by Ann Withanee — November 1, 2010—The IEC (International Electrotechnical Commission) recently announced it will launch its online IEC Smart Grid Standard Mapping Solution. This multidimensional interactive tool will create a map of the smart grid and enable smart grid managers around the world to quickly identify IEC international smart grid standards, position them in relation to their role in the smart grid, and point out possible interactions and overlaps. The announcement was made at the GridWeek conference, during a panel discussion on Global Markets and Global Standards for the smart grid.
The mapping solution will launch by the end of 2010 or early 2011, and has already been recognized by major smart grid standard players, including United States’ National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST).
The IEC currently provides the large majority of all standards needed to build the smart grid, with new standards being brought into the portfolio on an ongoing basis. The IEC is bringing relevant national or regional standards via a fast track system into the international consensus process. Gradually the new mapping solution will allow other organizations to add their own standards in layers in addition to IEC international standards.
The IEC Smart Grid Standard Mapping Solution will help smart grid project managers to easily identify the standards they need in their smart grid. Currently, this process must be done manually, often by reading through thousands of pages of standard documents, leading to non-reproducible results with the danger of creating more problems than are solved.
The solution will be constantly updated, new use cases and standards will be continuously fed into the open source database. It will allow users to search by pointing to areas or links between elements of the electric system.
For more information, visit the Web site.
