ES6: Technologies for smart grid and smart meter

A Smart Grid is a required infrastructure in the near future to meet the world´s energy usage and generation demands. The US government has just injected 4.5B$ of stimulus into creating Smart Grid technologies, and this has created a huge momentum to implement the infrastructure today. With a variety of diverse renewable power sources (wind, wave, solar) and new challenging loads (e.g. electric vehicle) and usage models (e.g. peak shaving), the role of Smart Meters and communications among meters and appliances of your home is becoming increasingly important. As consumers are becoming more aware of their own economic and environmental responsibilities regarding green power consumption and generation, connecting their appliances in the home to the WWW will also open up new opportunities in Energy 2.0 applications independent of the traditional utility companies. This special topic session aims at introducing to the audience the market requirements and three of the key candidate technologies for the Smart Grid and Energy 2.0 application: accurate power metering, powerline communications, and low-power wireless communications for power management.