Cisco Systems kept its promise to build industrial strength smart-grid hardware, unveiling on Tuesday its first router and switch.
The Silicon Valley networking giant has made no secret about its interest in this potentially lucrative market. But so far its efforts have appeared sluggish, with few utilities other than Duke Energy climbing aboard.
Cisco's Connected Grid line built with special features for the grid, including a greater resistence to extreme temperatures and electromagnetic fields.
This could be ready to change. Along with the new products – engineered with special features, such as an ability to resist strong electromagnetic fields – the company named several utilities now testing the products and said it expects them to become customers. They are San Diego Gas & Electric, Southern California Edison, Enel Group in Italy and E.ON Westfalen Weser in Germany
Cisco also introduced a brand name for its line of hardware: Connected Grid. And it said additional products were on the way, included an in-home energy display expected in several months that could put the company in head-to-head competition with vendors such as EcoFactor and Tendril.
To design products for the market, “we really needed to start from the ground up,” says Brad Tips, product manager for substation automation.
The new router and switch target the substation market, where extreme temperatures and electric fields make for difficult conditions. Standard routers and switches would not likely survive the 15 years or more utilities demand, said Tips.
Cisco says its Connected Grid Router 2010 and Switch 2520 will withstand temperatures from 40 below zero to 140 degrees Fahrenheit. Traditional products operate in a narrower 32-degree to 100-degree range.
They also will operate in high electromagnetic fields, withstand abnormal electrical surges and run with no fans or moving parts to eliminate the likelihood of failure. The Switch 2520 has optional support for powerline over Ethernet with a similar feature expected for the router.
The products will cost more than traditional networking gear – a base price of $5,900 for the router and $5,400 for the switch. But Cisco says they will competitively stack up with gear from suppliers RuggedCom, GarrettCom, Hirschmann Automation and Control, and Encore Networks.
Cisco had promised its first smart grid products within nine to 12 months of last May’s push into the market space, so it claims to be on time. The two products will be available commercially by August.
Along with new consumer-facing products, Cisco said it would unveil what it calls field-area network gear, such as pole-top routers expected to work out of doors in neighborhood settings. It withheld additional information on the in-home consumer display.
Posted by Mark Boslet 
