by Brianna Crandall — January 30, 2017 — A smart grid standard published in 2016 by global building technology society ASHRAE and the National Electrical Manufacturers Association (NEMA) has been approved as an International Organization for Standardization (ISO) standard.
ANSI/ASHRAE/NEMA Standard 201-2016, Facility Smart Grid Information Model (FSGIM), provides a common basis for electrical energy consumers to describe, manage and communicate about electrical energy consumptions and forecasts.
On November 17, ISO/TC 205 Building Environment Design unanimously approved the FSGIM standard in a draft international standard ballot. Because there were no negative votes and no comments to resolve, the standard can move directly to the publication process without an additional international vote, according to Standard 201 committee chair Steve Bushby. The standard will soon be published as ISO 17800.
Bushby pointed out:
This approval is important given that the standard provides one piece of a larger ecosystem of standards that support the global transformation of the current electric grid into a new smart grid. This grid will support the two-way flow of both information and electricity as well as widespread use of distributed, renewable generation sources.
The FSGIM standard builds upon the work of the Smart Grid Interoperability Panel (SGIP) Priority Action Plan 17 and several other smart grid standards, including the standards that support Green Button. The FSGIM standard defines key information that must be shared between electricity providers and electricity consumers along with internal operational and control information needed to control loads and generation sources in facilities (from homes to manufacturing plants) in cooperation with a smart grid.
The FSGIM is a seed standard intended to guide the evolution of control technology specific standards, such as ANSI/ASHRAE Standard 135, BACnet – A Data Communication Protocol for Building Automation and Control Networks, for use in various locations.
Standard 201 joins three other ASHRAE standards that have been adopted by ISO. Two of these standards, both direct adoptions, ISO 16484-5, a direct adoption of Standard 135, and ISO 16484-6, ANSI/ASHRAE Standard 135.1, Method of Test for Conformance to BACnet, are already being modified to include new features that would support the functionality defined in FSGIM.
Standard 201 is part of ASHRAE’s efforts to support SGIP in accelerating the development of interoperability for a nationwide smart electric power grid.
