HomeGrid Forum lays out smart grid work at IEEE symposium

  • May 19, 2020
  • imc

At last week’s virtual 24th IEEE International Symposium on Power Line Communications (ISPLC), Marcos Martinez, chair of the HomeGrid Forum’s contributions working group, unveiled the forum’s latest work on advancing G.hn for industrial and smart grid applications around the world.
 
The HomeGrid Forum’s participation in the virtual event followed the recent addition of energy provider E.On as the latest member to join the fourm, strengthening its position within the smart energy and smart city sectors.
 
“IEEE gave us a fantastic opportunity to share our latest G.hn developments and its applications within the smart grid industry, for instance creating a smart meter gateway and providing a medium voltage backbone,” said Len Dauphinee, HomeGrid Forum president. “We are continuing to expand G.hn use for applications such as smart lighting, smart traffic lights and charging stations, showing just how game-changing G.hn is with its facilitation of secure, real-time data communication.”
 
With ITU-T unveiling its latest roadmap on adapting G.hn for use in smart grid and industrial applications, HomeGrid Forum highlighted its expansion and progress in transforming the utilities sector of the future. HomeGrid Forum has a role to play in ensuring the future success of G.hn with its certification process, which ensures interoperability, performance and compliance between the multitude of devices within the industry.
 
“Demand continues to grow for smart energy and smart cities, and it is important as more innovations continue to be implemented in these areas that there is a strong backbone within the infrastructure of home connectivity,” said Dauphinee. “G.hn is the most reliable and versatile core for home networking that can be integrated into power line, coax and copper pairs to provide a service that can cope with the additional traffic and security needed in these new applications.”
 
He said the forum had received a “positive response” to its roadmap and smart grid applications when it was first launched it and he was excited to see what the industry thought of the advancements since then.
 
“This is an exciting time for these technologies and to be able to see where the developments are headed really solidifies what we have been working towards over the last twelve months and we look forward to continuing the great work throughout the rest of 2020,” he said.
 
The HomeGrid Forum is an industry alliance that brings together technology innovators, silicon vendors, system manufacturers and service providers to promote G.hn as a globally recognised gigabit home networking technology based on ITU-T standards. G.hn is a wireless home network backbone. Members promote the global adoption of G.hn, a single unified, multi-sourced networking technology over coax, copper pairs, powerline and plastic optical fibre. The HomeGrid Forum provides G.hn silicon and system certification through a compliance and interoperability testing programme.