With the advent of smart grid, many sectors stand to benefits. These include: utilizes, heavy industrial electronics manufacturers, auto makers, software and integration providers, etc.

As time passes, we may be able to add home appliances manufacturers in the scope.

The Association of Home Appliance Manufacturers (AHAM) has identified six key features that distinguish smart appliances:

• Dynamic electricity pricing information is delivered to the user.

• A smart appliance can respond to utility signals, contributing to efforts to improve the peak management capability of the smart grid and save energy.

• Integrity of its operation is maintained while automatically adjusting its operation to respond to emergency power situations and help prevent brownouts or blackouts.

• The consumer can override all previously programmed selections or instructions from the smart grid while ensuring the appliance’s safety functions remain active.

• When connected through a home area network and/or controlled via a home energy management system, smart appliances allow for a total home energy usage approach. This enables the consumer to develop their own energy usage profile and use the data according to how it best benefits them.

• A smart appliance incorporates features to target renewable energy by allowing for the shifting of power usage to an optimal time for renewable energy generation (i.e., when the wind is blowing or sun is shining)

As of now, the smart appliances market has been led primarily by European players. They are actively launching pilot projects to test their initial models in the smart meter and AMI environment. The front runners are Bosch, Siemens, Electrolux, Indesit, and Miele. These companies have several pilot programs underway and many have already rolled out commercial product line-ups.

For instance,

• Electrolux started its smart appliance testing on powerline networks using the European Home Systems (EHS) protocol.

• In July 2010, Indesit unveiled a smart washer capable of communicating with the smart grid.

• Miele plans to roll out smart grid ready clothes washer by 2011.

• Siemens has tested its “Smart Watt” model compliant with energy efficiency in conjunction with smart grid in 100 households in Germany.

How about Asian players? They’ve been lagging behind. Asian manufacturers have taken a wait-and-see approach to the smart grid. As of a few months ago, Samsung and LG were still not aggressively pursuing deals and were content to sit on the sidelines watching the field.

However, Samsung and LG have recently changed their minds and are ready to become players in this new field. In Jeju demonstration projects, they set up ZigBee based smart appliances in their Smart Place practice demo sites (or Home Energy Management System and Service: HEMS). They are supposed to launch dedicated teams under control tower’s initiatives to spur their stance.

This new movement was to be expected as infrastructure upgrades in progress and smart meters moved attention inside the home.

Korea has an advanced power grid infrastructure resulting in supplying high quality electricity with merely 15.6 minutes of blackout time per household and a 99.9% or higher voltage holding ratio.

It also indicates that the time and investment for deployment in terms of utility upgrades could be bypassed or shortened. Further, the government has already started an aggressive procurement and deployment plan for smart meters with varying types of models for consumers. As a result, Korean manufacturers could be confident to move ahead.

However, these Asian policy changes are not the primary reason for their interest in the market. Both Samsung and LG are inspired by European players because the Euro zone is one of the primary markets for Samsung and LG.

For general consumers, smart grid may have a narrow scope because most market attention and conventional ideas for smart grid may mean upgrades toward transmission and distribution, smart metering, and constructing offshore wind turbines. Hence, the market perception tends to more watch on B2B business deals and massive national power grid enhancement projects.

With local network management, home area network (HAN) integration, and the ability to connect intelligent devices to the network, smart grid will open up the consumer-driven smart grid market. In addition, opening the market door to smart appliances will result in enhanced energy efficiency in the home environment. General consumers will be interested in this benefit of the smart grid.