Israeli consortium shines spotlight on smarter utility networks
Several companies and universities in Israel have come together to create a new group aimed at developing next-generation unified communication and smart-grid management networks for utilities.
Founding members of the ISG Consortium include ECI Telecom, Motorola Solutions Israel Ltd., CEVA, Yitran Communications, PowerCom, RUGGEDCOM, Control Applications, Ben-Gurion University, the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, Ariel University Center of Samaria, Holon Institute of Technology and Tel-Aviv University. The organization is being supported in part with funds from the Magnet program of the Israeli Office of the Chief Scientist.
Among the research areas the consortium plans to focus on are:
- Developing distributed architectures and topologies to help make utilities’ communication networks more scalable, survivable and resilient;
- Forecasting models for consumption and demand response (DR) control mechanisms;
- Developing technologies and protocols for real-time prediction, monitoring and control of potential failures, automatic isolation and self-healing of communication and electricity networks;
- Advanced monitoring of electricity quality for grid stability and methods for local and decentralized network management;
- Optimizing the effectiveness and capacity of Power Line Communication (PLC).
The consortium has already begun work in some of these areas and expects to continue for the next three to five years.
