IBM, OASIS Advance Smart Grid Initiatives

Smart-grid initiatives are taking the form of many different partnerships including product improvements, standards development and demonstration projects that are designed to improve reliability and efficiency, and ease the integration of network capabilities into smart-grid networks.

As an example, smart-grid solution provider Trilliant Inc. is integrating its UnitySuite of smart-grid management software with IBM’s WebSphere application server capabilities and Tivoli products to help utility companies expand their smart-grid initiatives.

The WebSphere Enterprise Services Bus capabilities simplifies and enhances the integration of smart-grid network capabilities into utility enterprise grid networks, while the Tivoli components delivers a new level of enterprise event management, real-time system visibility, enterprise dashboards, automatic diagnostics and notification, said Trilliant.

Trilliant and IBM will also partner on joint solution architecture development and integrated solution offerings for the global utility market, as well as cooperate on industry standards development.

To help define transaction standards for the smart grid, OASIS, an international open standards consortium, has formed a new committee that will develop Web services-based information and communication models for exchanging energy pricing, reliability and emergency signals, reports Renew Grid.

The OASIS Energy Interoperation Technical Committee will base its work on the Open Automated Demand Response Communication Standards (OpenADR), donated by Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory’s Demand Response Research Center (DRRC), according to the article. Participants include IBM, Microsoft, Cisco, CPower, EnerNOC, Google, Grid Net, and the U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology.

To gather research data for future smart-grid development, more than a dozen Northwest energy-related companies have partnered to submit a bid to the U.S. Department of Energy for a $178-million, five-year smart grid project in five states, reports the Portland Business Journal.

Led by Columbus, Ohio-based Battelle Memorial Institute, which operates the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, the partnership includes a dozen utilities in five Northwest states, including Portland General Electric and Portland-based Bonneville Power Administration, according to the newspaper.

The project involves more than 600,000 metered customers in Idaho, Montana, Oregon, Washington and Wyoming to study smart grid benefits at 15 test sites, reports the Portland Journal. Researchers told the newspaper they will use the data to study consumer behavior and to determine whether new technologies will modify consumer behavior.

Project participants will pay for half of the $178 million cost of the project, reports Renew Grid. The project is expected to employ 1,500 workers in manufacturing, installation and operating of smart-grid equipment.