OpenADR Continues to Move the Smart Grid Forward

Open Automated Demand Response (OpenADR)—the standard for open automation of building electricity demand response and price communications—has gained considerable attention since it emerged from Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory's (Berkeley Lab's) Demand Response Research Center in 2008. This non-proprietary DR interface facilitates open, standardized communication that enables power providers and managers to securely communicate wholesale and retail price and reliability, as well as DR program information, with customers using existing electronic communications. Developed as an effective means for DR service providers to maintain grid reliability and for customers to benefit (and profit from) demand reduction, OpenADR is now becoming an integral component of the U.S. and international Smart Grid.

OpenADR 1.0 was developed as a non-proprietary open communication specification by Berkeley Lab researchers and industrial partners for U.S. markets. In 2009, they donated it to the Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards (OASIS), where it became the basis for the formal international Energy Interoperation 1.0 standard. In 2010, OpenADR 1.0 became a U.S. Smart Grid standard supported by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) and the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). Today it supports more than 250 megawatts of automated DR in California alone, and cleantech market intelligence firm Pike Research predicts that it will be used in nearly 170,000 sites by 2018.

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