As we approach the half-way mark in 2022, it’s good to take a look back and acknowledge our successes so far. Sometimes we are so busy looking ahead to the next thing that we forget to look at what the Alliance and our members have achieved.
In February we announced a record year for Wi-SUN FAN product certification driven by our active membership across more than 46 countries around the world. With a growing number of silicon companies joining our ranks, among them Texas Intruments, which this year became a Promoter member and with a representative on the Board, we are represented across the entire spectrum from chip manfacuturers to utility companies and government bodies.
The numbers of Wi-SUN FAN certified products has continued to grow and grow, with more than 60 products available, up 40% over last year, helping meet the demand for open standards based interoperable solutions for smart city and smart utility initiatives.
This is good news, according to our latest IoT study Journey to IoT Maturity launched in March. Plans to roll out smart initiatives have grown since Wi-SUN’s last report five years ago, with security and surveillance the most likely use case, followed by distribution automation, advanced meter infrastructure and smart street lighting.
While these are perhaps the more well established use cases and the ones where we see Wi-SUN technology most often deployed, it is interesting to see growth in new initiatives like smart parking, traffic management and controls, noise and air sensors, and electric vehicle charging.
The key takeaway from our report, however, was that organizations are becoming more ambitious and that IoT is becoming a much bigger priority across all sectors, not just a few. Yes, there are still challenges, but the signs are very encouraging.
We saw this echoed at this year’s DistribuTECH in May. We were delighted to see so many members there, showcasing Wi-SUN FAN certified products and the FAN interoperability demo. After two years of virtual events, it was clear that people are delighted to be back in person and this was reflected in a very busy show and lots of productive conversations.
This year has also been one of partnerships with the goal of ensuring Wi-SUN FAN product testing and certification is as straighforward as possible.
I’m delighted that we are partnering with QualityLogic, developer of the official Wi-SUN FAN v1.0 Test Bed Controller, and WISeKey, a third party supplier of certificates for Wi-SUN FAN products. Through our collaboration with DLMS User Association to ensure seamless end to end interoperability of solutions, a complete testing solution for validating DLMS/COSEM over Wi-SUN communications networks is now available.
The second half of the year is looking busy with Enlit Asia in Bangkok, IoT World in Austin, TX, and also Enlit Europe in Frankfurt, Germany all approaching. Much like DTECH in the US, this is the premier event in Europe to connect with utility companies, service providers and industry thought leaders to hear more about what’s going on in the European energy sector and how Wi-SUN can play a bigger role in smart utility rollouts.
I look forward to an exciting and productive second half of 2022.