The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) recently issued an initial list of standards and other elements needed to support an interoperable smart grid. The NIST Framework and Roadmap for Smart Grid Interoperability Standards, Release 1.0, concentrates on standards that will help achieve interoperability among devices and systems. OPC Unified Architecture (UA) is one of the few non-industry specific standards to make the list.

The whole process of choosing which standard makes the cut requires a lot of effort to ensure that those chosen meet the industry specific needs and have sufficient vendor support to encourage a market of compatible products. In order to coordinate work within the SmartGrid community to work towards the achieving interoperability, NIST has coordinated the formation of Domain Expert Working Groups (DEWGs). The DEWG members are subject matter experts representing from utilities, vendors, academia, industry, standards groups, and federal agencies. The working group most relevant to OPC UA is the Industry-to-Grid (I2G) collaboration. As on OPC UA vendor, MatrikonOPC is an active part of the I2G Working group.

I’ll be attending the upcoming ARC forum in Orlando, where Keith Stouffer, the co-chair of the I2G Working group will be presenting on topics related to SmartGrid initiatives. If you’re going to be at the conference and looking to learn more on OPC applications to the SmartGrid or on the I2G working group, let me know. Hope to see you there.

If not you can always read more on it on our OPC and the SmartGrid page.