Archive for January, 2011
How Will Consumers Benefit from the Smart Grid?
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George Arnold from NIST gave a talk with that title over lunch today at the Smart Energy Summit in Austin. The benefits of the Smart Grid may be obvious at NIST but they’re a lot less so to consumers. In fact as Arnold noted wryly at the beginning, “Neither consumers nor utilities are quite sure why we’re doing this.” As the National Coordinator for Smart Grid Interoperability at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), it’s Arnold’s job to get the word out, which this talk definitely did.
The basic structure of the electric grid today is not much different than it was 100 years ago, other than the fact that it supplies AC rather than DC. Reasons for modernizing the grid include reducing costs; using more renewables; improving reliability; and supporting electric vehicle recharging.
The arguments on the cost side are compelling. Half of all U.S. coal plants are over 40 years old, and the cost of upgrading or replacing them is estimated at $560 billion by the year 2030. Smart Grid technology can reduce both peak and average electrical usage, reducing the required investment. There’s also considerable leeway for conservation. In the United States per capita annual electricity usage is 13,000 kWh. In Japan the per capita usage is 7900 kWh. By providing feedback to consumers on their usage patterns and enabling them to shift loads to nonpeak – and therefore lower cost – hours, smart grids provide the feedback loop to consumers both enabling and incentivizing them to conserve electricity.
The US has nowhere to go but up in the use of renewable energy sources. The vast majority of our electricity comes from coal-fired power plants. According to the Department of Energy renewables account for only 8.4% of US electrical generation, with Hydro contributing 5.95%, wind only 0.83% and solar even less.
On the reliability issue: the average U.S. utility customer experiences 125 min. of power outages per year; the average Japanese consumer only has to put up with that for 16 min. per year. The estimated cost of these power outages to the US economy according to the department energy is approximately $80 billion per year.
Turning to the demand side, where does the power go? Residential use accounts for 37%, commercial usage is 36% and industrial applications account for the remaining 27%. On the residential side 17% of your electricity goes to air conditioning, 15% to lights, 9% to heating and the balance to other devices. Getting your kids to turn off the lights will help, but only so much.
Arnold spent some time discussing smart appliances. Smart appliances will need home control systems in order to store your preferences for them; it won’t be up to the electric utility to determine when and which appliances you run. This event was heavily supported by numerous players in the smart appliance and home control markets, including the HomePlug Powerline Alliance, the HomeGrid Forum, the Z-Wave Alliance, the Wi-Fi Alliance and numerous semiconductor, system and utility providers. The stakeholders came to share ideas and hear what NIST had to say.
As well they might. As Arnold asked rhetorically, “With a dozen different communications interfaces, how do you do a national Smart Grid?” Good question. Right now just about every RF protocol you’ve heard of – and some you may not have – is vying to be part of the smart grid. Lacking any kind of standardization, and with plenty of money invested in proprietary solutions, utilities are understandably reluctant to move forward with Smart Grid implementations, and consumers are at least as confused.
NIST has now finished reviewing the various protocols and is now passing that information back to industry to work out standards. In Arnold’s words, “Things are about to become very contentious and argumentative” as standards are hashed out. As Bismarck once remarked, “If you like laws and sausages, you should never watch either one being made.” The same certainly applies to electronics standards.
There actually is real progress being made, and we’ll report on that shortly. Meanwhile don’t despair, the Smart Grid really is happening. It’s just not going to be happening next week.
January Wireless Update
Posted by: | CommentsGuest Blog by Will Strauss, President & Principal Analyst, Forward Concepts
4G is Now Officially Meaningless
The International Telecommunications Union (ITU) has loosened its definition of 4G to include LTE, WiMAX, and HSPA+. Clearly, this was caving in to the claims of the operators who are now plastering 4G on anything that has higher data speeds than 3G. So, when LTE-Advanced arrives, you can bet that the carriers will be calling it 5G…assuming that they haven’t begun to incorporate that terminology with their next half-step up from “4G.”
Windows for ARM-based Tablets?
At CES this week, rumor is that Microsoft plans to announce a “full” version of Windows for ARM-based portable devices like tablets, etc. Not to be confused with Windows Phone 7 (WP7), which is relegated to cellphones, the new version will boost the opportunities for tablets, netbooks and other portable devices competing for a piece of the Apple-dominated portable market…or is it the Intel-dominated netbook market?
Intel Gets Tighter with Via Telecom
You may recall that on Sept. 27th I recommended that Intel purchase Via Telecom as an adjunct to its still-pending purchase of Infineon’s cellular business. Well, Intel and Via Telecom have announced a new working relationship through Intel’s Wind River subsidiary. Codenamed
Kunlun, the joint project is said to help bring low-cost Android smartphones to China-based CDMA handset makers. Taking a page from MediaTek’s playbook, the ultimate aim of Kunlun appears to be providing a complete PCB assembly platform to make it easy for the zero-R&D-budget Chinese whitebox cellphone makers to wrap plastic around it for a virtually complete cellphone solution.
This is exactly what Intel needs to do for a quick entry to the CDMA cellphone market after completion of the Infineon acquisition, and we believe this move is an initial step before Intel actually makes a bid for Via Telecom (if it hasn’t already).
BTW: Kunlun is the name of a legendary mountain in China.
So, What’s Holding up Intel’s Infineon Acquisition?
One rumor coming out of Europe is that Samsung was also a bidder for Infineon’s cellphone business, and with a higher bid price. However, the rumor is that Intel promised Infineon and the German government that there would be no personnel layoffs for at least two years and other considerations favorable to the country. Hammering this out with a government entity and awaiting EU approval is one possibility for the acquisition delay.
Fujitsu Intros Wideband 3G/LTE Transceiver
Fujitsu Semiconductor Wireless Products, Inc., based in Tempe Arizona, was formerly part of Freescale Semiconductor (and earlier part of Motorola). The 150-man team is well-seasoned in the cellphone transceiver market, and is now offering the first commercially ready SAW-less 3G and LTE single-chip, multi-mode cellphone transceiver. The MB86L10A RF transceiver covers 700 MHz to 2.7 GHz and eliminates the need for external LNAs. Supporting DigRF/MIPI interfaces, the MB86L10A offers simultaneous support of both 3G and 4G modems which allows the MB86L10A to be paired with one or two baseband processor chips as needed. So, until there is a single 2G/3G/LTE baseband chip available, this is a great RF transceiver solution for most emerging “LTE” modem/handset vendors.
Infineon has long been the leader in the merchant market for 3G transceivers, but that part of Infineon is soon to be part of Intel. If Infineon ceases serving that segment, Fujitsu will become “the prettiest girl at the party.”
Will Synopsys Compete with ARM and MIPS?
With its acquisition of Virage Logic last year, Synopsys now has the ARC RISC/DSP technology that was acquired by Virage Logic just a few months earlier. Whether Synopsys will continue to pursue direct competition against ARM, MIPS, and others or will simply incorporate the IP into its custom design portfolio is not yet clear.
Sanyo Semiconductor Acquired by ON Semiconductor
In its 8th company acquisition, Phoenix-based ON Semiconductor is acquiring Japan-based Sanyo Semiconductor for a figure stated as about 50% of Sanyo’s annual revenues. Clearly, Sanyo wanted out of the semi business and ON Semi adds MCUs, motor controllers, audio tuners, inverters and other products to its ever-expanding product portfolio. Through the acquisition, ON Semi increases its market presence in Japan and improves its position in the automotive and consumer markets.
Freescale Announces First Quad ARM Cortex-A9 Chip
Yesterday, Freescale became the first company to announce a 4-core Cortex-A9 chip. The new chip is part of the company’s new i.MX 6 family of multimedia processors. Naturally, solo-core and dual-core members of the family are also available. One should remember that Freescale’s earlier i.MX family dominates the eReader market, including Amazon’s Kindle. Freescale will be introducing even more products at CES and continues revenue growth; so its future is looking brighter now.
NSN Acquisition of Motorola’s Infrastructure Business Delayed
Although it was announced back in July that Nokia-Siemens Networks (NSN) would be acquiring Motorola’s cellular infrastructure business for $1.2 billion cash, the deal is still awaiting approval by China’s Anti-Monopoly Bureau of the Ministry of Commerce. The deal is now expected to close in Q1 of this year.
Nokia’s acquisition of Siemens’ infrastructure business is still a work in progress, so it will be interesting to see how smooth the integration of Motorola’s 7,500 employees in the U.S., China and India will be.
Mobile World Congress Scheduling
We’ve begun filling out our calendars for the upcoming MWC in Barcelona (Feb. 14-17). Satish Menon, Forward Concepts’ Senior Wireless Analyst, and I will be attending, so let me know if your company has new wireless chips or cellular software (no Apps, please) that you’d like to introduce to us at the Congress.
Shameless Plug
Our newest market study, “Cellular Handset Chip Market’10″ has achieved strong market acceptance. Published in November, the new 548-page study provides strategies and insight for the many chip types serving the cellphone market and their vendors. Although the study covers the popular digital basebands, application processors and RF transceivers in great depth, it also covers virtually all of the other chips in cellphones, too, with individual forecasts of each type. For details, check our website at: www.fwdconcepts.com/Cellchip10.
