Phil Carson, wrote a interesting piece entitled "Home Area Networks: Zigbee or Wi-Fi ?". In the article he examines a conversation occurring on a LinkedIn executive forum on smart grid that discusses the merits of Zigbee versus Wi-Fi as communication protocols. Now the home appliance industry has weighed in on their opinion of the best protocol for smart appliances. The Association of Home Appliance Manufacturers (AHAM) recently released a report entitled "Assessment of Communications Standards for Smart Appliances: The Home Appliance Industry's Technical Evaluation of Communication Protocols."
For background, AHAM represents manufacturers of major, portable and floor care home appliances, and suppliers to the industry. AHAM defines a smart appliance as a product which has the capability to receive, interpret and act on a signal received from a home energy management system, utility, or third party energy service provider, and automatically adjust its operation depending on the signal's contents and settings from the owner.
AHAM's membership includes over 150 companies throughout the world. In the United States, AHAM members produce more than 95 percent of the household appliances shipped for sale within the United States. The factory shipment value of these products is more than $30 billion annually. AHAM is also a standards development organization, accredited by the American National Standards Institute. AHAM authors numerous appliance performance testing standards used by manufacturers, consumer organizations and governmental bodies to rate and compare appliances.
According to the assessment's results, the most relevant communications technologies were clearly separated from their peers for use in smart grid appliance applications. Across the physical, media and network layers evaluated, Wi-Fi received the highest rating, followed closely by ZigBee and HomePlug Green PHY. Actually, "closely" does not do the final ratings justice, as Wi-Fi's score was just 1.35 percent higher than ZigBee and HomePlug Green PHY. For the Application layer, SEP 2.0 scored the highest, followed by OpenADR.
The assessment was built with a focus on consumers' needs. To represent those needs accurately, AHAM's approach was to use appliance consumers' requirements to drive identification of the best protocols to use for smart grid interfaces. These customer requirements included ease of installation, ease of use, interoperability, reliability of operations, privacy levels, security levels and safety levels.
The assessment also takes into account numerous system requirements such as acceptance of the technology in the marketplace, acceptable cost trade-offs, ease to provision, existence of supply chain, compatibility, noise handling and robust messaging capabilities.
I had the opportunity to ask Edgar Figueroa, CEO of the Wi-Fi Alliance, about his take of the report. "We're very pleased with the AHAM report, and not just because of the top score given to Wi-Fi as a communications standard for appliances," said Figueroa. "In this report AHAM has also validated the appliance industry's support for SEP 2.0, which is the focus of our collaboration with the Zigbee Alliance."
There is a need for national standards in order to ensure an appliance has the capability to function anywhere in the U.S. where smart grid infrastructure is available. These national standards also will promote interoperability between appliances and enhance consumer choice. National standard communications and application protocols will make it possible for consumers to move from one area of the country to another while continuing to benefit from smart grid technologies without having to replace, modify or upgrade their appliances.
Thanks to AHAM for such an interesting report, and I look forward to our readers' feedback.
Christopher Perdue - Vice President, Sierra Energy Group - [email protected]
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