The battle for standards in energy control systems

According to Frost and Sullivan, energy conrol sysems based on Echelon's original template (an open-standard smart grid communications and control technology) now make up 81 per cent of the European market. 

To date, about 35 million Echelon-powered meters have been installed in Europe. Most recently, Echelon announced wins with Fortum Norway on the utility side and Brasov in Romania on the commercial/street lighting side.

Beyond Europe, Echelon recently announced a major agreement with China-based Holley Metering, one of the largest meter manufacturers in China and in the U.S. it announced that extended field trials have started with Duke Energy for intelligent distributed control.

As outages become more frequent in the UK, the demand for smart metering is set to soar.

But it's a questoin of choosing the right vendor. The best technology doesn't always win out. it's the best organised vendors, with the clearest messages and the most user friendly products. And indeed channels to market.

That's not always an association one would make with open systems.

In the coming weeks we will exmaine which vendors are worth backing.