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SMART GRID ROUNDUP: Grants for National Smart Grid Announced, Hacking the Smart Grid; Wind and Solar Power Drives Need For Smart Grid

By Chris de Morsella on April 23, 2009 1 Comment Biden, code development, Commerce Secretary, Department of Energy, embedded devices, energy appliances, energy management products, energy storage, Gary Locke, grant, Grants, grid monitoring devices, hacking the smart grid, high voltage transmission, intelligence, IOActive, Jefferson, Joe Biden, Joshua Pennell, Mo., monitoring, National Smart Grid, National Smart Grid Grants, nationwide electrical smart grid, network security, network stack, power storage, security, Security Focus, security threats, smart grid, smart-grid industry, smart-grid technology deployment; deployment of grid monitoring devices, smart-grid technology development grants, solar power, solar;, stimulus funding, technology viability. smart-grid technology development grants, Vice President Joe Biden, wind, wind power, wireless networking standard, ZigBee

Quite a bit is happening in the smart grid sector. In this post I quickly look at the breaking announcement by Vice President Joe Biden of more than $3.3 billion in stimulus funding for grants to drive the rollout of a nationwide electrical smart grid.

I continue to follow the hacking of the grid story and try to give some various perspectives on this issue and what is being done about it.

Finally I post on how the growing adoption of renewable energy like solar and wind will require the grid to evolve into a much smarter, robust system and to incorporate systems for storing transient excess energy.

The Dark Side of the Smart Grid (Updated)

By Chris de Morsella on April 23, 2009 1 Comment Add new tag, Advanced Metering Infrastructure, Department of Homeland Security, Hackers, IMA, IOActive, Secure Software, Security Development Lifecycle, Security Vulnerability, smart grid, Smart Grid infrastructure, smart meters, software

The Smart Grid promises to make our energy (and also water and sewage systems) more efficient, robust and responsive by building a paired parallel information and control network onto the existing distribution networks. However hooking up the grid’s multitude of component units to a network also opens up the potential for the grid to be hacked — in much the same way anything that is exposed to the internet can be hacked.