Networking giant Cisco has estimated that the market for smart grid communications will grow into a $20 billion-a-year opportunity as the infrastructure is built out over the next five years, and a new report from researchers at Specialists in Business Information (SBI) forecasts the market will grow to $17 billion per year by 2014 from today’s $6 billion. That’s a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of almost 21 percent through 2014 for technology that will provide better sensing and control systems and help integrate more renewable energy into the U.S. power supply. Globally, SBI expects the market for smart grid technologies to grow to about $171 billion by 2014 (with a CAGR of nearly 20 percent), up from approximately $70 billion in 2009. (link)