Cisco outlines strategy for highly secure Smart Grid infrastructure

Cisco today outlined its plan to deliver an end-to-end, highly secure network infrastructure solution that helps utility companies and their customers manage power supplies and energy consumption more efficiently.

Cisco’s plan establishes a complete communications fabric from electrical generation to business and the home based on Internet-Protocol standards. This will build intelligence, resiliency and two-way communications into an electricity distribution system that has been traditionally fragmented.

Cisco’s Smart Grid solutions will address critical points within the energy infrastructure: from data centers and substations, through neighborhood-area networks, to businesses and homes. The company’s experience in designing networks based on industry standards will bring much-needed expertise to utilities striving to integrate smarter, on-demand energy utilization capabilities that result in greater energy conservation, lower greenhouse gas emissions and innovative end-user services.

Cisco has already begun sharing its networking expertise with leading utility providers around the world and is building innovative network solutions for them and their customers to monitor electricity utilization, optimize energy delivery, reduce energy usage and cost, improve system security, and lessen their impact on the environment.

In the months to come, Cisco plans to deliver products and additional services to support this initiative – one that is aimed squarely at addressing the growing Smart Grid communications infrastructure market projected by Cisco to reach $20 billion annually over five years.