By Rolf Bienert, Managing and Technical Director, OpenADR Alliance
As we catch our breath after a hugely successful 2nd OpenADR User European Conference in London last month, I thought it would be interesting to reflect on what we learnt and what lessons we can take forward into next year.
My thanks first of all to everyone who attended and for making it such a huge success, including members, speakers and special thanks to the Department for Energy Security & Net Zero (DESNZ) who co-hosted the event.
There were so many great discussions around a variety of topics with a special focus on the latest developments in the DESNZ’s IDSR program incorporating OpenADR, and a deep-dive presented by executives from the Energy Networks Association and UK Power Networks, the largest electricity distributor in the U.K.
But we had delegates and speakers from right across the globe, with reports and use cases from New Zealand, the Netherlands, Germany, and an update from Alliance Board member Pacific Gas and Electric Company on the progress of dynamic pricing in the U.S.
One message was clear; the influence of the OpenADR standard continues to grow and its impact on the industry cannot be underestimated. With much of the discussion around the potential for the recently released OpenADR 3.0, we heard how companies are incorporating OpenADR into their plans for programs in Europe and the rest of the world.
Terry Paddy at Cortexo – one of our most passionate advocates – travelled several thousand miles to talk about the progress of Cortexo’s energy flexibility services programs in New Zealand. Armed with his experience of working on projects that test the use of OpenADR from utility services down to the aggregators, Terry admitted he was also at the event, “to steal ideas from people and take them back home”!
Over the next few weeks, we’ll take a deeper dive into some of these sessions to explore them in more detail. But what was evident was that terms like ‘flexibility’ and ‘interoperability’ were top of mind. This is exactly what OpenADR is about so it’s exciting to see this recognised in a public forum.
We took some time out to speak to some of the delegates to get their take on what OpenADR and the User event means to them.
Bartosz Majewski, CEO at Codibly, systems integrator for the renewable energy and e-mobility sectors, discussed why so many companies are talking about the need for interoperability and how, “OpenADR is becoming such a widely adopted standard, helping to lower the barrier to energy flexibility for market participants and facilitate energy transition.”
Meanwhile, Robert Scudamore, product analyst from Passiv UK, which makes smart controls for heat pumps that improve efficiency and home comfort, spoke to us about the company’s smart energy heat pump project in collaboration with Samsung. He touched on the importance of flexibility for domestic devices, and how they are using OpenADR, “to communicate with demand side response service providers to enable heat pumps to operate flexibility and support the needs of the grid.”
We also heard from Oliver Sartor, Chief Economist at Voltalis, an independent aggregator that operates the largest virtual power plants for residential and commercial buildings in Europe. He talked about flexibility and interoperability as part of the company’s plans to enter the U.K. power market that will, “automate and operationalize gigawatts of residential and commercial energy flexibility to help the U.K. achieve its renewable energy goals.” He also stressed the importance of standards in promoting tomorrow’s flexibility markets in order to meet clean energy goals.
We hope attendees left with a better understanding of how the OpenADR standard is evolving the energy landscape and enjoyed some networking fun too.
In my next post-conference blog, I’ll talk about how we are collaborating with other industry alliances and standards organizations, including EEBus, the Flexiblepower Alliance Network, and the Energy Networks Association.
Take a few minutes to watch the speaker videos on our LinkedIn page to give you a taste of some of the great presentations over the two days. Presentation slide decks from the event will also be posted online once permissions have been cleared.