich, +1 509-891-3590
Itron Communications et Marketing
kim.papich@itron.com

© Business Wire 2009

Le texte du communiqué issu d'une traduction ne doit d'aucune manière être considéré comme officiel. La seule version du communiqué qui fasse foi est celle du communiqué dans sa langue d'origine. La traduction devra toujours être confrontée au texte source, qui fera jurisprudence.

http://www.zonebourse.com/ITRON-INC-NPV-9753/actualite/ITRON-INC-NPV-Itron-selectionne-la-solution-sur-une-puce-unique-d-Accent-pour-ses-applications-de-co-13261906/

Release 1.0 of American Smart Grid Interoperability Standards Project

Le National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) americain vient de rendre publiques ses propositions pour la standardisation des systèmes intelligents de distribution d'électricité.
Download

----------------------
"Smart Grid" : l'Europe et les États-Unis accélèrent la standardisation

L'Europe souhaite qu'avant 2020, 80% de la population de l'Union soit équipée de systèmes intelligents pour la distribution de l'électricité. Le National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) américain vient pour sa part de rendre publiques ses propositions pour la standardisation des systèmes.

L'objectif des « Smart Grid » sera d'utiliser des réseaux de capteurs pour contrôler, en temps réel, la distribution d'électricité en permettant une circulation des flux d'information et d'électricité bidirectionnelle entre les sources et les consommateurs. Un système sur lequel le gouvernement américain compte pour soutenir sa quête d'indépendance énergétique ainsi que le dynamisme de son économie et du marché du travail. Reste à imposer des standards, « afin d'assurer l'interopérabilité et la sécurité des équipements produits » et de permettre l'évolution des techniques de production d'énergie qu'elle soient d'origine éolienne, géothermique, solaire...

Les manquements actuels en matière de standards détaillés par le rapport « NIST Framework and Roadmap for Smart Grid Interoperability Standards, Release 1.0 » sont regroupés en huit domaines : réponse à la demande et efficacité énergétique, évaluation de l'état du réseau, stockage de l'électricité, transport de l'électricité, infrastructure avancée de mesure de la consommation, gestion du réseau de distribution, cybersécurité et communications sur le réseau. L'assurance de la cybersécurité des « Smart Grid » est également une priorité.Ce marché de la « responsabilisation » des consommateurs pourraient rapidement atteindre près de 100 milliards de dollars.

Source:
http://www.nist.gov/smartgrid/
http://www.neteco.com/303678-smart-grid-tats-unis-accelerent-la-standardisa.html?xtor=EPR-1

First deal outside the United States with two Australian utilities

Deux utilities australiens vont installer 1 million de compteurs intelligents d'ici 2013. Les différents marchés internationaux offrent des défis différents pour le déploiement de compteurs intelligents. Une petite revue des acteurs et des techno par région. Selon cet article EDF deployerai une solution CPL propriétaire.

15/04/2009

The smart meter networking and communications provider lands its first deal outside the United States with two Australian utilities planning to install 1 million smart meters by 2013. Different international markets offer different challenges for smart meter deployments.

Silver Spring Networks has landed its first contract outside the United States – a deal to enable an eventual 1 million smart meters in Australia with its networking technology.

The Redwood City, Calif.-based startup announced the deal with Australian utilities Jemena Electricity Networks and United Energy Distribution on Wednesday. The utilities hope to have 1 million Silver Spring-enabled smart meters from U.K.-based meter maker PRI installed by 2013.

The news adds an international contract to the many Silver Spring has landed with U.S. utilities – Pacific Gas & Electric Co., Florida Power & Light and American Electric Power among them – to enable two-way communication between utilities and customers, thus making the meters "smart."

It's a booming business in the United States, which has an estimated 140 million traditional power meters that could be upgraded, though so far the number of smart meters installed is in the low millions, according to recent estimates (see Smart Meter Installations Grow Nearly Fivefold). Canada has another estimated 10 million endpoints.

But North America is far from the only market. In fact, Europe likely holds the current lead, with at least 27 million smart meters installed by Italian utility Enel and millions more in other nations, according to a March report from ABI Research (see Notes From a National Smart Grid Experiment).

Australia, with a population of about 21 million and an estimated 14 million "end-points," or homes and businesses served by power meters, isn't such a large market by comparison, noted Ben Schuman, an analyst with Pacific Crest Securities.

Still, landing the contract "validates that their solution can be applied to markets outside North America, which opens up a huge incremental opportunity for them," he said.

Specifically, he noted that the Australian deal indicates that the nation is a good candidate for Silver Spring's radio frequency mesh technology.

Silver Spring equips meters with radios that mesh together in a 900-megahertz frequency range and send data to central collectors for "backhaul" over utility wide-area networks -- a typical means of smart meter communications in the United States (see Smart Grid: A Matter of Standards).

In contrast, European utilities have mostly opted for power-line carrier technologies that send data over existing power lines, Schuman said. Italy's Enel, which uses technology from Echelon Corp., is one example, he said. French utility EDF plans to use its own power-line carrier technology to link an eventual 35 million endpoints in a massive smart meter project, he said.

Power-line carrier is more cost-effective in Europe because utilities there tend to serve more homes per transformer than in the United States, he said. Because those transformers interfere with power-line carrier signals, they must be bypassed with repeater devices, at costs that tend to be too high in U.S. markets, he said (see Will Smart Grid See a Push for Power-Line Networking?).

Silver Spring's Australian presence could grow, said Eric Dresselhuys, vice president of markets. The Australian state of Victoria, which the utilities serve, has mandated that 2.5 million smart meters be installed within its borders, he said.

"There is now a national plan for smart meters in Australia," he added. "We suspect that all of the large utilities throughout the country are going to work to be in compliance with those requirements."

Other Australian utilities are trying different smart meter technologies. San Francisco-based Grid Net, which has developed technology for installing WiMax Internet routers in smart meters from partner General Electric, is testing them with SP AusNet and Energy Australia (see GE Offers WiMax Smart Meter Solution).

The utilities are also considering power-line carrier and cellular networks for their smart meter deployments, according to ZDNet Australia.

Silver Spring has raised about $160 million since 2007, including $90 million since October (see Silver Spring Grabs $75M and Green Light posts here and here).

The company expects to see about 2 million meters with its technology deployed by the end of 2009 (see Green Light post). PG&E, its biggest customer, had installed about 150,000 Silver Spring-enabled electric smart meters as of February, and plans to have 5.3 million electric meters installed by 2011, most of them using Silver Spring technology.

As for PRI, the U.K.-based smart meter maker is involved in projects in Europe, the Middle East and New Zealand as well as Australia, and also makes home energy monitoring devices.

http://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/silver-spring-heads-down-under-6051.html

Tropos: WiFi for the Smart Grid #techno #wifi #us

Les fournisseurs wifi des municipalités deployent des projets de smart Grid qui assure la liaison entre des quartiers de compteurs intelligents et le reseau des utilities

14/04/2009

The long-time municipal WiFi provider is making a push into networking utility smart grid projects, providing the link between neighborhood smart meter networks and utility "backhaul" networks.

A city that has installed its own WiFi network might as well let its municipal utility use it. That's the logic behind Tropos Networks‘ growth into the smart grid business.

The Sunnyvale, Calif.-based municipal WiFi networking startup has seen a number utilities use the networks it has installed over the years, including as a way to link the devices that aggregate data from thousands of two-way communicating "smart meters" with the utilities' back-office systems.

Given that those smart meters are now being installed in the millions, that's a growth business. That's where Tropos' GridCom architecture – the name Tropos has given for its utility-specific offering – comes in.

But while GridCom was officially unveiled Tuesday, working with utilities is something Tropos has been doing for quite awhile, said Rob Pilgrim, vice president of business and corporate development.

"We've seen it become a significant percentage of our business, and it's a huge proportion of our pipeline," he said. Tropos now has about a dozen utilities using its WiFi networks for so-called smart meter aggregation, he said.

While WiFi is seen as too expensive and power-hungry to serve as a cost-effective communications technology for individual meters, it does make sense as an aggregation network in denser, more urban areas, said Ben Schuman, an analyst with Pacific Crest Securities.

Denise Barton, Tropos' marketing director, said the company has partnerships with major smart meter makers Itron, Elster and Echelon, and is serving about 300,000 meters today, a number that's expected to climb to 1 million by year's end, said

The few utilities Tropos has named as customers are municipal utilities, including Anderson (Ind.) Municipal Light and Power, Lafayette (La.) Utilities System and Burbank (Calif.) Water and Power (see Reading Electric Meters Wirelessly).

But at least two of its utility customers are outside the United States, and several are larger investor-owned utilities, some with plans to install millions of meters, Pilgrim said.

He wouldn't name those utilities, but it's possible that Duke Energy may be one.

David Mohler, Duke's chief technology officer, has told Greentech Media that Duke is planning to include WiFi in its suite of technologies to link smart meters with the utility, though he wouldn't say which company was providing the WiFi service.

Of course, Duke and other utilities are also looking at a host of other communications technologies to bridge the gap between smart meter aggregators and utility "backhaul" networks.

Take cellular networks. KORE Telematics uses AT&T's wireless network to connect the 800,000 smart meters being installed by utility Arizona Public Service to the utility's "backhaul" system. Verizon is working with Duke on a similar project, and has been working with Itron for some time to fill that need (see Green Light post).

And AT&T is working with smart meter networking company SmartSynch to bring communications directly to smart meters (see Your Electrical Meter Becomes a Cell Phone).

Then there's WiMax, the powerful, long-range wireless technology that is being deployed by a Sprint-Clearwire partnership aimed at building a nationwide network.

While no utilities have opted to use that network, General Electric is deploying its own WiMax-based aggregator-to-utility backhaul network for CenterPoint Energy in Texas (see GE Offers WiMax Smart Meter Solution).

Grid Net, a San Francisco startup that makes WiMax Internet routers for smart meters made by GE, is hoping to see its system taken up by utilities including SP AusNet and Energy Australia in Australia and American Electric Power (AEP) and Consumers Energy in the United States, a spokeswoman said last month.

Broadband over powerline - a technology for carrying data over transmission lines - is also being deployed as a way to carry meter data back to utilities (see Broadband Over Powerline Brings Smart Grid to Rural Areas).

And Hughes Network Systems is now offering its combination satellite and land-based communications network to utilities, though it isn't concentrating on linking smart meters (see Hughes Offers Utility Communications).

Of course, it's possible that other companies in the municipal WiFi field may see the same utility opportunities that Tropos is pursuing - and Cisco Systems has been building municipal WiFi networks since 2005.

Cisco has already announced plans to incorporate energy management features into WiFi access points and other devices within buildings, and could see outdoor WiFi networks as another opportunity (see Cisco Jumps Into Energy Management for Computers, Buildings).

In fact, in 2006 Cisco was picked by Cellnet Technology (now part of smart meter maker Landis+Gyr) to provide WiFi mesh technology for a Madison, Wisc. project called Mad City Broadband that included wireless meter reading.

While Schuman said he wasn't aware of a big push into utility networking by other municipal WiFi developers, including Cisco, the networking giant "can always wait and see where markets develop, and then buy in later."

Tropos' Pilgrim conceded that Cisco could move aggressively into the field, but said he believed Tropos has developed technology that's better suited for outdoor applications.

Tropos has received investments from Benchmark Capital, Boston Millennia Partners, Integral Capital Partners, the Intel Communications Fund, Duff Ackerman & Goodrich, Hanna Ventures, Siemens Venture Capital, Voyager Capital and WK Technology Fund.

While Tropos would not say how much total investment it has received, news sources have stated that Tropos had received $9.3 million as of June 2003, and $28.5 million as of September 2005.

http://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/tropos-wifi-for-the-smart-grid-6037.html

AT&T partners with SmartSynch for wirless smart grid IP #market #us

AT&T annonce son partenariat avec le fabricant de compteur intelligent SmartSynch pour developper un reseau sans fil avec des compteurs electriques IP.

By Camille Ricketts | March 17th, 2009

AT&T announced today that it will open its wireless network to smart meter maker SmartSynch, allowing electric utilities to install its IP-based smart grid technology in even more residential areas. Every SmartSynch SmartMeter will now send energy use information to utilities and homeowners over the expansive AT&T network, saving millions of dollars in network infrastructure, expansion and maintenance costs.

Now any consumer with AT&T service will be able to understand their energy consumption in economic terms, encouraging them to cut down on unnecessary use, especially during peak periods. There are several companies and tools that provide the same information — Tendril, Greenbox and soon Google PowerMeter, among them — but AT&T claims its new system will increase the speed and efficiency of communication between meters, homeowners and utilities.

“This is the first announcement of a major network provider really getting into the smart grid business, and AT&T is the largest wireless provider in the country,” says SmartSynch chief executive Stephen Johnston. “Hopefully this will encourage other businesses in the IP-based communication space like Motorola, Qualcomm and others to get involved.” He cited mobile phone applications that allow users to remotely monitor and adjust home energy consumption as a key area for expansion.

The wireless giant says it chose to work with SmartSynch because it’s the only company that offers end-to-end smart grid intelligence on any device (cell phones, computers, etc.). Plus, it already works with the decade-old smart grid company to connect meters in commercial and industrial settings with more than 100 different utilities. This new move is essentially a big bet that the residential smart meter business will take off in the next several years — but it’s also a fairly safe one, considering the billions of dollars the recent economic stimulus plan has earmarked for smart grid expansion. President Obama himself has urged the installation of at least 40 million smart meters in homes across the country.

AT&T has had its hat in the smart grid ring for a while but has more plans in store. On top of these efforts, it says it has also cemented useful relationships with U.S. utilities by providing them with mobile applications that track fieldworkers, detect power outages and remotely monitor electrical systems. These connections could come in handy as it deepens its involvement in the smart grid’s rapid evolution.

SmartSynch raised $25 million last year in fourth-round funding. Its investors include Credit Suisse, Batelle Ventures, Beacon Group, Endeavor Capital Management, GulfSouth Capital, Battelle’s affiliate Innovation Valley Partners, Kinetic Ventures, OPG Ventures and Siemens Venture Capital.

Source: http://venturebeat.com