In their first face-to-face meeting, the leaders of the Smart Grid Interoperability Panel (SGIP) and utility regulators explored options for increasing state-level participation in developing the standards needed to modernize nation’s electric power system with two-way communication and control capabilities. Such capabilities will be needed to give consumers greater control over their energy bills, facilitate charging of electric vehicles, enable high penetrations of renewable energy, and improve the reliability of the power system.
interoperability
The smart grid a massive shift as utilities move from the existing world of proprietary, standards-based legacy technologies and towards an architecture that will require a much greater degree of interoperability and use of open standards. Despite barriers currently prevent widespread adoption, the fact that it is possible at all to apply open source models is a testament to how far the utility industry has come in the past few years.
“The basic structure of the present grid has changed little over its hundred-year history. The U.S. grid, which is operated by over 3100 electric utilities using equipment and systems from hundreds of suppliers, has historically not had much emphasis on standardization and thus incorporates many proprietary interfaces and technologies that result in the equivalents of stand-alone silos.
Transforming this infrastructure into an interoperable system capable of supporting the nation’s vision of extensive distributed and renewable resources, energy efficiency, improved reliability and electric transportation may well be described by future generations as the first great engineering achievement of the 21st century.”
The vision of a smarter grid is of course a lovely thing to behold: an electric power system that’s much more interactive, interoperable, reliable, and robust—“self-healing,” even. That’s why so much excitement attended the news this time last year that the U.S. stimulus bill would contain billions of dollars in new funding to support smart grid construction, and the news six months later than the National Institute for Standards and Technology was issuing draft standards and a roadmap for completing standardization of the smart grid (the Framework and Roadmap for Smart Grid Interoperability Standards, issued in final form in January). And it’s the reason too why such high expectations ride on the avalanche of smart meter installation projects launched in the last year.
How do you know when your project has a future? When one of the fathers of the Internet joins to help with the design. This just happened to the Smart Grid Interoperability Panel (SGIP), a federally sponsored, multi-disciplinary standards body that held meetings during late May at the ConnectivityWeek conference in San Jose, Calif.
Vint Cerf, one of the key architects of the Internet–who now works at Google ( GOOG – news – people ) as a vice president and Chief Internet Evangelist–was elected to the SGIP last November. At ConnectivityWeek, an annual conference of smart grid participants including the SGIP, Cerf gave a keynote speech offering his advice about how to design the smart grid so it can be as successful as the Internet.
When it comes to technological advancements in the connected home space, wireless networking certainly seems to be the way to go. There are a variety of different types of wireless technology to chose from, all specifically designed to enable data to be transferred more efficiently to various devices throughout the home.
Recently two popular standards for wireless communications, ZigBee and Wi-Fi (wireless fidelity), have agreed to come together to enable greater interoperability for smart energy applications in the home. The ZigBee Alliance, www.zigbee.org, San Ramon, Calif., and the Wi-Fi Alliance, www.wi-fi.org, Austin, Texas, will collaborate on the use of an energy management protocol, ZigBee Smart Energy 2.0, across HANs (home area networks) in households equipped with smart meters.
- How will the Smart Grid be integrated to facilitate effective cooperation, and two-way communication among the many interconnected elements?
- How is the unifying framework of interfaces, protocols, and the other consensus standards being established?
- How will utilities mix and manage varying renewable energy sources with legacy power generation and better respond to changing demand?
- Given that the Smart Grid is almost entirely owned and operated by industry, will Smart Grid interoperability and cybersecurity standards reflect industry consensus, with active participation, and where required, leadership and coordination by government?
The second draft of the Smart Grid Cyber Security Strategy and Requirements released last week provides more detail about the Herculean task of securing the nation’s modernized electrical infrastructure.
The draft looks at anything that could threaten the Smart Grid from terrorists to simple but potentially disastrous errors.
via Smart Grid cybersecurity vulnerabilities identified – SmartPlanet.
NIST has published release 1.0 of the smart grid interoperability standards. Most notably, this is the first attempt to address cyber security in smart grid deployments. This release points to various standards that can be used for implementing interoperability and security controls, and it’s fair to say that it plants the seeds for what should become comprehensive, control-driven guidelines for implementing various aspects of smart grid.
via Cyber security sees the light of day – Community – ComputerworldUK.
If you divide how important some energy technology is to the future of mainstreamers by how much they know about it–call it the Invisibility Index–you’d be hard-pressed to come up with something that scores higher than changes to the electricity grid. Luckily, there are plenty of people thinking and talking about it, and even better, laying the groundwork for the US to change from what it is (picture Fred Sanford’s living room festooned with high-voltage cables) to what we need it to be (picture most of the tech in The Jetsons).
The National Institute of Standards and Technology on Wednesday released additional details on requirements for developing the smart electric grid.
The NIST Framework and Roadmap for Smart Grid Interoperability Standards, Release 1.0 addresses more than 400 public comments in response to a draft document published in September 2009. The draft proposed standards for the security and technical capabilities of the smart grid.
The Commerce Department’s National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) announced today that John D. McDonald, general manager of marketing for GE Energy’s transmission and distribution business and an IEEE Fellow, will serve as chair of the governing board of the Smart Grid Interoperability Panel, the organization launched by NIST in November to sustain and coordinate development of interoperability standards for a modernized electric power grid.
via Governing Board of Smart Grid Standards Panel Announces Officers.
Carl Weinschenk spoke with Zpryme Research & Consulting Managing Director Mark Ishac. Last month, Zpryme released a snapshot report describing smart grid opportunities for hardware and software companies.
Weinschenk: Please characterize the relationship between smart grid, IT and telecom.
Parks Associates announced today that George Arnold, National Coordinator for Smart Grid Interoperability, National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), U.S. Department of Commerce, will deliver the afternoon keynote “NIST Smart Grid Interoperability Standards and the Home Area Network” at Smart Energy Summit.
Smart Grid technology is aimed at creating a more dynamic power grid where users can ‘interact’ with the system and actively control their energy consumption thus reducing costs. It can use digital technology in delivering energy which leads to an increase in reliability and transparency. Ambitions of what Smart Grids can accomplish are grand, but so are the possibilities.
The U.S. government fueled significant work on a smart electric grid this year, but the hard work of making the transition to a digital power network is just beginning. That’s the view of Steve Widergren, a principal engineer at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory recently named to head a broad new smart grid standards effort.
via EETimes.com – Engineer tapped to head smart grid standards work.
Telvent (NASDAQ: TLVT), the IT company for a sustainable and secure world, and Trilliant Incorporated, a leader in delivering Smart Grid solutions that enhance energy efficiency, utility operations, and renewable resource integration, today announced successful interoperability between Telvent’s suite of real-time monitoring and control solutions and Trilliant’s SecureMesh™ communications infrastructure. This validated integration will increase reliability and lower the cost of operating electric distribution networks.
EnerNex® Corporation continues to assist in the pioneering task of establishing the nation’s first Smart Grid Interoperability Panel (SGIP), per its $8.5M contract with the U.S. Commerce Department’s National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) to support the agency in its role of coordinating and accelerating development of Smart Grid interoperability standards.
The SGIP is a public-private partnership to support NIST in its “primary responsibility to coordinate development of a framework that includes protocols and model standards for information management to achieve interoperability of smart grid devices and systems,” as specified in the Energy Independence and Security Act (EISA) of 2007.
Current List of SGIP Participating Member Organizations. The Smart Grid Interoperability Panel (SGIP) will support NIST in fulfilling its responsibilities under the 2007 Energy Independence and Security Act. The SGIP will identify, prioritize and address new and emerging requirements for Smart Grid standards. It will further develop the initial NIST Framework and Roadmap for Smart Grid Interoperability Standards, Release 1.0, which was released for public review on Sept. 24.
See the link below for the complete list of member organizations as of today.
via SGIPParticipatingMemberOrganizations < SmartGrid < TWiki.
Smart Grid Interoperability Panel
he planned Smart Grid Interoperability Panel (SGIP) will support NIST in fulfilling its responsibilities under the 2007 Energy Independence and Security Act. The SGIP will identify, prioritize and address new and emerging requirements for Smart Grid standards. It will further develop the initial NIST Framework and Roadmap for Smart Grid Interoperability Standards, Release 1.0, which was released for public review on Sept. 24.
The following is the SGIP Charter – Smart Grid Interoperability Panel (SGIP) Charter (347)
