Over 50 People Attend Inaugural Member Meeting of OpenADR Alliance

Members establish important milestone for compliance and market adoption of OpenADR standards

Morgan Hill, CA, February 8, 2011: The OpenADR Alliance, a nonprofit corporation created to foster the development, adoption and compliance of a Smart Grid standard known as Open Automated Demand Response (OpenADR) held its inaugural member meeting in Berkeley, CA on January 20th and 21st. OpenADR is part of the national Smart Grid interoperability standards for two-way communication between an energy consumer and an energy service provider using price and reliability information for demand response and distributed energy resources. Hosted by founding member and sponsor, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL), over 50 people representing 32 different companies and organizations attended the two-day meeting. Strong interest in the OpenADR Alliance was reflected in the broad cross section of meeting attendees representing regulators, utilities, energy aggregators, controls companies, software providers, system integrators and consultants.

The two-day meeting started with a keynote address from Michael Gravely, manager of energy systems research office with the California Energy Commission's Public Interest Energy Research Program. Mr. Gravely spoke about the history of OpenADR and how it is ideally suited to support the current and future power and energy management needs of the California electricity grid by providing readily available automated demand response and lowering the costs of grid management for the California ratepayer over all other known alternatives. "In order to meet the 33% renewable energy target in California by 2020, the state will need low cost and reliable automated demand response provided by technologies like OpenADR to support the integration of high levels of solar and wind generation," said Mr. Gravely. "Over time we will also need to blend energy storage and OpenADR to optimize the grid operation to support our growing need for clean renewable energy. Ongoing research indicates this combination of automated demand response and energy storage provides California the most cost effective blended solution for future grid management."

The OpenADR Alliance members identified several key goals for the OpenADR Alliance, including :
•    Coordination with standards organizations for OpenADR standard development,
•    Development and implementation of a successful testing and compliance program,
•    Education and training of the OpenADR standard and it's implementation, and
•    Adoption and market acceptance of OpenADR-related products and applications.

I was very impressed with the level of industry support shown by those attending the inaugural OpenADR Alliance meeting, "said Mary Ann Piette, chairman of the OpenADR Alliance and Research Director of Demand Response Research Center, LBNL. "The members made significant progress identifying key goals and priorities for the OpenADR Alliance, along with the formation of technical and marketing committees."

[an error occurred while processing this directive]The newly formed technical committee will facilitate the transition from the OpenADR 1.0 technology originally created by LBNL and CEC to the OpenADR 2.0 standard which is rapidly emerging from the Energy Interop standards being developed by the Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards (OASIS). This committee will begin work soon to develop feature-sets and test cases for the OpenADR 2.0 standard which is the initial step in establishing a framework for the OpenADR testing and certification program. The new marketing committee will focus on various promotional activities and events to support the rapid adoption of OpenADR among regulators, ISOs, utilities, suppliers, energy aggregators and end-users.

This was also the first meeting of the OpenADR Alliance Board of Directors consisting of representatives from Honeywell, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Pacific Gas & Electric Company and Southern California Edison.

About the OpenADR Alliance
OpenADR Alliance is fostering the development, adoption, and compliance of the Open Automated Demand Response (OpenADR) standard through collaboration, education, training, testing, and certification. The OpenADR Alliance intends to work with related organizations such as the Smart Grid Interoperability Panel, Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards (OASIS), North American Energy Standards Board (NAESB), Utilities Communications Architecture International User's Group (UCAIug), Wi-Fi Alliance™, Zigbee Alliance™ and others as appropriate.

The OpenADR Alliance is open to all interested stakeholders sharing a common interest in facilitating and accelerating the use and adoption of the OpenADR standard for price- and reliability-based demand response. More information can be obtained at http://www.openadr.org/

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