Driving to Grid 2020

The GridWise® Architecture Council (GWAC) envisions a United States smart grid electric system as a collaborative network of intelligent systems and devices exchanging information and offering abundant opportunities for product and market development. This electric system spans central and distributed generation, energy storage, transmission and distribution, customer interfaces and appliances, and electric vehicles, plus the information systems that help manage this equipment. The GridWise vision weaves together the most productive elements of our traditional infrastructure with new technologies that integrate easily and safely into a cohesive system. Using advanced telecommunications and information technology, we can create a “society” of devices that functions as an integrated, transactive system, while achieving ease of use by all customers.

Attaining this vision requires coordination among heterogeneous infrastructures supporting automated systems that will advance support for electric power and economic processes. An interoperability framework and roadmap has been developed to address the interface issues of transforming the existing situation to smart grid enabling solutions while encouraging competition and innovation.  The National Institute for Standards and Technology (NIST) is fulfilling a Congressional mandate to examine smart grid standards by establishing Domain Expert Working Groups (DEWG) as part of the Smart Grid Interoperability Panel (SGIP) to provide strategic perspectives. .  The SGIP established a number of Priority Action Plans (PAP) to specify requirements for standards.

This sixth annual Grid-Interop Forum builds on the success of the past events (see the event proceedings for 2007 - 2011) by helping to enhance interoperability activities in pursuit of the smart grid. The Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007 directed NIST to coordinate the development of a framework to achieve interoperability of smart grid devices and systems. This legislation heightened the need for stakeholders to address interoperability issues. At the 2010 Grid-Interop forum, NIST held organizational sessions for the SGIP and some PAPs in order to accelerate implementation of the roadmap for creating such an interoperability framework. Since then, NIST has been coordinating with a wide range of stakeholders to ensure full engagement in the interoperability efforts.

Abstracts should address ideas and proposals to advance interoperability of smart grids as articulated by the GridWise Architecture Council (please visit www.gridwiseac.org) and to implement the NIST Interoperability Roadmap. Grid-Interop offers the opportunity to discuss new and innovative ways for improving smart grid interactions, and the opportunity to participate in actions that shape the future of interoperability.

Call for Papers Subject Areas

Abstracts for papers are being sought to address the broad area of interoperability in the electric grid.  Some of the subject areas covered by Grid-Interop 2012 are the challenges in implementing interoperable solutions for smart grid problems including:

To provide organizational context, the agenda of Grid-Interop 2012 will be divided into tracks that correspond to the broad divisions of the GridWise Architecture Council interoperability stack.  These tracks include Business and Policy, Information Interoperability, Architecture, and Crosscutting topics.  Each of these tracks is described briefly and some key questions for each track are provided to spur the thoughts and imagination of the authors.