Monday, March 15, 2010

Mary Zientara: Remove the Barriers - Open Participation

This posted to smartgrid@ostp.gov by Mary Zientara, Reliant Energy
Q1: Low-income consumers are best served by home-to-grid technology when barriers to participation are minimized; out-of-pocket investments should not be required to take advantage of Smart Grid enabled products. Universal deployment of a standard interoperable interface will allow a HAN device to easily and securely join the ESI at any premise. Moreover, interoperability will drive HAN device manufacturers to innovate and differentiate their product offerings such that competitively priced HAN devices will be readily available.
The key to delivering Smart Grid benefits to low-income customers are (1) to ensure customers are not required to have access to an additional communication technology (e.g. internet, broadband, etc) or advanced technology like an energy management system; and (2) through interoperability standards, to encourage competitive innovation among HAN device manufactures that drives down prices to a point at which the savings realized by a low-income consumer quickly offsets the price of a device.
Q2-4: A widely acknowledged and referenced set of requirements for Smart Grid data communications interface to customer devices was set forth in the OpenHAN SRS published in 2008 and recognized by NIST as a low hanging fruit and in NIST standards Roadmap v 1.0. The purpose of the OpenHAN SRS is set forth on page 10 of the document:
“The UtilityAMI 2008 Home Area Network System Requirements Specification:
-Promotes open standards-based HANs that are interoperable
-Provides the vendor community with a common set of principles and requirements around which to build products
-Ensures reliable and sustainable HAN platforms
-Supports various energy policies in a variety of states, provinces, and countries
-Empowers citizens with the information they need to make decisions on their energy use by enabling the vision of a home energy ecosystem”
This requirements specification is currently being updated in an open collaborative process which includes participation from appliance manufacturers, other original equipment manufacturers (OEMs), software developers, utilities, and many other participants.
As mentioned, the OpenHAN SRS is technology independent. Therefore, technology companies and organizations should be called upon to implement the requirements from OpenHAN to develop “plug and play” technology and products for customers, including certification processes. One example of this occurrence is the efforts of the ZigBee Alliance and its members which produced the ZigBee Smart Energy profile as the first implementation of a standard data communication interface based on the OpenHAN SRS. The ZigBee Alliance also provides certification for ZigBee Smart Energy products to ensure customers and equipment manufacturers realize a “plug and play” interoperable experience. ZigBee Smart Energy HAN device products connected to the Smart Grid are available and being installed in customer homes today in the regions of Texas with retail competition. These devices are being used s without any additional gateways or adaptors between the Smart Grid and the HAN devices.
Mary Zientara
Reliant Energy

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