NIST Smart Grid and CPS Newsletter - January 2017

Table of Contents

• GCTC SuperClusters Are Up and Running
• Green Button Initiative Drives Innovations in API Technology
• Two Upcoming Meetings to Focus on Synchrophasors and Sensing for Electrical Power Systems (March 22-24, 2017)
• Transactive Energy and DER: Workshops and White Paper
• Department of Energy Releases Quadrennial Energy Review (QER)
• SGIP Update

GCTC SuperClusters Are Up and Running

NIST’s Global City Teams Challenge (GCTC) is focusing special attention this year on “SuperClusters”— multi-city, multi-stakeholder deployments of smart city projects in sectors such as energy, transportation, and public safety.   The creation of these multi-team SuperClusters will enable existing GCTC action clusters to work together, thereby increasing the scale and impact of their efforts.

Since the October 2016 SuperCluster Kickoff Event held in Washington, D.C., six SuperClusters have ramped up and begun work. They have each been meeting regularly by conference call, and several have established Google Groups. Two SuperClusters have already scheduled face-to-face meetings in February 2017, and the other SuperClusters will be announcing their face-to-face meeting details soon.

Each of the SuperClusters welcomes new participants. Here is contact information for those wishing to get involved in one of these SuperClusters:

• Transportation:  This SuperCluster is holding a face-to-face workshop in Portland, Oregon, on February 1-2, 2017. Agenda and registration details are available online.
• City Platform:  This SuperCluster is holding a face-to-face workshop in Kansas City, Missouri, on February 7-8, 2017.  Agenda and registration details are available online.
• Public WiFi: This SuperCluster has established a Google Group.  To join, visit the invitation page online.
• Public Safety, Emergency, Disaster, Resilience:  This SuperCluster has established a Google Group.  To join, visit the invitation page online.
• Energy/Utility/Water: To join this group, please contact Ed Davalos <ed306n [at] att.com (ed306n[at]att[dot]com)>.
• Healthcare/Environment: To join this group, please contact Alan Howze <ahowze [at] wycokck.org (ahowze[at]wycokck[dot]org)>.

In addition to the work of the SuperClusters, many of the action clusters that have participated in the past are continuing to develop their projects.  Several new action clusters have been formed in recent weeks, including  Washoe County (Nevada), Wake County (North Carolina), Westminster (Maryland), Grenoble (France), and Fujisawa (Japan).

All groups are looking ahead to the 2017 GCTC Expo, which will be held in late summer 2017.  The 2016 GCTC Expo, held in June 2016 in Austin, Texas, attracted thousands of visitors as well as significant media attention.

An additional opportunity for action clusters to present their projects and interact with others will be at a workshop to be held in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, on April 21, 2017, co-located with CPS Week.  The Second International Workshop on Science of Smart City Operations and Platforms Engineering (SCOPE) in partnership with Global City Teams Challenge (GCTC)—SCOPE 2017 with GCTC—is accepting paper submissions through February 3.

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Green Button Initiative Drives Innovations in API Technology

In a recently published series of articles, “How The Green Button Initiative Secured Its APIs With OAuth,” NIST’s Martin Burns and David Wollman describe how application programming interface (API) technologies are used in the Green Button Initiative. The series of articles, published by ProgrammableWeb as part of its API University, discusses the history and current status of the Green Button Initiative and how it uses OAuth 2.0 to perform third-party authorization and access.

APIs have been attracting increased attention from the business community in recent months. (See, for example, “How APIs Drive New Digital Business” in Forbes or “The Strategic Value of APIs” in the Harvard Business Review.)  For a good introduction to APIs and their importance, see API University’s “APIs 101.”

For more information about the Green Button Initiative, visit the website of the Green Button Alliance, a non-profit organization formed in 2015 to foster the development, compliance, and wide-spread adoption of the Green Button standard.  Additional technical information for Green Button developers is available at greenusa-buttondata.org.

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Two Upcoming Meetings to Focus on Synchrophasors and Sensing for Electrical Power Systems (March 22-24, 2017)

Two meetings, to be held at the NIST campus in Gaithersburg, Maryland (March 21-24, 2017), will be of interest to representatives from the utility industry, manufacturers and vendors, academia, national laboratories, government agencies, and standards-making bodies.

On March 22-23, the North American Synchrophasor Initiative (NASPI) will be holding its semi-annual work group meeting. Details will be available soon on the NASPI website.

On March 24, following the NASPI meeting, NIST will host a workshop on “Advanced Electrical Power System Sensors.” The purpose of this workshop is for NIST and the Department of Energy to get input from industry to help determine research priorities concerning emerging and future sensor, transducer, and transformer technology for use in electrical power transmission and distribution systems.  Agenda and registration details are available online.  Registration closes March 17.

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Transactive Energy and DER: Workshops and White Paper

• Late in 2016, NIST held two workshops on “Harnessing the Power of Distributed Energy Resources: Quantifying Transactive Energy and Economics”—one in San Jose, California (October 20, 2016) and one in New York City, New York (December 6, 2016). The purpose of the meetings was to engage with technology companies, grid operators, and other stakeholders to discuss and learn about future transactive business models and challenges in the distributed energy resources revolution. The workshops featured presentations by NIST team members, as well as presentations by key government and industry stakeholders. Copies of the slides presented at the two meetings are available on the events’ web sites. Within the next few months, NIST plans to publish a technical report summarizing the discussions and findings of these workshops. 
• A technical white paper, “Transactive Energy Application Landscape Scenarios,” was published in December 2016 by the Smart Grid Interoperability Panel (SGIP) and its Transactive Energy Coordination Group. The paper examines the transactive process, business functions, actors in different smart grid application domains, and time scales, with a focus on six high-level, operational scenarios. These scenarios can help transactive energy (TE) stakeholders to understand the scope of TE applications for different use cases and possible TE system architectures. Authors include David Holmberg (NIST), David Hardin (SGIP), Ronald Cunningham (American Electric Power), Ronald Melton (Pacific Northwest National Laboratory), and Steve Widergren (Pacific Northwest National Laboratory).

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Department of Energy Releases Quadrennial Energy Review (QER)

The Department of Energy (DOE) last week released “Transforming the Nation’s Electricity System (QER 1.2),” the second installment of the Quadrennial Energy Review. This installment analyzes trends and issues confronting the nation’s electricity sector out to 2040, examining the entire electricity supply chain from generation to end use. The electricity system is considered within the context of three overarching national goals: (1) to enhance economic competitiveness; (2) to promote environmental responsibility; and (3) to provide for the nation’s security.  The QER involves a multi-agency review process, and more than 20 executive departments and agencies, including NIST, play key roles in developing and implementing programs and policies proposed in the QER.

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SGIP Update

Recent White Papers:

• Transactive Energy Application Landscape Scenarios (12/15/2016)
• Economic Value of the Integration of Consumption Preferences in Electric System Planning (12/12/2016)

Recent Webinars:

• OpenFMB Collaboration Site and Repository (12/15/2016)
• SGIP 2016 Year in Review (12/13/2016)
• SGIP NIST Cybersecurity Framework Implementation Case Study (12/12/2016)

Upcoming Webinar:

• Evaluation of the Electromagnetic Phenomena Issues on Smart Grid Reliability (1/17/2017)

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