The U.S. Commerce Department’s National Institute of Standards and Technology released for public review a report that identifies issues and proposes priorities for developing technical standards and an architecture for a U.S. Smart Grid.
The nearly 300-page report was developed by the Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI).
This report is part of the first phase of NIST’s three-phase plan,
announced in April, to expedite development of key standards for the
Smart Grid.
NIST will use the report in drafting the NIST Smart Grid
Interoperability Standards Framework. The NIST document will describe a
high-level architecture, identify an initial set of key standards, and
provide a roadmap for developing new or revised standards needed to
realize the Smart Grid. Release 1.0 of the NIST Smart Grid
Interoperability Standards Framework will be available in
September.
In May, the Energy and Commerce Departments announced the first set of standards needed to drive the development of a smart power grid.
The EPRI report includes suggestions from a variety of Smart Grid stakeholders, including technical contributions taken from two EPRI-facilitated, two-day, public workshops. The EPRI report also incorporates contributions from six expert working groups established by NIST in 2008, and a cybersecurity coordination task group established in 2009.
A third public EPRI-sponsored Smart Grid interoperability-standards workshop will be held in early August to engage standards-development organizations in responding to unaddressed needs identified in the draft standards roadmap.
Ultimately, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) determines whether sufficient consensus has been reached to implement final standards and protocols necessary for Smart Grid functionality and interoperability. NIST’s role is to identify and submit to FERC recommendations for the final product.
NIST will accept public comments on the report for 30 days.
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