Seven Israeli companies and five universities in Israel have formed the ISG Consortium, whose goal is to develop next-generation unified communication and smart grid management networks for utilities. With financial support provided by the Israeli Office of the Chief Scientist (OCS) through its Magnet program, the founding consortium members are ECI Telecom, Motorola Solutions Israel Ltd., CEVA, Yitran Communications, PowerCom, RUGGEDCOM, Control Applications, Ben-Gurion University, the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, Ariel University Center of Samaria, Holon Institute of Technology and Tel-Aviv University.

Smart grid technology is fueled by the continuous growing demand for green energy and the requirement to economically deliver and control reliable and sustainable electricity service. Smart grid technology attempts to predict and intelligently respond to the behavior and actions of all electric power users connected to the grid, by employing innovative products and services, coupled with intelligent monitoring, control, communication, and self-healing technologies. With the emergence of smart grids, every consumer is a potential “prosumer” – both a consumer of green energy services and a supplier of excess capacity to the rest of the grid. The smart grid adds the intelligence necessary to the network that empowers such users.

Research Scope

The ISG consortium will focus on the smart grid of the future, addressing all issues related to communications and monitor and control of transmission, distribution and generation of energy to and from the home network.

Research topics will include:

• Developing distributed architectures and topologies to allow scalability, survivability and resiliency of utilities’ communications networks
• Forecasting models for consumption and Demand Response control mechanisms
• Developing technologies and protocols for real time prediction, monitoring and control of potential failures, automatic isolation and self-healing of communication and electricity networks
• Advanced monitoring of electricity quality for grid stability and methods for local and decentralized network management
• Optimizing Power Line Communication’s (PLC) effectiveness and capacity

The Consortium has already initiated its activities and will continue for the next three to five years. It will work closely with and contribute to the international industry standard organizations dealing with smart grid, such as ANSI, ETSI, IEC 62056 and DLMS/COSEM, as well as with electrical power companies around the world.