SGIP will migrate to SGIP 2.0 in January 2013

The Smart Grid Interoperability Panel (SGIP) will transition from a public-private partnership to a self-financed, legal entity that retains a working partnership with government early 2013.

Since the formation of the SGIP in 2009, the activity of the SGIP by NIST personnel and member volunteers has been supported and enabled by the work of a Program Administrator that has been fully funded by NIST in the approximate amount of $5 to 7 million per year; a significant portion of those funds came from the ARRA program.

The SGIP 2.0 has five principal responsibilities:

1. To provide the technical guidance and coordination necessary to facilitate standards development for Smart Grid interoperability
2. To identify and specify the necessary testing and certification requirements, including providing the underlying rationale, to assess the achievement of interoperability using Smart Grid Standards
3. To oversee the performance of these activities to maintain momentum and achievement
4. To proactively inform and educate smart grid industry stakeholders on the definition of and the benefits attributable to interoperability
5. To conduct an outreach to similar organizations in other countries to help establish global interoperability alignment

Download the SGIP 2.0 Business Sustainment Plan - Roadmap to the Future of Smart Grid Interoperability

Interoperability requires subsets (or profiles) of the various standards. It would be great if the SGIP 2.0 would support the development of profiles for specific applications, e.g., for PV inverter with an IE 61850 interface. IEC 61850 provides many information models and services – just a few may be needed for very simple PV inverters. These profiles should have very few (or better no) optional definitions. If vendor A uses option 1 and B uses option 2 – then interoperability may be limited.

Somebody told me the other day: “If you accept a special feature of a vendor’s product, you may have to use this vendor’s products forever.” Don’t use any special function! If a profile has no options, then all products have to support the same information models and services … and protocols.