Communications Day reports this week that smart grid strategies risk missing out on the spectrum they need to function fully unless energy industries develop cohesive standards, Australian Communications and Media Authority chairman Chris Chapman has warned.

Chapman told the National Smart Grid forum in Sydney that the ACMA’s work with utilities on the spectrum needs for smart grids was made more challenging by the diverse range of bands currently being investigated by multiple players  and urged the industry to pull together or risk having to go to market.

“At the moment there does not appear to be any agreement across the energy industry on a preferred frequency band to meet its spectrum requirements for smart grids,” lamented Chapman.

He noted that at least one utility had been investigating smart grid spectrum in the 400MHz band; that others had approached the ACMA with regards to the much sought-after 700MHz digital dividend band; and that still others were looking at the unlicensed 900MHz band, already used for smart grid projects elsewhere in the world.

“I’d like to encourage the use of harmonised spectrum as possible for infrastructure, both across the nation and across different projects. But there’s a warning: spectrum is a valuable and sought after commodity,” he said. “Given the spectrum landscape into which we’re all heading, multiple disconnected standards are really problematic and if the smart infrastructure community fails to develop a strong united argument for spectrum access, it runs the risk of having to go to market.

“I implore you as an industry to... develop a cohesive standard for smart grids so as to meaningfully address spectrum access challenges,” Chapman concluded. “The engineers of ACMA are keen to assist you in any way we can.”

The confusion amongst utilities about their smart grid strategies is perhaps best epitomised by Energy Australia which is lobbying DBCDE to make a special 20MHz paired spectrum allocation for smart grids as part of the 700 MHz digital dividend.

Its submission says wireless is superior to wired solutions for smart grids: “Typically all solutions to the challenge of communicating with this many devices in a smart grid is via (cellular or radio mesh) wireless networks. Wholly wired communications connections are not an effective substitute for a large proportion of smart grid communications requirements as they are significantly more expensive and not flexible or ubiquitous enough to create fully efficient smart grids, particularly when communicating with very large numbers of individual consumer devices.”

But on the same day this submission was released, ITWire reported Energy Australia was seeking a tie-up with NBN Co. The report quoted its general manager for intelligent networks, Adrian Clark stating: “The NBN needs smart metering or needs the utility industry as much as the utility industry needs the NBN.

“There's a whole industry out there that needs to put an [optical network terminal gateway] at every single house in Australia. We need to put a smart meter at every single house in Australia. And we also need to justify our smart metering business case … I believe that there's cost savings in providing a smart metering rollout that addresses the NBN requirements. [This strategy also] helps put the smart metering business case beyond doubt into positive territory.”