Atlanta, GA, U.S.A. --- (METERING.COM) --- September 3, 2010 - The American Society of Heating, Refrigerating and Air-Conditioning Engineers (ASHRAE) and National Electrical Manufacturers Association (NEMA) have started work to jointly develop a facility smart grid information model standard that will provide a common basis for electrical energy consumers to describe, manage and communicate about electrical energy consumptions and forecasts.

ASHRAE/NEMA Standard 201P, Facility Smart Grid Information Model, will define an object-oriented information model to enable appliances and control systems in homes, buildings and industrial facilities to manage electrical loads and generation sources in response to communication with a “smart” electrical grid and to communicate information about those electrical loads to utility and other electrical service providers.

The development of ASHRAE/NEMA 201P is being carried out as one of the priority action plans (PAP17) of the U.S. Smart Grid Interoperability Panel, which is overseeing the development of smart grid interoperability standards in the U.S.

The term “Facility Smart Grid Information” is intended to convey the nature of critical information originating from the customer operated “facility,” which deals with the representation and dynamics of loads including prediction, measurement and shedding. It is also aimed to distinguish PAP17 from PAP10, in which the North American Energy Standards Board (NAESB) is developing standard energy usage information.

At its first meeting earlier this week, seven essential tasks and five work groups were formed on use cases (WG1), terminology (WG2), conceptual diagram (WG3), White Paper (WG4), and CIM v 61850 (WG5).

The chair of the PAP17 work group is National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) staff member Steve Bushby.