Smart Grid - Guidelines, Standards and User Groups

Guidelines, Standards and User Groups

Part of the IEEE Smart Grid Initiative, IEEE 2030.2 represents an extension of the work aimed at utility storage systems for transmission and distribution networks. The IEEE P2030 group expects to deliver early 2011 an overarching set of guidelines on smart grid interfaces. The new guidelines will cover areas including batteries and supercapacitors as well as flywheels. the group has also spun out a 2030.1 effort drafting guidelines for integrating electric vehicles into the smart grid.

IEC TC57 has created a family of international standards that can be used as part of the smart grid. These standards include IEC61850 which is an architecture for substation automation, and IEC 61970/61968 – the Common Information Model (CIM). The CIM provides for common semantics to be used for turning data into information.

OpenADR is an open-source smart grid communications standard used for demand response applications. It is typically used to send information and signals to cause electrical power-using devices to be turned off during periods of higher demand.

MultiSpeak has created a specification that supports distribution functionality of the smart grid. MultiSpeak has a robust set of integration definitions that supports nearly all of the software interfaces necessary for a distribution utility or for the distribution portion of a vertically integrated utility. MultiSpeak integration is defined using extensible markup language (XML) and web services.

The IEEE has created a standard to support synchrophasors – C37.118.

The UCA International User Group discusses and supports real world experience of the standards used in smart grids.

A utility task group within LonMark International deals with smart grid related issues.

There is a growing trend towards the use of TCP/IP technology as a common communication platform for smart meter applications, so that utilities can deploy multiple communication systems, while using IP technology as a common management platform.

IEEE P2030 is an IEEE project developing a "Draft Guide for Smart Grid Interoperability of Energy Technology and Information Technology Operation with the Electric Power System (EPS), and End-Use Applications and Loads".

NIST has included ITU-T G.hn as one of the "Standards Identified for Implementation" for the Smart Grid "for which it believed there was strong stakeholder consensus". G.hn is standard for high-speed communications over power lines, phone lines and coaxial cables.

OASIS EnergyInterop' – is an OASIS technical committee developing XML standards for energy interoperation. Its starting point is the California OpenADR standard.

Under the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007 (EISA), NIST is charged with overseeing the identification and selection of hundreds of standards that will be required to implement the Smart Grid in the U.S. These standards will be referred by NIST to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC). This work has begun, and the first standards have already been selected for inclusion in NIST’s Smart Grid catalog. However, some commentators have suggested that the benefits that could be realized from Smart Grid standardization could be threatened by a growing number of patents that cover Smart Grid architecture and technologies. If patents that cover standardized Smart Grid elements are not revealed until technology is broadly distributed throughout the network (“locked-in”), significant disruption could occur when patent holders seek to collect unanticipated rents from large segments of the market.