In the next 10 years, China is expected to build more than 70 million new homes in what observers are calling an unprecedented housing boom in the country. This year alone, Shanghai will build towers with more living and working space than there is in all the towers in New York City.
The ZigBee-based AMR system that Holley Metering will deploy creates self-forming, self-healing wireless mesh networks across neighborhoods and apartment complexes that will link meters and send back real time data to the utilities' corporate offices. Holley Metering already has installed AMR in industrial and commercial settings using GSM/GPRS/CDMA mobile networks, but this technology and infrastructure is too costly for wide-scale deployment in the residential arena. Hence, the move to ZigBee technology.
"The ease, efficiency and lower cost of standards-based ZigBee wireless networks is the most logical way to meet the residential metering demands of China's explosive housing market," said Tony Delgado, Ember's director of business development for Asia.
Ember is also a leading member of the ZigBee Alliance, a coalition of about 200 companies focused in interoperability of various wireless technologies using the IEEE 802.15.4 standard. Just as the Wi-Fi Alliance works to ensure interoperability between Wi-Fi products by different manufactures, the ZigBee Alliance does the same for IEEE 802.15.4 products. These operate on the same unlicensed 2.4GHz frequency that Wi-Fi and Bluetooth do.
"Bluetooth is built on IEEE 802.15.1 which is personal area networks," said Delgado. "ZigBee, 802.15.4, is kind of just the industrial version of personal areas networks. But whereas with Wi-Fi or Bluetooth, you might have 5 or 10 devices all talking to one another, with ZigBee you may have hundreds of them talking to each other in a mesh network. The standard is designed for low data rates and very flexible networking with several hundred devices."
Typical applications for ZigBee include home and building automation, medical devices and asset monitoring. In the home for instance, you might have ZigBee enabled light switches, alarm system components, entertainment components, thermostat and all would form a mesh network enabling these devices to talk with one another.
"That would be the ideal world for ZigBee -- all your appliances and all of your electrical system in your house communicating with one another," said Delgado. "Wi-Fi is great at what it does for high bandwidth applications like streaming video. ZigBee is designed for very large networks but it is also designed for long battery life. There are some ZigBee devices that can last for years on a single battery."
Connected World
The connected world that Ember envisions is
already here. It's products are now being used by Salt Lake City-based Control4 that now manufactures wireless automation products that allow homeowners to control lighting, audio, video, climate, and security systems. The company claims that most of its products can be installed easily and without the need for remodeling or special maneuvering, at an average cost of around $600 per home.
As for AMR, NURI Telecom in Korea has already implemented Ember's technology in its AIMIR product line including AMR system for electricity, gas and water supply, gas valve closure, security sensor, telephone cable control in the Siheung district of Kyoungki-do. The company has called this the world's first successful commercial implementation of AMR and claims the result is a 99 percent operating efficiency.
Holley Metering's deployment of Ember's technology is currently in its test phase. However, the Chinese manufacturer expects to launch a family of Ember-enabled electric meters later this year with plans to develop gas and water meters later in 2006. And while the first roll out of the new AMR system will be in China, Holley Metering intends to export the system to the 30 countries with which it currently does business.
