Rick Porter: Open Interface from the Meter

I agree wholeheartedly with the comments made by Chris King in his 2010-02-23-14:22 posting. In particular, his position that "The best thing the government can do is enable an open interface from the meter (the exclusive source of usage information), then allow the market to deliver, and consumers to choose from, the many potential alternatives." is one that is fundamentally sound.

Establishing an open interface would foster continuous and un-stifled innovation to meet the needs of the "market". It also would eliminate many of the barriers to prolific adoption of new technology solutions that would otherwise not be developed or implemented, due to perceived risk of obsolescence. In addition to supporting new technologies, an open interface would also optimize utilization of existing infrastructure capabilities and communications protocols by not requiring their premature replacement, One such open interface that is under consideration is the one proposed by the non-proprietary USNAP Alliance.

It seeks to provide an open standard and specifications for a low-cost interface to be incorporated into consumer devices that would likely benefit from having Smart Grid communications capabilities. Much like a USB port on a PC, a USNAP enabled device would allow the user to easily install different modules for communications, based on the architecture of the environment the device would be used in. If the customer wanted to benefit from device communications to and from their energy provider, they could optionally acquire the USNAP module needed to do so.

If they wanted to only have the device communicate internally to their own H.A.N,, they could install a Wi-Fi, Zigbee, or other type of module. That would permit proliferation of Smart Grid ready devices while addressing the concern, and perhaps paranoia, that "big brother" automatically would have access to them for control, or for gathering information.

Without an open interface such as USNAP, or something like it, I don't hold much hope for any material progress to be made in enabling the consumer-to-Smart Grid interface in the near future.