To meet its goal, Siemens will concentrate on end-to-end network infrastructure. Currently the utility is working on transmission grid sensors and high-voltage direct current transmission lines that carry power from expansive offshore wind farms. Siemens is also building an underwater cable to carry power across the San Francisco Bay. Siemens has also developed an open platform to manage power delivery between utilities and grid operators.

Siemens is working with US utilities Oncor in Texas, New York’s Consolidated Edison and Northeast Utilities on networks of lower-voltage lines that carry power from substations into neighborhoods and to individual businesses and homes. All these projects combine grid sensors and control systems with communications and are managed by back-end software

Software is a strength area for Siemens. The company recently made a deal to build a distribution automation system for Kansas City Power & Light that reflects Siemens’ software-centric approach to managing the various smart grid elements. Dave Pacyna, senior vice president of Siemens Energy’s North American transmission and distribution division, explains the strategy.

“The more time goes on, the more we’re convinced that all these applications being talked about – like demand response programs, like fault location services and applications, like microgrid control and operation – all these kinds of things are ultimately going to be most efficiently deployed when they can come through one or two common software platforms.” Siemens already makes software to manage the complex network of transmission and distribution assets.

Pacyna also says that managing smart meter data is a key software platform for the smart grid, even though Siemens doesn’t make that kind of software. Instead, Siemens is relying on eMeter, which it invested $12.5 million in, to help utilities manage their new smart meters. Siemens and eMeter are partnered in several meter data management projects with European utilities.

Despite being bullish on smart grid technology, Siemens has opted not to make smart meters an aspect of their business model.  Instead, Siemens has partnered with Landis+Gyr to develop common standards to ensure their systems are interoperable. Explains Pacyna: “We would agree that while the smart meter is an important enabler to what most people want to achieve, it’s nothing more than an enabler.”