On Wednesday, as Itron reported mixed earnings, the Liberty Lake utility technology maker and service provider also announced it's taking part in an East Coast smart grid demonstration project.

Itron and National Grid, a northeast U.S. utitlity, announced they will be partners on a project to build and evaluate advanced smart grid systems in Massachusetts.

Here's where the geeky tech stuff shows up in the story: the two firms will field-test the multi-application capabilities of the new Itron-Cisco IPv6 based smart grid solution, including advanced metering, home area networking (HAN) and distribution automation (DA). That “stuff” is the typical and more or less standard set of tools the smart grid depends on.

OK, then, what's the key news here?  The press report says the system will use Cisco technology that allows a utility to exchange information with its residential and business customers without requiring them to all use just one proprietary set of equipment or applications.

As designed, that makes the smart grid more open-standards based, sort of like the way the Web is designed.

It's a big deal because this allows an electric utility do have a grid system across a diverse set of customers, including large industrial customers, or when dealing with a dispersed group of home customers, some of whom may be using different home metering products than others across the utility map are using.

If you really want all the other details, here's the official Itron release.

Itron and Cisco not long ago announced they had a similar deal for BC Hydro, one of Canada's largest electric utilities. Here's a summary of the project being done in British Columbia.

View Larger Map The company that operates a large network of fiber-optic cable for Spokane and North Idaho business customers said it could be midnight on Tuesday before their Internet service returns.

Shelly Mills, a spokesperson for the Spokane office of Zayo Enterprises, said it might be that long, following a car crash early Tuesday that knocked over a utility pole in northeast Spokane County.

That pole, in the accompanying Google StreetView image, is at the intersection of Starr Road and Wellesley.

It's not clear how many businesses use the fiber that is hung on that pole.

The black lines on the pole are fiber-optic lines. The other mess of wires are for phone and electric power.

The white conduit on the left of the pole brings fiber down into the buried vault on the ground.

Zayo provides both “lit” and dark fiber for customers.

Zayo spokesman Glenn Russo, based in Colorado, said fiber carriers choose to either use poles or bury lines under ground. “You end up picking your poison,” he said. Aerial lines are more frequently broken than buried lines. “But they’re also much easier to fix, by nature of being in the open,” he said.

Another story, to be posted later at spokesman.com, will add information on the specific companies impacted.

Power is out on a portion of the South Hill this afternoon as Avista Utilities crews replace a pole at 9th Ave. and Monroe St. destroyed in a motor vehicle accident at about 10 a.m.

A spokeswoman said service should be restored to all customers by 4:30 p.m.

At 1:30 p.m. the outages had been limited to an area between 8th Ave. and 11th Ave. between Monroe and West Cliff Avenue.

About 222 customers were still without service, down from more than 400 initially.