OpenADR Alliance: 2020 Year in review and 2021 Outlook
Rolf Bienert, Executive and Technical Director, OpenADR Alliance
The OpenADR Alliance has seen a lot of momentum especially for DER and EV Charging. Over the last 12 months despite a pandemic, the Alliance has increased its membership with the addition of 24 new member companies bringing our global membership to over 167 members. Member companies also certified 31 new systems bringing the total of certified products to 222.
Although in-person meetings were canceled or postponed, we still managed to participate and speak in almost a dozen virtual industry related events. We continued to educate the industry with our latest white paper DER Control and How to Implement Smart Inverter Management with OpenADR and hosted an entire series of global webinars. The webinar topics and recordings can be found at https://www.openadr.org/webinar-series.
Upcoming in March we are excited to host a two-day OpenADR Virtual Event. This LIVE virtual event will include presentations from industry experts and is open to all professionals interested in gaining a better understanding of how the OpenADR standard is being applied in the electricity market and other distribution system reliability activities.
The OpenADR Alliance is seeing significant progress in global market adoption of the OpenADR standard for use in effectively and securely managing distributed energy resources (DERs) and Electric Vehicle Support Equipment (EVSE) in electric grids. To learn more on the agenda and to register please visit: http://openadr.memberclicks.net/message2/link/cc0828b3-a809-4fb2-932c-c4013a5c00ac/1
In 2020 we worked closely with industry partners including LF Energy, a Linux Foundation nonprofit seeking to accelerate the energy transition of the world's grids and transportation systems through open source. They recently announced their latest project, openLEADR. This project creates an open source implementation of OpenADR, the open standard for exchanging demand response information among global utilities, aggregators and energy management and control systems to better manage the supply and demand of energy. To view the press release, please visit here.
NEEA, the Northwest Energy Efficiency Alliance, approached the OpenADR Alliance in the summer of 2020 to discuss an opportunity to add the CTA-2045 modular communications port certification to OpenADR’s already existing certification program. CTA-2045 can enable an appliance to accept varying communication modules using one common port, similar to USB for IT equipment. CTA-2045 provides an ideal in building connection downstream from the OpenADR signal. It therefore complements OpenADR significantly when it comes to appliances. NEEA has started investing into a test tool and will eventually turn the tool and the program information over to the OpenADR Alliance.
As we enter 2021, we encourage you to support the implementation of the OpenADR 2.0 Demand Response Program Guide. This guide defines OpenADR best practices for the DR industry and will play an important role in the standardization of DR programs and the solutions used to implement them. Be sure to check out the latest blogs from members Electriq Power and Universal Devices to learn more about the importance of the certification program here.
Also ahead, the California Energy Commission (CEC) is working on establishing a price distribution system. Goal is to be able to reach a large percentage (99% mentioned) of CA customers to provide instant price information. This system is meant to be a one-way communication tool, sending the price tiers only, based on a request from the client. We worked with representatives of the CEC to showcase an OpenADR solution (a limited OpenADR 2.0b schema). The OpenADR Alliance is also looking at implementing and operating a test server for member companies. We will need to manage the cost and maintenance, but we hope to have a concept in place in Q1 of 2021.
Other topics on the radar for 2021 include the new common JSON programming tools, easier access to security certificates, and other new requirements.
We will continue to keep you updated on our progress in these areas. For more information please be sure to visit www.openadr.org.