The Battle Over the Next-gen Open Smart Grid

Will the smart grid eventually follow the path of the Internet with truly open standards? Several up-and-coming companies are betting that the answer will be a resounding "yes" and are in the process of looking to sign up utilities and customers that want to embrace the open-standards smart grid vision.

Among them is newcomer Arch Rock, which has been selling wireless network products for data centers and buildings for the past five years, and on Monday morning plans to announce its first smart grid wireless network product based completely on open standards. Arch Rock's network product, dubbed "PhyNet-Grid," is designed to connect smart meters to the utility back office using wireless mesh technology — an architecture where each node can act independently and which is self-healing.