TI Smart Grid in the news – February 2013

In case you didn’t get a chance to see the interview, Markus Staeblein, general manager for TI’s Smart Grid solutions team recently spoke with Smart Grid Insights / Zpryme Research about the state of the smart grid and TI’s plans for 2013.

Here are a few of the highlights from Markus’ interview:

“Our philosophy at Texas Instruments is that the Smart Grid is a wide range of new applications that makes energy distribution and transmission more efficient, makes energy measurement more accurate, provides real time information about demand and incidences, and enables providers and consumers to control and manage energy. Data concentrators, smart meters (e-meter, gas, water, heat), home gateways, in-home displays, and thermostats are a few examples. The foundations of these applications are semiconductors, or more precisely embedded processors and analog components. With the urgent need for smart grid implementations across the world, it will be one of the top growth markets for semiconductor companies in upcoming years.”

“In the upcoming year, TI believes the biggest challenge for the smart grid is rooted in communication, meaning the deployment of a robust and reliable network between the meter and data concentrator. Utilities that deploy several different meters from various manufactures in the same environment will also face an interoperability challenge. Standards exist, but they are not ‘plug-and-play.’ The question remains: What is the right communication technology and protocol? These decisions are based on results of test deployments that only simulate a portion of the grid. Another non-technical but important challenge is: What’s in it for the consumer? Will smart meters provide more information to the consumer that allows them to better manage and control their energy?”

“Texas Instruments continues to invest into new technologies, and similar to previous years we will release several new solutions for the smart grid market in 2013. In the first two months of 2013, TI has announced a) fully integrated polyphase smart meter Systems on-Chip (SoCs) b) a Home Energy Gateway Reference Design integrated with TI’s Sitara AM335x processors, TI’s CC2530 ZigBee® system-on-chip and TI’s WiLink™ 8.0 module, and c) a Smart Data Concentrator Evaluation Module based on TI’s Sitara AM335x processors and PLC and RF technology. In the next few months TI will release a new power analytics board, a new metrology solution, an ARM® Cortex™-M4 application processor, a hybrid dual core communication device, RF and analog front end (AFE) chips and a series of analog products for power, measurement, isolation and communication. These new products will help developers create the next generation of products for the smart grid.”

For the full interview, check out the Zpryme Q&A session online.

Buy the CC2530 now at Mouser Electronics

This Post originally appeared in the Smart Grid blog on E2E . 

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