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Gen4 Technology:
Defining Innovation in the Smart Grid, Again
Back in 2002, with our vision for an IPv6-based smart grid, Silver Spring pioneered innovation in the smart grid. Ten years later, our Gen4 networking technology is once again defining innovation in this dynamic, global market.
Gen4 makes it easier and more cost-effective for utilities to support:
- Any transport – mix and match options, including cellular and mesh, as desired
- Any territory – cost effectively reach any service area
- Any endpoint – support more intelligent grid devices
- Any application – run more demanding applications
How does Gen4 do so much?
- Cellular transport. Via WAN-enabled Communications Modules. Gen4’s modular architecture lets utilities dynamically select transports such as cellular communications to connect isolated or hard-to-hear devices.
- Micromesh™ Technology. A WAN-enabled Communications Module enables a unique Silver Spring innovation – the Micromesh technology. The Communications Module supports cellular and mesh and can connect to multiple nearby devices over the mesh and act as their take-out point, avoiding the expense of unnecessary cellular connections.
- 300 kbps. Gen4’s data rates double or triple the performance of alternative smart grid networks, enabling a new generation of advanced smart grid applications.
- Gear shifting. In another unique innovation, Gen4 devices automatically adjust their data rates to maintain backward compatibility or to optimize between performance and range.
- Increased memory. Higher memory increases the distributed intelligence Gen4 devices can support, improving smart grid functionality.
Gen4 also supports the emerging IEEE 802.15.4g specification, providing utilities with additional investment protection and broadening the potential ecosystem for the Silver Spring smart grid platform.
Gen4 supports utilities’ most pressing demands:
- More cost-effective options for reaching any and all devices in highly mixed territory types. Gen4’s flexibility to dynamically mix and match mesh and cellular connectivity, and to leverage the Micromesh technology, improves the economics for covering all locales.
- More capacity and higher network performance. Gen4’s increased data rates and memory enable utilities to better support more smart grid applications over common infrastructure, yielding significant operational and capital savings.
- Easier integration of increasingly diverse and smarter endpoints. Microgrids, electric vehicles, intelligent line monitors, water and temperature sensors – grid devices are getting more intelligent and more prolific all the time. Gen4’s increased capacity and memory support this growing diversity.
- Support for more demanding applications which are each individually becoming more mission critical to grid operations. The lower latency Gen4 delivers, along with higher data rates, enables the technology to support stringent protection and control applications along with other real-time solutions.
