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The IEEE has launched a new Web site that consolidates information about smart electric grids from it various societies. The portal is one of many activities from an IEEE smart grid initiative coordinating the organization's work on the transition to digital, networked power systems and services. The smart grid is "so interdisciplinary," said Wanda Reder, chair of the IEEE Smart Grid Task Force and former president of the IEEE Power & Energy Society. "We have the gamut covered in technical interests, but we needed a way to facilitate communications between our many entities to link information on all the conferences, papers and standards we have in this area," she added.

In separate keynote addresses in Silicon Valley, two Internet pioneers gave different takes on the future of the network of networks Monday (May 24). Vint Cerf, co-developer of the Net's TCP/IP protocol, shared his thoughts with developers of the smart electric grid, seen as a massive embedded extension to the Internet. Larry Roberts, who helped launch the forerunner of the Internet, explained his ideas for remedying the growing congestion that plagues the Web today. Smart grid developers can learn from the lessons of the Internet, Cerf told attendees at Connectivity Week here. They should follow the model of the Net in creating a layered architecture with plenty of room for flexibility in areas that cannot be anticipated today, he said in a keynote at Connectivity Week.