Under a national Smart Grid effort, ASHRAE and the National Electrical Manufacturers Association (NEMA) are jointly developing a standard that would provide a common basis for electrical energy consumers to describe, manage and communicate about electrical energy consumptions and forecasts. A kickoff meeting to begin work on the proposed standard is taking place Aug. 30-31 at ASHRAE Headquarters in Atlanta.

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.

“Smart grids lead to smart meters lead to smart systems”, ASRHAE President Lynn G. Bellenger, P.E., said. “As the smart grid adjusts to suit load distribution and maintain power quality and reliability, one of the steps will be to communicate with building metering systems which, in turn, will communicate with building systems and equipment. This ties into demand response control to reduce peak demand. One day in the future, we likely will have real-time pricing with dramatic differences in power costs dependent upon the time of day or grid load”.

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