POW

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ID.C

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2013

YOUR POWER DELIVERY MEDIA SOURCE

24 Oncor’s AMI

34 Transformer Maintenance

38 Strategic Vegetation Management

T H E O F F I C I A L P U B L I C A T I O N O F

21 | May 2013www.power-grid.com

BY CHRISTOPHER IRWIN, DEPARTMENT OF ENERGY

the North

American Energy

Standards Board (NAESB) and others. By

the time PAP 10 was completed, NAESB

had created the standard on which Green

Button is now based (REQ 21, or ESPI).

A half dozen other standards now possess

similar DNA.

The Green Button has its origins in a

health data access initiative called the Blue

Button developed by the Department of

Jane and Robert Brown sat down side

by side, gazing at the computer screen.

“We spent more money on electricity

last month than we did on car payments,

and I want to find out why and what we

can do about it,” Jane said. “This portal is

handy, but I went on and put our usage

into a spreadsheet and correlated it to

activities I was able to pull from our com-

bined Outlook calendars and dropped it

into this presentation,” and cut.

TAKE TWOJane Brown set the groceries on the

counter. Her phone chimed with a new

email. Her Cabin Buddy app reported

that usage at the Browns’ little place in the

woods was up 40 percent from yesterday,

and for a big change such as that, Cabin

Buddy was set up to register an alert and

follow up with an email. She called the

Johnsons to ask if they could check if the

cabin door had blown open again.

A few miles away, Robert Brown walked

through the automatic doors of Big Box

Hardware. He was approached by a staffer

holding a tablet computer.

“Would you like a customized energy-

savings shopping list?” asked the staffer.

“All you need to do is give us one-time

access to your utility usage data. We’ll

delete the data as soon as we’re done gen-

erating your list.”

Robert politely declined.

“I’m way ahead of you,” he said.

“I got the same offer by email and

uploaded my file this morning.”

Robert looked at his phone, and there

were the estimated savings per month

and year next to each potential item.

What he really wanted were the supplies

to fix that door on the cabin, but a few

lightbulbs, an air filter and a water heater

blanket were easy enough to pick up, and

because he was already here ... and cut.

THE GREEN BUTTON INITIATIVEWhich scenario is realistic? Two years

ago, the best that most U.S. electricity

customers could hope for was the first

scenario. Now, some 16 million customers

across more than 20 utilities are closer to

scenario two, thanks to the Green Button.

The UCA International Users Group

(UCAIug) launched the OpenADE

(Automatic Data Exchange) Task Force,

which contributed some of the early

emphasis to making energy usage infor-

mation faithful to international standards

and more uniform. The effort accelerated

rapidly under Priority Action Plan 10 (PAP

10) of the then-newly created Smart Grid

Interoperability Panel (SGIP). The National

Institute of Standards and Technology

(NIST) considered a broad consensus on

energy usage information critical to the

success of many key technologies in the

smart grid and was joined in PAP 10 by

Christopher Irwin is the smart grid stan-dards and interoperability coordinator for the Office of Electricity Delivery and Energy Reliability in the Department of Energy.

© CAN STOCK PHOTO INC. / SERMAX55

Green Button GROWS

May 2013 | 22 www.power-grid.com

© CAN STOCK PHOTO INC. / SERMAX55

Veterans Affairs to put health care data into

the hands of military veterans. All that was

left to do was to provide a spark, which

was delivered by former White House

Chief Technology Officer Aneesh Chopra

during GridWeek 2011. He challenged

utilities and industry to create a Green

Button and shared the success he saw in

the health care sector.

California, Maryland and Texas com-

mitted, and each added millions of cus-

tomers. In April 2012, the Department

of Energy (DOE) launched the Apps for

Energy contest, which challenged software

developers to build within five weeks apps

that use Green Button data. More than 60

apps were submitted. Four months after

the first Green Button data was available

to customers, an ecosystem of utilities,

vendors, developers and customers was

emerging.

That the NAESB ESPI standard is

embraced so widely means apps devel-

oped for Green Button data are likely to

work with multiple utilities. This delivers

an equally clear victory for interoper-

ability. One more win stems from the

common heritage that the NAESB stan-

dard shares with Smart Energy Profile 2.0,

the IEC Common Information Model,

and a companion effort by the American

Society of Heating, Refrigerating and Air-

conditioning Engineers. The data will not

be identically composed and structured,

but this convergence coupled with coexis-

tence form the second victory for interop-

erability. The final win for interoperability

requires revisiting scenario two and con-

sidering interoperability from a human

Utilities Committed to Implementing Green Button

Companies Supporting or Pledging to Support Green Button Data

American Electric Power

Austin Energy

Baltimore Gas & Electric

Bangor Hydro Electric Co.

CenterPoint Energy

Central Maine Power

Chattanooga EPB

Commonwealth Edison

Connecticut Light and Power

Consolidated Edison

Efficiency Vermont

Glendale Water and Power

JEA

Kootenai Electric Cooperative Inc.

National Grid

NSTAR

Oncor

Pacific Power

PacifiCorp

PECO

Pepco Holdings Inc.

PG&E

PPL Electric Utilities

Public Service Co. of New Hampshire

Reliant

Rocky Mountain Power

Sawnee Electric Membership Corp.

SDG&E

Southern California Edison

The United Illuminating Co.

TNMP

TXU Energy

Virginia Dominion Power

Western Massachusetts Electric Co.

Yankee Gas

Aclara

Belkin

Building Energy Inc.

BuildingIQ

C3

Calico Energy Services

EcoDog

eMeter - A Siemens Business

EnergyAi

EnergySavvy

EnerNex

EnerNOC

FirstFuel

Gas and Power Technologies

Genability

High Energy Audits

Honest Buildings

HyperTek

iControl Networks

Itron

Lucid

Melon

OPower

Oracle

People Power

Performance Systems Development

PlotWatt

Power2Switch

Retroficiency

Schneider Electric

Silver Spring Networks

Simple Energy

Smart Grid Labs

Smart Utility Systems

Snugg Home

SunRun

Tendril

Wattvision

23 | May 2013www.power-grid.com

as another point of acceleration for Green

Button this year. NIST also continues to

provide leadership with a new users guide

this year to its NIST Green Button Software

Developers Kit.

Most of the more than 3,000 U.S. utilities

are publicly owned municipal providers

or member-owned

cooperatives. That’s

why it has been a

milestone to add

municipal and

cooperative utili-

ties to the commit-

ments list last year, notably Jacksonville

Electric Authority in Florida, the Electric

Power Board of Chattanooga in Tennessee,

the Kootenai Electric Cooperative in Idaho,

and the Sawnee Electric Membership Corp.

in Georgia. With their unique approaches

to software services and their ownership

models, cooperatives might provide a dra-

matic area for Green Button growth in the

coming year.

This year marks the first international

expansion of Green Button into Ontario,

Canada. With support from the White

House Office of Science and Technology,

the DOE and NIST, a collaboration involv-

ing the Ministry of Energy, utilities and the

private sector is embracing the standard

and the Green Button with substantial

parallels but under the sovereign con-

trol of Canada. Their program is ambi-

tious and aggressive, with Green Button

Download My Data piloting this year and a

shared framework for implementing Green

Button Connect My Data uniformly across

the participants. Their effort eventually

will add another 2 million customers to

the initiative and attract Canadian software

developers.

The success of the Green Button ini-

tiative is credible evidence we are on the

right path.

perspective. In this context, interoperabil-

ity means the ability to recognize the value

of something and how it might be useful

with little or no detailed knowledge—a

shallow interface.

Robert Brown does not have to know

much about his energy data to know that

clicking the Green Button on his utility

website will allow him to share that data

with entities he trusts. Jane Brown does

not have to know much about her energy

data to know Cabin Buddy will use Green

Button data to provide a valuable service.

The third victory for interoperability lies

between the consumer and the data, and

that is why it’s called the Green Button and

not the NAESB REQ 21 Button.

Green Button is growing, but it’s no

longer only about volume; it’s growing in

value, consistency, diversity and across

borders.

San Diego Gas & Electric (SDG&E) was

among the first to implement Green Button

Download My Data, and it is among the

first to implement Green Button Connect

My Data. The difference is primarily auto-

mation but with corresponding increases

in privacy and security protections.

Download is the easiest to implement

and fits nearly every regulatory envi-

ronment that supports Internet access.

Connect is more involved from an infor-

mation technology perspective and might

require updates to regulatory policy but

simplifies access and authorization. In

either case, the value of doing so on

the utility side and the customer side

is increasing. Most utilities already have

dozens of needs to share consumption

data with contracted third parties, as well

as mandated data sharing for regulatory,

efficiency measurement and verification or

academic needs. Converging these feeds

to a single format in the case of Download

or a single data service in the case of

Connect is more efficient and easier to

manage. SDG&E reports high demand

for Connect requests from commercial

accounts and their service provider base,

although the service is still in pilot mode.

Chris King, global chief regulatory officer

of Siemens Smart Grid Solutions, referred

to the eMeter Meter

Data Management

System and said

utilities and ven-

dors can reduce the

number of custom

interfaces they need

to spend time and money on by migrat-

ing to Connect for within-enterprise data

exchange needs. For customers, the appli-

cations that serve commercial and residen-

tial customers continue to grow (although

Cabin Buddy does not exist just yet).

EnerNOC, the demand response com-

pany, recently announced its support of

Green Button data in some measurement

and verification applications.

Having a common standard is great but

does not guarantee that each implementa-

tion of the standard will result in identical

outputs, that is, the domain of a testing

and certification process. Developers have

encountered variations in Green Button

files from different implementing utilities,

which is normal at this point, and the uni-

formity is still light-years ahead of the pre-

cursor alternative, the Comma Separated

Value or CSV format (which served as

the basis for Jane’s actions in scenario

one). To meet the needs of utilities, indus-

try vendors and third-party vendors, the

UCAIug is creating test plans and a certi-

fication program for Download My Data

and Connect My Data, and the Electric

Power Research Institute is supporting

that effort with test case development and

additional tools. With the compounding

benefits of interoperability, this will serve