Interoperability. So, what’s in it for me?   In terms of actual benefits, interoperability enables more devices to communicate, improved operational efficiency, and of course, a more level playing field for entrepreneurial minds to innovate and create a much larger potential market.

Anto Budiardjo President & CEO, Clasma Events Inc. Contributing Editor Originally published The Energy Collective

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Unfortunately, it is perhaps one of the hardest things to get businesses and vendors excited about. Why? Well, despite the fact that interoperability facilitates the “greater good” for all Smart Grid players, interoperable features often have little or no bearing on a product’s core function.

In fact, many vendors who serve the utility industry have gotten used to innovating under closed – or proprietary – ideologies. After all, if your system is closed, you only have to play by your own rules, you innovate based on your own set of standards, and if you are successful, you’re likely to get repeat customers. The risk to this approach is high, as there is a good chance that your technology will not be adopted and that the broader benefits sought by your customers cannot be delivered.

But, because a Smart Grid operates as layers of communications and information technology (IT), often over our existing or non-grid specific infrastructures, the closed systems of the past will no longer be the best approach. Devices will need to talk upstream, downstream, and cross-stream for the true benefits of Smart Grid to be realized – from renewable integration, to enhanced efficiency and reliability, to consumer empowerment.

The crash of the Mars Climate Orbiter in 1999 was a classic example of a lack of information interoperability between scientific metric and U.S. English measurement units. A crash for the “grid” could mean a brownout or a large-scale blackout, like what we saw in 2003 – with huge implications for our economy.

So, how do we communicate with, and excite, the Smart Grid industry about the potential of interoperability -- outside of our nerdy standards circle? We must start to talk in terms of benefits all stakeholders can understand.  The Foundational Session at our upcoming Grid-Interop conference in Chicago will convene multiple stakeholder groups to discuss the benefits of interoperability for the many faces of Smart Grid. In my opinion, here’s the WIIFM (“what’s in it for me”) of Smart Grid interoperability for each of the following groups:

• Consumers & the Consumers Electronics Industry: Benefits for this group are probably the most obvious, especially when we think in terms of everyday technologies. First, think about the Internet – a universal, interoperable medium that average people can use to communicate, using a variety of tools without ever knowing the specifics of the underlying technologies.  We send emails, talk over Skype, and update our Facebook status, and miraculously, people all over the world – using PCs, Macs, and smart phones – can see and understand what we’re communicating. In addition to making communications easy and cost-effective for consumers, the Internet has opened doors for all sorts of innovation. With interoperable standards in place, broad market adoption is possible. Then, the dollars follow.
• Consumer Advocates: Consumer advocates should feel comforted to know that with interoperable standards for Smart Grid devices (i.e. in-home energy displays, controllers, and smart appliances), people will never face the same level of frustration with their home area networks as they do with their TV remote controls. Without a standard for remote controls, people are forced to get another “clicker” with every new television, Blue-Ray player, and digital cable box. Not only does this add to the cost of the technology, it also adds unnecessary burden, hassle, and confusion. With interoperable standards, consumers will know that any home energy manager will work with any smart meter or smart appliance – anywhere.
  
• Commercial & Industrial Buildings/Facilities:  Interoperable standards in the C&I space will mean that Honeywell’s HVAC will talk to Siemens’ energy management system without any issue. When facility managers don’t have to worry about creating custom solutions to integrate disparate systems, they will have more choices in the vendors they can work with – and ultimately, lower technology costs. In the long run, this makes cleaner, greener, more energy-efficient buildings more attainable.
  
• Utilities: Whether you’re in generation, transmission, or distribution, Smart Grid will unleash terabytes of new data. The only way this data will ever be useful is if it’s effectively stored and shared – with different parts of the grid, and even across the utility’s own silos. For example, while meter data once served the utility’s customer service and billing departments, it can now be useful to operations and engineering as it’s fed into outage management systems and used for system planning.  For this to happen, all of these systems must speak the same “language.”  At the end of the day, we get a more reliable, cost-effective grid.
  
• Independent & Regional System Operators (ISOs and RTOs): ISOs and RTOs function to coordinate generation and transmission, while keeping supply and demand in balance. As distributed generation and demand response become more prevalent with the growth of Smart Grid, the need for ISOs and RTOs to communicate with multiple utility systems, departments, and vendor technologies will increase rapidly. Interoperable standards will ensure all parts of the grid can speak to one another, while sending and responding to commands that translate equally system-wide. In this case, interoperability isn’t a choice. It’s a necessity.
• Policy & Regulatory: At the end of the day, policymakers and regulators need to understand the benefits to the rest of these stakeholder groups, and ultimately to the American consumer. As the Smart Grid “lubricant,” interoperability standards are required to realize all of the big-picture benefits, in a big-picture way, including: renewable integration, consumer empowerment, reduced carbon emissions, and enhanced grid reliability. The government is already headed in the right direction, pouring money into standards activities spearheaded by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). The job of the policymaker and regulator is to then ensure that new policies and regulations support interoperability and innovation. So, what’s in it for the politician? Public benefit, of course (and votes).
  

Smart Grid is how we connect all parts of the future energy system together to become the new smarter electricity grid, from generation to consuming devices – just like the Internet is the medium we use to connect people and ideas. If our grid can’t communicate without constant custom translations, we’ll never realize Smart Grid benefits for the environment, our economy, and society at large.

We hope to see you at Grid-Interop in a couple of weeks, where it is our entire mission to bring the right people together and collaborate around the opportunities and challenges presented by interoperability. Only then can we accelerate Smart Grid – and ultimately, all of the benefits it will bestow upon us.

About the Author

Anto Budiardjo is President and CEO of Clasma Events, a global event company specializing in conferences at the center of the worldwide energy discussion. Focusing on Smart Grid, connectivity, and the new energy economy, Clasma’s major events include: ConnectivityWeek, GridWeek, and Grid-Interop. Anto can be reached at Anto@Clasma.com. Follow him on Twitter @AntoBud.

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