Smart Houses: ICT Markets and Technologies Development

This report continues the Practel project on the Smart Grid development and evolution. In particular, it is detailing characteristics and applications for wired and wireless ICT in the Smart Houses environments.

The report addresses the development of wireline and wireless Information and Communications Technologies (ICT) to support the Smart House infrastructure. With each year, Smart Houses communications technologies are becoming more and more affordable and efficient on the industry-wide scale for multiple applications; though the concept was originated in the 80th of the last Century. The importance of Smart Houses proliferation is now tied with the Smart Grid deployments, and Smart Houses communications networks will eventually be a part of a large country-wide project, such as centralized and intelligent automation system, which integrates utilities and consumers.

The report updates the analysis of wireless ICT (Z-wave and ZigBee/IEEE802.15.4) and wireline technologies (HomePlug, HomePNA, G.hn, MOCA); and respective markets. The emphasis is made on mesh networking and the IP environment that only recently became available for home-based communications nodes. Wireline technologies are using the existing Smart Home wiring, while wireless technologies support connectivity between various home network nodes by implementing the necessary wireless networking.

The report also addresses the Smart appliances initiatives, related technologies and markets; as well as the role of smart meters in the evolving smart houses development; HANs and Smart Houses features and market characteristics are also summarized.

The U.S. market for ICT in Smart Houses (with a base of private houses reaching more than 100 million) is huge; it also is supported by the government, which is deeply involved in the Smart Grid project.