14 DAY TRIAL // Microsoft is hard at work ensuring that the necessary steps are made to push the utility industry toward embracing smart grid development. In this regard, the integrated utility of the future could be ushered by the company’s reference software architecture released on October 13th, 2009. The Microsoft Smart Energy Reference Architecture (SERA) is designed to act as the basis for technology integration throughout the energy ecosystem, the software giant indicated. Already, a range of Microsoft Gold Certified Partners have indicated strong support for SERA. Companies including Accenture, Alstom Power, AREVA, ESRI, Itron Inc. and OSIsoft Inc. are backing up the Redmond giant’s latest utility offering, following the introduction of the Hohm, Cloud-based home energy management application.
“Alstom has established a long-term relationship with Microsoft in order to provide cost-efficient, scalable architectures for electrical producers like solar, hydro, wind, coal, Steam or nuclear power plants,” revealed Laurent Demortier, senior vice president of Alstom Power’s Energy Management Business. “This Microsoft reference architecture accelerates solution development to enable developers to provide enhanced, more cost-effective, secure and scalable solutions.”
Microsoft pointed out that the main advantage that its reference software architecture delivered over rival offerings was that it streamlined the implementation of projects funded by national smart grid stimulus programs, and ensured a superior level of reliability. In this regard, the company has based the reference architecture on its own platforms and technologies, and ensured that power industry partners were tapped for insights into how to tailor SERA to the power utilities’ IT infrastructure needs.
“Utility industry executives who are concerned about changing their business models to ones that enable a smarter energy ecosystem will view Microsoft as a partner of choice because of its current strengths within their technology regimes as well as our solutions’ adaptability to future, sometimes unknown, conditions and business environment needs,” added Larry Cochrane, Worldwide Utilities Industry technology strategist/architect, Microsoft.
The Microsoft SERA will essentially make it possible for the smart energy ecosystem to manage smart devices just as Windows computers today deal with plug-and-play hardware. Such a scenario of course implies not only common standards but also a comprehensive interoperability framework.
“The Microsoft Smart Energy Reference Architecture represents our continuing commitment to our utility industry customers and our holistic vision of how the smart grid fits into the much larger energy ecosystem that’s evolving daily,” Cochrane added.