Creative Connectivity

Smart Meters could have saved US from Sandy

Following the disruption caused by hurricane Sandy, Smart Metering proponents have been quick to point out how a more widespread deployment could have prevented many of the problems seen in New York and New Jersey. Utilities in Texas and California reported that within their regions where there was close to 100% smart meter deployment, they’d not experienced a single example of power outage or flooding. And smart meter manufacturers added that the outage reporting capability of their meters would have saved vast amounts of time and money for the East Coast utilities. “Instead of having hundreds of staff watching CNN and following twitter feeds to find out where power had gone down, utility executives could have just checked on their iPhones” said one industry spokesman.

These benefits were echoed by smart thermostat manufacturers, claiming that the wireless networks in their devices could have been reconfigured to provide a local wireless mesh, enabling peer-to-peer communications within affected communities, as well as being used for in-home geo-location, aiding local emergency services. “Our thermostats don’t just look over your climate control”, one executive commented, “they can even look after Granny and your pets in situations like this”.

Choosing a Wireless Standard

The first question that most designers ask when adding wireless to their product is “which wireless standard to use?” In some cases, where it is connecting to an existing product, that’s easy to answer. If it’s not, it’s a lot more difficult. It’s one reason I wrote a book about it – to try and help designers answer that question. But another part of the same question is how well the different standards promote themselves as a solution?

This year has seen some major changes within some of those wireless standards. The ZigBee Alliance has lost Benno Ritter – for many years the global marketing face of ZigBee. And the Bluetooth SIG has replaced its Chairman, Mike Foley, as well as its CTO, Andy Glass. Both are interesting moves, as each of these standards is still evolving. ZigBee is taking on smart lighting, home automation and smart metering, whilst Bluetooth is finally seeing Bluetooth Smart appearing in the mainstream. In a recent issue of Incisor magazine, Vince Holton wrote about the loss of passion within the Bluetooth SIG – a sentiment that I’d echo and also extend to some of the other wireless standards. But that’s an opinion formed from being close to these groups. A few years ago I ran to survey to try and see what the general engineering opinion was of the different wireless standards. Prompted by Vince’s article, I thought it would be useful to run the survey again to see what designers think as we approach the end of 2012.

Digital First – a Patient Perspective

A couple of years ago I wrote a somewhat tongue-in-cheek article about how much the NHS could save each year by implementing some fairly basic mHealth initiatives. Nothing very complicated – mostly simple stuff like appointment reminders, but with the help of some silly projections from NESTA I reckoned there was potential to save almost £13 billion a year from the NHS budget.

A few weeks ago I came across a much more sensible proposal in the form of Transform’s Digital First report for the NHS. Whilst my effort was largely based on fanciful numbers from corporate PR departments and think tanks trying to get noticed, the Digital First report uses real examples of current practice within different parts of the NHS. It looks at ten easy-win initiatives which, if they were to be implemented across the wider NHS, could release funding of £2.9 billion per year.

These are not high tech; they don’t require massive capital investment, they’re just ten good ideas which have been developed and deployed locally and which can be copied throughout the country. Most are centred on GP practice. In each case, the report describes the current implementation, the degree of difficulty (or in many cases the ease) of attempting each project, and details of how to do it. There’s even a Digital First website “designed to help NHS staff implement Digital First”. The report is essentially an instruction manual for every GP surgery. I’d recommend downloading and reading it. And the next time you see your GP, give them a copy or ask them how they’re getting on with it.

NHS – The Olympic Legacy

While most of the world was scratching its head about the London Olympics’ opening ceremony, Danny Boyle managed to do something that successive UK Governments have failed to do for over sixty years. The world watched as he promoted the NHS as a Global Brand. For five years we’ve had debates about what the lasting legacy of the London Olympics would be, a lot of which has concentrated on what to do with the buildings. The rest has been about whether it will persuade more people to become more active. Whilst I’m not belittling the positive effects that it may have in reintroducing people to sports and providing renewed support for sporting facilities, I’d like to put forward a much more important legacy – we should follow on from Danny Boyle’s tribute and start making the NHS a Global Health Service.

Readers of this blog will know I’ve been espousing the need to turn the NHS into a Global Brand for many years. But with the Olympic coverage disappearing from the front pages of our papers, that idea seems to be catching on. Recently the Independent ran the headline that the Government was considering a Global NHS. We now have the best opportunity to make that a reality – quite possibly a once in a lifetime chance to transform healthcare in theUK, and improve access to it around the world.

So Jeremy Hunt, here’s a challenge for you. If you want to go down in history, here’s you chance. Take this opportunity to show the world that the UK is great at healthcare as well as sport by making the NHS a truly global brand.

The End of the One Trick Wireless Pony. Or is it?

And then there were none. Last month Silicon Labs acquired Ember – the last independent ZigBee chip manufacturer. It’s good news for the Smart Metering industry as it’s secured a future for Ember, who have become the chip and protocol stack supplier of choice for a large proportion of smart meters, IHDs and home gateways in the market today. It’s not such good news for the investment community, as the $72 million initial consideration from SiLabs is a little short of the $89 million investment that had gone into Ember. But given the fire sales of the other ZigBee start-ups, it’s still not a bad result.

And it could be one of those excellent fits that don’t come along that often. For Silicon Labs, it extends their radio technology into the hotly contested 2.4GHz band, complementing their very capable sub-GHz range of EZRadio PRO chips. It also gives them what I’d consider to be the best ZigBee stack on the market. And it gives Ember what must be a very comforting degree of financial security as well as a ready made range of sub-GHz radios, just at the point where the UK and Japanese smart metering communities are looking at 868MHz.

But it’s not just Ember getting gobbled up. A few weeks later, Samsung quietly acquired Nanoradio – the Swedish specialist in low power Wi-Fi for mobile phones. Both Ember and Nanoradios played the standards card and had essentially become one trick wireless ponies – a fate common to many wireless start-ups. Perversely, CSR did the opposite thing today, by divesting itself of much of its location technology, (which it had acquired from SiRF), to Samsung, who seem to be getting rather good at acquiring bits of wireless technology. In doing so CSR moved itself back closer to its Bluetooth roots.

Although the prospect of an acquisition is the raison d’être of most wireless silicon start-ups, I wonder whether this flurry of activity indicates that we’re nearing an end-game? In which case, what comes next?

Posh Boys push Smart Meters

DECC – the Government department leading the Smart Metering deployment in the UK recently published their latest research on consumer attitudes to Smart Metering. It reports the results of in depth interviews with 120 representative members of the population on their feelings about Smart Meters and IHDs.

The research was conducted in February this year, several months before the Conservative backbencher Nadine Dorries described her Prime Minister David Cameron and Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne as “two posh boys who don’t know the price of a pint of milk”. She wasn’t referring to the UK Smart Metering programme, but it was a pretty good description of what these 120 respondents thought of the smart meter deployment, telling researchers that it “sounds like it’s from someone who doesn’t have trouble paying their bills”.

The report is not all bad news. The respondents included people who had received In Home Energy Displays and in general they liked them. They thought they provided real benefits. In contrast, they had difficulty in seeing what the added value of the smart meter was.

I suspect DECC is busy trying to massage the results to make it look as if the survey supported smart metering, helped by some rather ambiguous leading questions. But the content highlights a growing division within the smart metering programme, which is whether it is meant to be there for the benefit of consumers or for the benefit of utilities?