December 22, 2011 Fabless communications chip company EnVerv Inc., has announced it has raised $12 million in a Series B round of funding led by Benchmark Capital. Previous investors, NEA and Walden International also participated in the round. Read more

October 31, 2011 Leading European energy and ICT companies, R&D centers and universities, including ESB, Intune Networks and the Telecommunications Software & Systems Group (TSSG) are teaming up as part of a €5million for EU Collaboration to develop innovative “smart grid” energy solutions and services for homes, buildings, industry and the transport infrastructure. Read more

October 26, 2011 HomePlug Alliance, Wi-Fi Alliance and ZigBee Alliance has signed an agreement formalizing the Consortium for SEP 2 Interoperability. The Consortium will provide the Smart Grid ecosystem with confidence in application and device interoperability. The ecosystem embraces utilities, product vendors and consumers. Read more

October 19, 2011 Mitsubishi Electric Corporation has begun full-scale tests of smart grid and related smart-community technologies at the company’s production sites in Japan. The aim of the project is to develop and test products including commercial systems,equipment and solutions for annual sales worth 1.3 trillion yen (about 17 billion USD) by March 2016. Read more

October 6, 2011 Texas Instruments Incorporated has unveiled four new system solutions for Smart Grid and metering applications, enabling designers to further accelerate time to market for PLC-based and low-power wireless products. The evaluation kits, tools and new software can be ordered immediately to enable communication protocols and promote Smart Grid applications. Read more

September 22, 2011 Smart grid specialist Sentec has joined the PRIME Alliance (PRIME = PoweRline Intelligent Metering Evolution), to further the development of smart meter and smart grid products based on an open standard for power line carrier data. Read more

August 11, 2011 Researchers at the University of Southampton have developed a mechanism which uses smart computerized agents to control energy storage devices in the home, resulting in energy savings of up to 16 percent. Read more

July 28, 2011 Saft is to deploy the company's state-of-the-art lithium-ion (Li-ion) energy storage systems as part of the MILLENER smart grid project, which has a target of installing energy management facilities in France's island territories.    Read more

July 8, 2011 A new study from the European Commission’s in-house science service, the Joint Research Centre (JRC), has presented a review of 219 smart grid projects Europe-wide. The review shows that the majority of investments, amounting to about €5.5 billion, were made in old Member States ("EU15"), while new Member States ("EU12") are tending to lag behind. Read more

June 14, 2011 Lattice Semiconductor Corporation and Flexibilis Oy have announced the immediate availability of the Flexibilis Ethernet Switch (FES) IP core.  The triple speed (10 Mbps/100 Mbps/1 Gbps) FES IP cores operate on Ethernet Layer 2 and can switch with gigabit forwarding capacity per port.  Read more

June 9, 2011 Cable&Wireless Worldwide has enhanced its smart grid enabling portfolio with smart grid substation automation products and solutions to help utilities create an intelligent communications network that will aid in the development of the UK’s smart grid. Read more

June 9, 2011 Accent has introduced an advanced metrology solution to meet the demanding energy measurement needs of smart meter devices. The solution achieves 0.1% accuracy across a dynamic range of 2000 to 1 and when integrated with Accent’s ASMgrid SoC Platform provides meter manufacturers leading-class system capabilities for smart energy applications while significantly reducing their electronic BOM. Read more

May 27, 2011 Microsemi Corporation has started working with Ariane Controls, a powerline communications developer, to provide FPGA technology for the industry's first development platform to support key emerging electric-vehicle charging and related Smart Grid standards. Read more

May 25, 2011 Costs and benefits of building a smart electric grid have more than doubled as the vision of a digital, networked power utility has expanded, according to a new report from the Electric Power Research Institute. Sensor networks are on the rise as one of the big and under-served opportunities in the diverse terrain of the smart grid. Read more

May 19, 2011 Toshiba Corporation has entered into a definitive sale agreement with the shareholders of Landis+Gyr, under which Toshiba, one of the world's leaders in electronics and power systems, will acquire Landis+Gyr, the global leader in energy management solutions for utilities, for USD 2.3 billion in cash. Read more

April 20, 2011 The European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI) and T&D Europe, the European association of the electricity transmission & distribution equipment and services industry, have signed a memorandum of understanding to collaborate on standards for smart grid. Read more

March 31, 2011 The USNAP Alliance and the Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI) will merge separate efforts to develop a modular interface specification for linking consumer gear to a smart grid. The collaboration is one step toward a broader convergence still in the works. Read more

January 26, 2011 Analog Devices, Inc. (ADI) is providing the company's iCoupler digital isolation solution to Siemens Aerospace for its PowerSCOE system, a satellite power protection system that will shut down kilowatts of power within the satellite within microseconds in the case of an anomaly. Serving as the advanced technology group for Siemens AG, Siemens Aerospace designed the system with other applications in mind, such as smart grid power monitoring. Read more

December 22, 2010 Trilliant Inc., a provider of smart grid communication solutions, said that Taiwan-based UMC Capital, the corporate venture arm of semiconductor foundry United Microelectronics Corporation (UMC), has invested in Trilliant. Read more

November 4, 2010 Cybersecurity will be the killer app for smart electric grids, and it will require a new generation of power electronics technology, according to Vinod Khosla. The veteran venture capitalist said the conventional wisdom about smart grids is all wrong. It is not about smart meters delivering real-time information about electricity pricing to consumers. Read more

November 3, 2010 The Wi-Fi Alliance and the HomePlug Powerline Alliance are entering into a liaison agreement to facilitate and promote the adoption of HomePlug powerline and Wi-Fi networking technologies in smart grid applications. Read more

October 25, 2010 The IEEE will write guidelines for large-scale electricity storage, focused on hybrid systems that use multiple technologies. The work, expected to start  before the end of the year, is part of a broad effort to define standards for smart electric grids. The IEEE 2030 group expects to deliver early next year an overarching set of guidelines on smart grid interfaces. Read more

October 7, 2010 Semtech has announced the SX1233, a programmable ISM-band transceiver with a bit rate up to 600 kbps FSK based on shorter on-time transmission for lower risk of RF collusion and reduced average current consumption. The device also offers a world-class link budget of 137 dB, low power consumption, excellent ACR (adjacent channel rejection) and blocking immunity. Read more

September 30, 2010 The smart grid concept is largely based on the assumption that vehicles can serve as mobile and flexible energy storage. The MeRegioMobil research project now gets granular on the details of energy exchange. Read more

September 24, 2010 Microsemi's ASIC design services group has developed a device for smart metering applications that integrates all power-management functions into one application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC). The device is the first of a planned family of both custom and standard products for advanced metering and other Smart Grid applications. Read more

September 9, 2010 Echelon Corp. has rolled out a Linux-based software environment for smart grid applications and new hardware to run the code. Duke Energy signed a $14.5 million deal to use the new products it expects to start field testing before the end of the year. The Echelon Control System (ECoS) is a framework and set of tools for distributed smart grid applications built on Linux. Read more

September 6, 2010 ADD Semiconductor of Zaragoza, Spain claims to be the first silicon vendor to receive the official PRIME brand recognition as a technology provider. PRIME is a new worldwide narrow band powerline communication technology based on OFDM that provides up to 128Kbps communications for smart grid applications. Read more

August 10, 2010 Dr. Horst J. Kayser has become the new CEO of 3W Power Holdings SA, the holding company of AEG Power Solutions. Dr Kayser replaces Bruce A. Brock who has been the company’s CEO since 2005 and is retiring. Read more

July 8, 2010 Cumulative global investment in smart grids, including smart meter implementations as well as upgrades to the transmission and distribution infrastructure, will approach $46 billion by 2015, according to the latest forecasts from ABI Research. Read more

June 24, 2010 At Intel's last Developer Forum, the company touted human smarts as a quick cure for energy efficiency, showing a smart-energy sensor that allows consumers to optimize their own energy consumption by monitoring and adjusting usage manually. But in a nation that has freely embraced the "For Dummies" model of knowledge distribution, the smart grid should likewise remove the necessity for deep thinking from energy efficiency efforts, according to members of the Smart Grid Panel at the Freescale Technology Forum. Read more

May 24, 2010 The HomePlug Powerline Alliance, the world's leading industry group for powerline network solutions, is welcoming STMicroelectronics to join the alliance's board of directors. Read more

April 30, 2010 An array of hurdles ranging from making communications gear secure to understanding consumer behaviors stand in the way of flipping on smart electric grids, according to a panel of experts at the Embedded Systems Conference. Read more

April 21, 2010 With the aim of combining public- and private-sector strengths to sell Japan's technology and systems to emerging smart-grid-related markets worldwide, the New Energy and Industrial Technology Development Organization (NEDO) established yesterday the Japan Smart Community Alliance (JSCA), whose 287-strong membership comprises companies, universities and other organizations. Read more

April 14, 2010 The IEEE Standards Association (IEEE-SA) is facilitating cooperation between the HomePlugR Powerline Alliance and HD-PLC Alliance Read more

March 24, 2010 The ZigBee Alliance is to expand its participation in the European Union’s various standardization efforts and will set up a European headquarters to help with this effort. Read more

March 18, 2010 Zigbee and Wi-Fi backers will collaborate to bring the Smart Energy 2.0 protocol to Wi-Fi networks. Read more