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Article #106 - Context Specific Views of GridWise Standards Landscape

Research on the evolution of semantics, on the semantic web, and on metadata all underline the importance of context in interpreting information. In this light and given the breadth of contexts with some relevance to GridWise™, several different viewpoints are used to present GridWise-related standards efforts. Each of the following lists presents GridWise-related standards from a different viewpoint, imagining which standards efforts, important to actors in a given sector, would appear to be relevant to GridWise from their own vantage point:

• A Home/ Residential/ Commercial/ Buildings View
• An IT and Telecommunications View
• A Market, Trading, Economics View
• An Industry/ Systems/ Control View
• An Energy/ Electric Generation, Transmission and Distribution View

Each table presents GridWise-related standards efforts which actors in those fields would be likely to be aware of and use. These contexts are in some areas overlapping and interrelated. The last view, Energy/Electric Generation, Transmission and Distribution, has the most obvious standards efforts related to GridWise. However, the technologies and standards efforts identified in the other views are not less important because in many cases they represent vast sectors of the economy, large sunk costs, or visionary new technologies that will be vital to the future of GridWise.

Different Points of View from Different Sectors

In cartography, a common two-dimensional Mercator projection of the world can greatly distort the relative surface of areas like Greenland and can provide quite different images of the world depending on whether the projection is centered on North America or on India. Similarly, applying different viewpoints and different mapping projections to GridWise-related standards efforts will effect how this information is interpreted by different readers.

In the field of electronic data interchange (EDI) as in more recent research on the semantic web, experts have been confronted with the difficulties stemming from different viewpoints. A given word like 'price', or a given XML tag like 'price' may be understood quite differently by different actors who must share the information with disputes between 'price' and 'cost', 'with tax' and 'after tax', 'local currency' or not, etc. There is no 'right' or 'best' definition, and different actors will continue seeing things in different ways: "multiple different legitimate and often essential views exist." (Madnick 2001).

In these separate sectors, different standards have emerged reflecting different business contexts, different technology contexts, and different semantic contexts. Current trends show that as technologies evolve and mature, and business practices overlap, standards efforts are now often focusing on convergence and interoperability. Global efforts toward convergence and interoperability in communications, information and business transaction technologies are as important to GridWise as are specific standards efforts in energy system control and communication.

Results from Views of GridWise-Related Standards

The five viewpoints presented above - Home/Residential /Commercial/Buildings, IT/Telecommunications sectors, Market/Trading/Economics, Industry/Systems/Control, and Energy/Electric Generation, Transmission and Distribution - provide a relatively clear set of windows into various facets of the vast world of standards and technologies related to GridWise. There are overlaps, and experts could easily debate the choices of categories and groupings chosen, yet these five viewpoints do allow us to arrange similar efforts together and gather some clear insight to the key issues in each domain.

This study has focused on standards groups and efforts that seem to have direct significance within the future scope of the GridWise vision - so only a fragment of the overall standards work of many of these groups is compiled here. The extent and range of different standards efforts in each of these various viewpoints remind us that GridWise interoperability must extend its vision well beyond the traditional frontiers of power and utility sector standards.

From A Home/ Residential/ Commercial/ Buildings View, one might say GridWise technologies and standards efforts revolve around smart homes, smart appliances, smart buildings and smart communications. At the communication level for data transfer and transport, many standards efforts are considering different physical (wires or wireless) media and protocols for in-home or in-building data transfer, contending with issues such as existing or non-existing cabling and divergent needs between control and entertainment. At the data use level, efforts generally focus on building performance, management and dynamics or on home electronic systems and gateways between the home and external systems and services.

From An IT and Telecommunications View, many efforts are aimed at a higher level of frameworking and architecting. Within more specific efforts, we may note that there are extensive, different efforts underway surrounding e-business and security in transactions, as well as a visible effort toward interoperability.

The relatively few standards development efforts in A Market, Trading, Economics View demonstrate the immaturity and market-driven tendencies in this area, where many implementations exist, but are not standardized, and much of the technological basis stems from academia. A considerable basis of rules and experience surrounding open market structures may be found in Security Exchange Commission rulings for markets such as Nasdeq, although the process and structure behind these rules does not follow a typical path of standards development. Though no specific SDO involved in these efforts was identified within the scope of this study, the Nasdeq example may provide valuable input for defining GridWise technical direction.

An Industry/ Systems/ Control View presents several standards areas that are historically linked to energy standards. It also demonstrates a tendency to move toward integrating XML compatibility into the world of industrial standards.

An Energy/ Electric Generation, Transmission and Distribution View reflects the breadth of the energy sector, and complexity of communication and control technology and business process issues within this domain. Interestingly, there is only a very small number of SDOs involved in these standards, which may reflect the non-market-based past of these areas.

Within these viewpoints, the various efforts are also classified according to an approximate level of specificity - whether they address overarching issues such as architecture, transverse issues such as security, or specific applications. This dichotomy is not clear cut, but it does provide some structure for readers who are unlikely to be familiar with every viewpoint covered.