Smart Grid Labs

The SGIP Begins 2012 with a Bang!

By Stuart McCafferty, VP of Government Projects and SGIP Project Manager

The Smart Grid Interoperability Panel (SGIP) kicked off 2012 with a bang adding new Governing Board members, adding new standards to the SGIP Catalog of Standards (CoS), and conducting virtual meetings of the Governing Board and the SGIP plenary.

After the completing the runoff elections in December, the 2012 Governing Board includes 7 brand new members:

• Mike Coop, ThinkSmartGrid – Stakeholder Category 3, Consumers – Residential, Commercial, and Industrial
• Bill Lawrence, Lockheed Martin – Stakeholder Category 9, Independent Power Producers
• Lisa Kaiser, Department of Homeland Security – Stakeholder Category 15, Relevant Federal Government Agencies
• Mark Smith, Reliant Energy – Stakeholder Category 17, Retail Service Providers
• David Forfia, Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) – Stakeholder Category 21, Transmission Operators and Independent System Operators
• Don Von Dollen, Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI) – Stakeholder Category 23, At-Large
• Doug Kim, Southern California Edison – Stakeholder Category 23, At-Large

The Catalog of Standards had three additional standards added following the December ballot, bringing the grand total of standards added since June, 2011 to 12.  The three new standards include:

• IEEE 1815-2010, IEEE Standard for Electric Power Systems Communications – Distributed Network Protocol (DNP3)
• eMIX, OASIS Energy Market Information eXchange
• SGIP 2011-0008-1, Transition and Coexistence from SEP 1.x to SEP 2.0

The Governing Board met on January 12^th, discussing several key topics and re-elected Steve Widergren as the SGIP Plenary Chair for his second consecutive term.  Dr. George Arnold discussed NIST’s expectations of the Board as the SGIP Administrator and NIST develop a draft business plan for SGIP self-sustainment.  Dr. Arnold made it clear that NIST would continue to be an active part of the SGIP and even plans to support some of the funding as long as it is supported by Congress.  But, the responsibility will be with the Governing Board to select the legal structure of the organization and to develop an execution plan.  The SGIP legal entity should be established by the middle of the year and we should begin executing the plan by the end of 2012.

The SGIP Plenary meeting is January 20.  This is a mandatory meeting for all Participating SGIP member organizations and attendance counts towards their voting rights.  The SGIP is seeking nominees for the upcoming standing committee ballots in the Smart Grid Architecture Committee, the Smart Grid Testing and Certification Committee, and the recently approved Implementation Methodology Committee.  The SGIP is also seeking nominees for the SGIP Plenary Vice Chair and Secretary.  The 2012 committee and Plenary Leadership voting will begin in late February and the newly-elected members will be in place by mid-March.