Mark Thompson, vice president of Strategic Communication Networks with ACLARA has been elected by member companies of the Wi-Fi Alliance to chair the newly formed Smart Grid task group. The Smart Grid task group will provide technical expertise to utilities and government officials on the properties of Wi-Fi that make it suitable for the smart grid, and assess how the long-standing Wi-Fi CERTIFIED testing program might be extended to support Smart Grid devices and applications. One of the first actions taken by the group was creation of a report entitled Wi-Fi for the smart grid describing the suitability of Wi-Fi technology for use in the smart grid infrastructure.

The task group is working to ensure that utilities have access to Wi-Fi CERTIFIED smart grid technologies.”

Wi-Fi is especially suited to for smart grid applications in part because of the ongoing roadmap of innovation and established mechanisms for collaboration developed by the Wi-Fi Alliance as well as IEEE.

Wi-Fi Alliance executive director Edgar Figueroa states: “It's clear that Wi-Fi will be as important in both in-home and outdoor smart grid applications as it is today in consumer and enterprise networks. Our new activities in this area will help make sure that smart grid users will have an excellent experience with the technology.”

In addition to certifying interoperability to the baseline functions defined in the IEEE 802.11 LAN standards, the Wi-Fi Alliance writes and executes test specifications for features including power saving, peer-to-peer communications, and security to enhance the usability of Wi-Fi technology.