Our central experience in advanced metering began when, under contract to the California Institute for Energy Efficiency (CIEE), EnerNex completed a significant project with the California Energy Commission to develop a draft high level reference design for advanced metering and demand responsive infrastructure. The intent of this reference design was to facilitate widespread, interoperable, and standards-based advanced metering and demand response systems across the State of California. This document can be found at http://www.ucop.edu/ciee/dretd/documents/reference_design.pdf.

To promote the draft reference design and the vision it describes, EnerNex helped the CEC to organize public workshops to reach out to the demand response stakeholder community and solicit their input. In addition, we developed a checklist for regulators, utilities, and others to evaluate AMI system proposals. This can be found on the Internet at http://www.ucop.edu/ciee/dretd/documents/pier_dr_sumrprt.pdf

These workshops led to the creation of the OpenAMI task force (http://www.openami.org/), an industry-led body that is developing open, standardized protocol solutions for Advanced Metering Infrastructure (AMI). OpenAMI works under the guidance of UtilityAMI, a utility-only organization that focuses on ensuring AMI products evolve to meet the needs of their end-users. EnerNex co-founder Erich Gunther is the founder and group facilitator of UtilityAMI which has more than 90 utility members and guests. EnerNex consultant Grant Gilchrist served as the secretary and facilitator for OpenAMI. EnerNex has provided facilitation and contributions to both UtilityAMI and OpenAMI since the groups’ creation.

EnerNex continues to provide support to the CEC in facilitating the implementation of demand responsive infrastructure. Another California initiative is the intention by the state to require that every new building in California contain a Programmable Communicating Thermostat (PCT). Under contract to the CIEE, EnerNex has organized and facilitated workshops between vendors, utilities, the CEC, the California Public Utilities Commission and other stakeholders to discuss how a statewide communications system for implementing demand response through PCTs could be developed. EnerNex continues to help the CEC and other stakeholders determine the challenges and solutions for deploying such a system.