ZigBee Joins Wi-fi Alliance on Smart Grid Collaboration

Wednesday, 17 March 2010 11:38

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The ZigBee and Wi-Fi Alliance have announced plans to collaborate on wireless home area networks (HAN) for Smart Grid applications.  The joint effort looks to extend the opportunity for interoperable wireless technology in the smart home through ZigBee Smart Energy 2.0, the next-generation energy management protocol for Smart Grid-enabled homes.

ZigBee Smart Energy was initially developed to operate over a standard ZigBee wireless network to support the needs of Smart Metering and Advanced Metering Infrastructure (AMI).  ZigBee Smart Energy 2.0 is designed to support other network technologies within the digital home, including HomePlug and now Wi-Fi. The protocol, which was selected last year by the U.S. Department of Energy and the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) as an initial interoperable standard for HAN devices, is expected to operate over Wi-Fi technology.

Using the ZigBee Smart Energy 2.0 protocol capitalizes on the unique strengths and capabilities of the Alliances’ respective technologies to expand the utility of the HAN in managing energy consuming or producing devices, a crucial part of Smart Grid efforts now underway.

Merging Wi-Fi’s communication technology with ZigBee Smart Energy 2.0 gives utilities, vendors, and energy consumers more choice and versatility in energy management solutions. The agreement between the two alliances will integrate the two communication technologies in a smart home environment. This environment will include devices ranging from utility meters, thermostats, and appliances to home entertainment devices, computing systems, and automobiles.

ZigBee Alliance chairman Bob Heile says the collaboration will help spur further innovation in solutions for the Smart Grid. “ZigBee has always interworked with Wi-Fi using ZigBee and Wi-Fi gateways. Now there is an opportunity for the organizations to collaborate more closely for the smart home of the future by leveraging the intelligence of ZigBee Smart Energy.”

Wi-Fi Alliance CEO Edgar Figueroa adds that working with the ZigBee Alliance members “will enable more than the extension of the ZigBee Smart Energy profile to Wi-Fi.  The collaboration will help bring about the vision of a truly interconnected smart home.  As a result of this agreement, representatives from each organization will be able to provide input on one another’s Smart Grid activities to speed any proposed solutions.”

The low-power ZigBee standard is optimized to the needs of Wireless Sensor Networks by offering self-organizing, self-healing mesh networking, scalability to very large networks, very low cost and complexity, and superlative battery life.