Article #111 - Key Standards Organizations Related to Gridwise

The following list summarizes key standards-related organizations that may be relevant to the GridWise™ context.

• AHAM

  The Association of Home Appliance Manufacturers is a home appliance organization. They are creating standards for "connected home appliances" to promote new features and services through networking. AHAM standards are presented to the American National Standards Institute (ANSI) for recognition as American National Standards.

• ANSI

  The American National Standards Institute (ANSI) is a privately funded federation of business and industry, standards developers, trade associations, labor unions, professional societies, consumers, academia, and government agencies. ANSI does not itself write standards. The United States National Committee of the IEC is a committee of ANSI representing US interests at the IEC. ANSI is also the sole US representative to the ISO organization. It sits as one of the five permanent members of the ISO governing council.

• ASHRAE

  ASHRAE is a professional society for the heating, ventilation and refrigeration engineers. ASHRAE, founded in 1894, is an international organization of 55,000 persons. Its sole objective is to advance through research, standards writing, publishing and continuing education the arts and sciences of heating, ventilation, air conditioning and refrigeration to serve the evolving needs of the public. ASHRAE sponsors research, develops standards, publishes technical data and organizes meetings and educational activities for both its members and other professionals concerned with refrigeration processes and the design and maintenance of indoor environments. ASHRAE standards and guidelines include uniform methods of testing for rating purposes, describe recommended practices in designing and installing equipment and provide other information to guide the industry.

• ATIS

  ATIS is a United States based body committed to developing and promoting technical and operations standards for the communications and related information technologies industry worldwide using an open approach. Over 1,400 industry professionals from more than 400 communications companies actively participate in ATIS' 16 industry committees and incubator solutions programs.

• CEA

  CEA standardization activities include those associated with the design and manufacture of consumer electronics (CE) products and related services, CE device/service and device/device interoperability and transmission signals that may traverse the demarcation points of telecommunications infrastructures.

• DISA

  Standardization to facilitate the interbusiness/institutional electronic interchange relating to order placement and processing, shipping and receiving, products and services, invoicing, payment and cash application data. The DISA -- Accredited Standards Committee (ASC) X12 develops standards for cross-industry electronic exchange of business information.

• EIA

  In 1997, EIA changed from the Electronic Industries Association to the Electronic Industries Alliance, an alliance of 5 trade associations. The two associations within the EIA which are significant for GridWise are:

  • CEA - The Consumer Electronics Association
  • TIA - The Telecommunications Industry Association
• FIATECH

  FIATECH is a not-for-profit, industry-led collaborative for technology development to support FIAPP (Fully Integrated and Automated Project Processes) in capital projects. FIATECH members form project committees to develop.

• IEC

  The International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) is the leading global organization that prepares and publishes international standards for all electrical, electronic and related technologies.

• IEEE

  The website contains IEEE standards for various technical fields including power and energy area. The parent organization, IEEE is an International trade body-including IEEE-SA and IEEE-ISTO and IEEE Societies. Some IEEE "Societies" have technical activities groups which develop standards, at some point this standards development is transferred to IEEE-SA. IEEE Councils regroup several IEEE societies. Societies relevant to GridWise include: IEEE Communications Society, IEEE Computer Society, IEEE Consumer Electronics Society, IEEE Control Systems Society, IEEE Power Electronics Society, IEEE Power Engineering Society.

  It may be in the interest of GridWise to aim to create an IEEE GridWise Council, regrouping the various IEEE Societies touching on GridWise.

  The IEEE-ISTO is a sort of prepackaged consortia home-base for initiatives and standards-making which doesn't follow the classic IEEE track.

• IETF

  The Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) is a large open international community of network designers, operators, vendors, and researchers concerned with the evolution of the Internet architecture and the smooth operation of the Internet. It is open to any interested individual.

• ISA

  Standards in the fields of instrumentation, measurement, control, and automation.

• ISO

  This site contains a list of technical committees that work on standardization of various fields. Appropriate committees need to be researched. Many US SDO committees provide input to ISO Committees through the U.S. technical advisory groups (TAGs). All United States participation is implemented by the selection/establishment of US Tags for ISO technical committees or subcommittees.

• ITI-INCITS

  ITI is the pre-eminent trade association representing the top U.S. providers of information technology products and services. INCITS's mission is to produce market-driven, voluntary consensus standards in the area of Information Technology. Some activities are: intercommunication among computing devices and information systems (including the Information Infrastructure, SCSI interfaces, Geographic Information Systems), database, and security. (previously ASC X3 & NCITS). INCITS is the primary U.S. focus of standardization in the field of Information and Communications Technologies (ICT), encompassing storage, processing, transfer, display, management, organization, and retrieval of information.

• NAESB

  The objects and purposes of GISB (now NAESB) are to adopt, promulgate, amend, revise, modify, interpret, rescind, and publish and otherwise make available to all interested persons, standards applicable to electronic information exchange and electronic communications necessary to promote more competitive and reliable gas service, including electronic data interchange (EDI) record formats and communications protocols; provided, however that GISB shall not address, adopt, promulgate, amend, revise, modify, interpret, rescind, and publish standards that prescribe the internal business practices of individuals.

• NEMA

  The objects and purposes of GISB (now NAESB) are to adopt, promulgate, amend, revise, modify, interpret, rescind, and publish and otherwise make available to all interested persons, standards applicable to electronic information exchange and electronic communications necessary to promote more competitive and reliable gas service, including electronic data interchange (EDI) record formats and communications protocols; provided, however that GISB shall not address, adopt, promulgate, amend, revise, modify, interpret, rescind, and publish standards that prescribe the internal business practices of individuals.

• NERC

  The North American Electric Reliability Council (NERC) is a not-for-profit organization formed as a result of the Northeast blackout in 1965 to promote the reliability of the bulk electric systems that serve North America. It works with all segments of the electric industry and customers, to "keep the lights on" by developing and encouraging compliance with standards for the reliable operation and adequacy of supply of these systems.

  NERC comprises ten Regional Reliability Councils (RRC) that account for virtually all of the electricity supplied in the United States, Canada, and a portion of Baja California Norte, Mexico. The participants of NERC are not only the ten RRC owner-members, but also many other organizations from all segments of the electric industry: investor-owned utilities; independent power producers; power marketers; federal, provincial and state regulators; and end-use customers. NERC works with all segments of the electric industry to develop Organization Standards for the reliable planning and operation of bulk electric systems.

  The NERC Organization Standards define certain obligations or requirements of entities that plan, operate, and use the bulk electric systems of North America. These obligations or requirements must be material to reliability and must be measurable. Each Organization Standard must enable or support one or more of the NERC Reliability Principles and be consistent with all Reliability and Market Interface Principles. The purpose of a standard is to support the reliability of the North American bulk electric systems without causing undue restrictions or adverse impacts on competitive electricity markets.

  The Energy Policy Act of 2005 authorized the creation of a self-regulatory electric reliability organization (ERO) that spans North America, with Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) oversight in the United States. The legislation makes compliance with North American Electric Reliability Council (NERC) and regional reliability standards mandatory and enforceable; presently compliance is voluntary in the United States. The legislation respects the international character of the bulk electric system by ensuring that the ERO applies for and receives comparable recognition and approvals from government authorities in Canada. In July 2006 NERC was certified by FERC as the Electric Reliability Organization (ERO) for the United States. NERC is also seeking recognition as the ERO from governmental authorities in Canada.

  NERC coordinates the development of reliability standards with NAESB and the ISO/RTO Council.

• NIST

  NIST's mission is to develop and promote measurement, standards, and technology to enhance productivity, facilitate trade, and improve the quality of life. (Within US Dept of Commerce, with a MOU between NIST and ANSI).

• OASIS

  OASIS is a not-for-profit, global consortium that drives the development, convergence and adoption of e-business standards. OASIS produces worldwide standards for security, Web services, XML conformance, business transactions, electronic publishing, topic maps and interoperability within and between marketplaces.

• OMG

  OMG mission is to produce and maintain software standards for interoperable enterprise applications. OMG IDL (interface definition language) is already an ISO standard. A Utility Domain Task Force has recently been merged with the Manufacturing Technology and Industrial Systems Domain Task Force. They have generated standards and submitted them to the IEC TC57 WG13 for adoption as well.

• OPC

  The OPC Foundation is dedicated to ensuring interoperability in automation by creating and maintaining open specifications that standardize the communication of acquired process data, alarm and event records, historical data, and batch data to multi-vendor enterprise systems and between production devices. Production devices include sensors, instruments, PLCs, RTUs, DCSs, HMIs, historians, trending subsystems, alarm subsystems, and more as used in the process industry, manufacturing, and in acquiring and transporting oil, gas, and minerals.

• OSGi

  An independent, non-profit corporation composed of 75 technology companies working to define and promote open standards for the delivery of multiple services over wide-area networks to local networks and devices in the home, small office, and the automobile. The OSGi specification defines an open framework that enables multiple software services to be loaded and run on a services gateway. Once resident in a vehicle, an OSGi-compliant services gateway enables the delivery of managed services and information to the vehicle, and also creates a platform for information and services exchange between home networks and tomorrow's car networks.

• RosettaNet

  A self-funded, non-profit organization, RosettaNet is a consortium of major Information Technology, Electronic Components, Semiconductor Manufacturing and Telecommunications companies working to create and implement industry-wide, open e-business process standards. These standards form a common e-business language, aligning processes between supply chain partners on a global basis. RosettaNet is a subsidiary of the Uniform Code Council, Inc. (UCC).

• UN/CEFACT

  The United Nations, through UN/CEFACT, supports activities dedicated to improving the ability of business, trade and administrative organizations from developed, developing and transitional economies to exchange products and relevant services effectively. Its principal focus is to facilitate international transactions, through the simplification and harmonization of processes, procedures and information flows and so contribute to the growth of global commerce.

• W3C

  The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) both develops and promotes standard technologies for the Web. It the international body responsible for XML, RDF, SVG, and is working on standards for the "semantic web" which is to make machines figure out the meaning of information, thus making communication "wiring" more flexible. The technology and architectural principles align well with the GridWise needs.