Images: The many faces of the smart grid

Substation, call home

Software for consumers is certainly important to modernizing the grid, but networking hardware does the heavy lifting. Here is a wireless access point from Trilliant, which makes equipment that allows a smart meter in a home to send data back to a utility over wireless networks. It purchased former municipal wireless company SkyPilot Networks to get access to its WiMax technology for utilities.

Given the networking challenge it poses, it's no wonder that Cisco is pushing aggressively into the smart grid. During the announcement of a planned smart-grid project in Miami, Cisco CEO John Chambers said: "This is an instant replay of the Internet. "Instead of moving zeros and ones, we're moving electricity."

Photo by Trilliant

Caption by Martin LaMonica