As we all get back into the flow of things after the Thanksgiving holiday break, it's not only a good time to give thanks for our work, family and friends. It's also a time to reflect on the developments in the energy industry to date and consider what the current trend lines look like for the next year. There has been a lot of press coverage over the torrent of data that is going to be spewing out from the smart meters and the Smart Grid investments - several issues have been listed by various ... [More]

We see the media barrage on Smart Grid projects and discussions of what to do with massive torrents of data coming in from smart meters and other devices in homes, offices and at various grid points. An area that has been getting less attention is the security threa posed by those interested in breaking into corporate web sites and through them into the sensitvie data stored by those companies on their customers. I came across an interesting report from McAfee about the prolonged attack on ... [More]

California PUC had been directed by the state legislature to publish new rules to ensure that the major electric utilities in the state protect the privacy of smart meter data. In response, the CPUC recently published a proposed decision ["Decision Adopting Rules to Protect the Privacy and Security of the Electricity Usage Data of the Customers of Pacific Gas & Electric Company, Southern California Edison Company, and San Diego Gas & Electric Company,” May 6, 2011].  Accordin... [More]

At the 2011 Consumer Electronics Show [CES] in Las Vegas, Verizon Wireless announced a home energy management + security application using its 4G broadband network. [For a report on this with nice photos, visit Cnet here. A sample photo is shown below from the Cnet site]. Real-time remote monitoring and control of consumers’ homes and their energy consumption will be possible using select smartphones. Connected home services are a new generation of consumer services that allow us... [More]

According to a recent article in major newspapers [see Washington Post, Oct 1], a sophisticated worm designed to infiltrate industrial control systems could be used as a blueprint to sabotage machines that are critical to U.S. power plants, electrical grids and other infrastructure. The malware goes by the name of Stuxnet and so far, nobody seems to know or willing to say where this virus originated from. It was first discovered couple of months ago when it infected several computers in Iran in ... [More]