By Paul Buckley

The announcement adds to the growing list of governments worldwide seeking to develop Smart Grids as energy efficiency solutions to reducing their nation's carbon footprint.

All these initiatives sound like great news to many analog and mixed-signal component suppliers developing power management devices to support energy metering and the Smart Grid roll-out worldwide. After all we are talking large volumes of components. China alone is aiming to deploy 150 billion smart meters. France, Spain, Germany, Italy and the UK are all planning to move over to smart meters in the foreseeable future.

In the USA 18 million homes, which is 13 percent of all U.S. households, will be equipped with smart meters within three years.

The Smart Grid promises to be one of those rare phenomenon that should be beneficial to component suppliers, utilities, industrial companies and even the consumer. However, before the roll-out has even really started to roll there are signs of discontent being raised by the people the governments see as the main beneficiaries of the Smart Grid roll-out. The consumers are starting to murmur the words - revolt.

In the USA millions of households across the USA have already seen their power companies install smart meters that can tell them how much electricity they are using hour by hour - and sometimes, appliance by appliance. Sounds just the kind of service consumers should be crying out for.

It seems that capturing the data is one thing but interpreting the results is something completely different.

Many customers in California are in open revolt with regard to the figures they are seeing on their smart meters. Officials in states such as Connecticut and Texas have begun questioning whether the rush to install meters is actually benefiting the public.

Almost as soon as some of the consumers have been able to monitor their energy usage themselves they have begun doubting the figures they are seeing. Many people are arguing that the meters are logging far more kilowatt hours than they believe they are using. Others say it is unfair that they will begin to pay immediately for the new meters through higher rates, when the promised savings could take years to be crystallized.

In some cases the US power generation companies have started to call in independent auditors to assess whether the meters count usage properly. So energy meter IC manufacturers beware you may just be opening a Pandora's Box.

By Vanessa Knivett

Chief among the most popular offenders in our house is the broadband router, which we really should unplug at night. Another item pricking my guilty conscious is my laptop, which runs most of the morning on battery but tends to get left connected to the power socket throughout the afternoon and evening, though it does get shut down properly at night. Interestingly, Skype lets you catch other likely offenders – I'll mention no names, but there are a couple of my contacts in later time zones who I regularly see are 'live' when I log on early in the morning ...

One of the most popular power consumption offences, apparently, is to leave the mobile phone charger plugged into the wall (though happily I can say I am not guilty here thanks to the obsessive-compulsive nature of my husband in this respect). Many consumers are unaware that phone chargers continue to drain electricity when disconnected from the phone but left plugged into the wall socket – it has been estimated that up to two thirds of the energy used by mobile devices is wasted in this way.

Mobile phone makers are attempting to solve this power wastage. Last year, a group of mobile manufacturers introduced a common energy rating system for chargers, making it easier for consumers to choose those that save the most energy. And with the signing of an agreement by some of the world's largest handset vendors, it looks like a common charger could be introduced next year (2010). The MoU submitted to the European Commission by Apple, LG, Motorola, NEC, Nokia, Qualcomm, Research in Motion, Samsung, Sony Ericsson and Texas Instruments, proposed the Micro-USB connector as the common standard. Let's hope the common charger becomes the most efficient charger too.

Elsewhere, other power-saving initiatives include one to encourage take-up of off-grid charging solutions. Just this week, a report from the GSM Association (GSMA) suggested that up to 500 million mobile users (more than 10 percent of global subscribers) in emerging countries could benefit from off-grid charging solutions such as solar phones or external solar chargers. GSMA, intent on selling the idea to operators, points out that this represents a '$2.3 billion opportunity', potentially boosting average revenues per user by 10 to 14 percent. But, of-course, it's not just off-grid markets that could benefit. Think of all those power stations that could be left 'on standby' if we could be bothered to unplug our wall chargers and start trickle charging our mobile phones using solar power?

By Vanessa Knivett

A little background: As you probably know, lasers are regularly used to track Earth-orbiting satellites, but Lunar-orbit laser-ranging – that's about 250,000 miles out into space – requires a different approach. Notably, the LRO is said to be the size of a minivan, but rotates the moon somewhat quicker, at nearly 3,000 miles an hour!

So what's the secret behind this repeated, one-way tracking capability? Well it's all about timing, according to NASA.

Earth-orbiting satellites typically have a reflector that deflects laser light from a ground-source back to a receiver on the ground, but the LRO has an on-board photon detector to pick up the incoming light. This data is transmitted back to NASA via a radio telemetry link. The first element of the timing challenge is to avoid interfering with the LRO's own laser-tracking duties, which involve sending a pulse 28 times per second to the lunar surface in order to accurately chart the moon's topology and composition. Laser pulses from Earth are sent at the same rate but shifted in time.

The range to LRO is calculated by measuring how long it took the laser to reach the spacecraft. The LRO's timing system uses a crystal oscillator, maintained at a stable temperature to ensure its accuracy to one part in a trillion over an hour. That a crystal oscillator is used in this application is perhaps contrary to what you would imagine. In the past an atomic-resonance device would have been the usual recourse for this kind of accuracy. But thanks to issues of size, weight, power, reliability, and even short-term frequency stability, quartz oscillators are in demand for space missions, according to Symmetricom, which has delivered ultrastable oscillators for the LRO.

The LRO's ultimate mission is to accurately map the lunar surface, in advance of a safe return of people to the moon. But with the 40th anniversary of the first moonwalk just past, NASA's goal of returning to the moon by 2020 looks in doubt. It is, therefore, somehow heartening to know that a return to the moon by man is simply a question of timing.

By Vanessa Knivett

Fast forward towards our early teenage years and our interest waned just as the next development of Lego – the 'Technical' range, was launched. Combining more advanced pieces with complicated designs, mastering this range this was the toy equivalent of joining the Venture Scouts, being something that we all aspired to but few would actually achieve.

And there, in a pile of abandoned designs, my – and many others – my involvement ended.

'So what' you might say. But, looking back, 'playing' with Lego did teach me a thing or two regarding the basics of mechanical design, something that still interests me as an adult. Today, child psychologists would categorise this as 'analytical cognitive mechanical behavioural learning in a non-threatening environment' but for us it was simple, good, clean fun.

Fast forward to today and Lego has just unveiled its new MINDSTORMS NXT 2.0 range at NI week in Austin, Texas. To the uninitiated, whereas we had 'mechanical' Lego, MINDSTORMS is Lego with electronics.

And how. For 289 euros you get a comprehensive kit with 612 pieces, servo motors, ultrasonic sensors, touch sensors and a colour sensor. Crucially you also receive the NXT Lego brick which features a 32 bit processor, 4 input and 3 output ports, plus Bluetooth and USB links.

From this kit of parts you can build four robots using the supplied plans and mighty impressive they look too, being able to walk, bite and sort / shoot coloured balls. You can add your own voice, your own image and make your robot follow a coloured path. Easy to use software and the Bluetooth links enable users to command their robots from their lap top and experience the 'real world' satisfaction of seeing their creations come to life.