By David Wagman
Chief Editor

With more than $4 billion in federal money available for smart grid demonstration projects, the IEEE (Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Inc.) has announced an initiative to develop a standards framework to help address interoperability issues.

IEEE spent a year deciding how it could best support a public-private approach that brings together generation, distribution, communications and sensors, Chuck Adams, president of the IEEE Standards Association told me last week. "This is an area where the heritage of IEEE could offer support."

On May 4, IEEE announced a smart grid initiative for the power engineering, communications and information technology industries. The initiative is called the IEEE 2030 Guide for Smart Grid Interoperability of Energy Technology and Information Technology Operation with the Electric Power System and End-Use Applications and Loads (or IEEE P2030 for short).

Intel Corp. will play host to the first IEEE P2030 meeting at its headquarters in Santa Clara, Calif., June 3-5. Three working groups will address power, information technology and communications aspects of the smart grid.

IEEE P2030 is intended to provide a knowledge base for understanding and defining smart grid interoperability with end use applications and loads. It seeks to integrate energy technology with information and communications technologies necessary to operate electric generation, delivery and end-use benefits that will permit two-way power flow with communication and control.

"IEEE P2030 will define key elements of the modernized grid and it will accelerate progress in making the smart grid a reality," Adams says.

IEEE P2030 is sponsored by the IEEE Standards Coordinating Committee 21 (SCC21) and chaired by Dick DeBlasio, program manager at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory in Golden, Colo.

DeBlasio told me the objective of IEEE P2030 is to develop a guide that defines the smart grid and lays out interoperability and functional requirements. He calls the effort to bring together a broad range of power generation technologies to discuss smart grid "monumental." The effort should pay off, he says, because a "grand need" exists for standards, in no small part because of the amount of federal money available.

For more information on the federal money available for smart grid demonstration projects, click here

Defining smart grid
DeBlasio, a long-time advocate of distributed generation, says that from a power generator's point of view smart grid is the use of power production and load management tools that also implies storage through optimization. In part it also means avoiding overgenerating electricity through inefficiency and adopting demand side management tools, he says.

DeBlasio says most thermal power plants use only around one third of the energy that goes into power generation. Smart grid will help generators control their base load to a greater extent. On the electric side, losses come through transformers and transmission. Smart grid enables improvements both to generation and distribution, he says.

Smart grid technologies—most of which already exist, according to DeBlasio—can help power providers better predict demand, which will enable them to operate more efficiently and burn less fuel.

DeBlasio estimates the amount of wasted energy could be reduced by one third to one half, contributing to improved carbon footprints. Technologies that include smart inverters and communications protocols are high on the list of ways to manage and control power. Those two items are currently major barriers to generation optimization. A third is energy storage.

"We're there"
Technology is not a barrier to smart grid, DeBlasio says. "From a technology point of view we're there," he says. The biggest barriers might lie in educating state regulators about the benefits that come from adopting smart grid.

Registration for in-person attendance at IEEE P2030 is now closed as the 150 meeting room limit has reached capacity. Individuals may register for remote attendance by accessing the registration site online.

The IEEE Standards Association develops consensus standards through a process that engages industry and brings together a broad stakeholder community. IEEE standards set specifications and best practices based on current scientific and technological knowledge. The IEEE-SA has a portfolio of over 900 active standards and more than 400 standards under development. For information on the IEEE-SA, see: http://standards.ieee.org.

IEEE (Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc.), the world's largest technical professional society, is commemorating its 125th anniversary in 2009. Through its more than 375,000 members in 160 countries, IEEE is considered a leading authority on a wide variety of areas ranging from aerospace systems, computers and telecommunications to biomedical engineering, electric power and consumer electronics.

IEEE publishes 30 percent of the world's literature in the electrical and electronics engineering and computer science fields and has developed nearly 900 active industry standards. The organization annually sponsors more than 850 conferences worldwide. Additional information about IEEE can be found at http://www.ieee.org.