Saturday, May 29, 2010

Nine new members join PRIME Alliance to develop multi-vendor solution for smart grids

SAN RAMON, USA: Nine new members have joined the PRIME Alliance (PoweRline Intelligent Metering Evolution) as utility provider Iberdrola is poised to deploy the first 100,000 multi-vendor, PRIME-compliant meters. The Alliance has announced new members: ADD Grup, ČEZ Měření, s.r.o., Circutor, EDP, Fujitsu Microelectronics, SAC, ORBIS, Iskraemeco/Metrega and SAGEMCOM.

“Having important semiconductor solutions suppliers, metering companies, utilities and system integrators joining the Alliance underlines the importance and recognition of PRIME as the future standard for power line communication-based smart meters enabling the smart grid vision,” said Tom Willie, PRIME Alliance vice chairman from member company Current Group.

The PRIME Alliance is focused on the development of a new open, public and non-proprietary Power Line Communications (PLC) solution that will support real-time smart metering functionalities and enable the building of the electricity networks of the future, or Smart Grids.

The goal of the Alliance is to provide a framework in which vendors of meters, data concentrators, in-home devices and chipsets, could access fully open physical layer (PHY) and Medium Access Control (MAC) specifications in order to design fully interoperable solutions, which would allow multiple vendors to be operational within the same distribution network in one common system platform.

Iberdrola selected seven meter vendors and four manufacturers of PLC data concentrators for the first PRIME deployment through a competitive tender processes. Each employs one of the four possible interoperable PRIME chip solutions. PRIME smart meter deployments by other PRIME Alliance utility members are expected to follow shortly.

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