November Update

Orange Button℠ Meeting at National Renewable Energy Laboratory

On October 26, I met with others from the SGIP and solar community at National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) in Golden, Colorado, for the Orange Button initiative, which aims to simplify and standardize solar data to improve the bankability of solar projects.

The Area A Requirements Working Group participants met to consolidate market requirements and begin to build the Orange Button^SM Market Requirements Document. Attendees had expertise in deployment, financial, real estate, solar O&M, and grid integration.

I’d like to thank NREL for hosting the meeting. They have 13 research programs, 684 active partnerships, 800+ patents, and more than 1,000 scientific and technical materials published. As a leader in renewable energy, NREL was the perfect place to hold this meeting.

We launched the OpenFMB^TM Collaboration Site

Last week, at the SGIP 2016 Grid Modernization Summit, I saw executive leaders from the electric grid industry come together and share their ideas. I had the pleasure of announcing one such solution—the OpenFMB^TM (Open Field Message Bus) Collaboration Site.

OpenFMB^TM is a reference architecture and framework for distributed intelligence. The collaboration site is essentially a developer’s kit with downloadable, turnkey, executable files, along with a simplified reference implementation code, so you can take the OpenFMB^TM code into your lab and see how it might be applied to your systems.  The site is dynamic and will be changing based on the feedback we receive from website visitors and users, and we welcome any suggestions.  Please visit the site at www.openfmb.io and let us know what you think!

Get the scoop on OpenFMB^TM with webinars

Aside from the collaboration site that launched last week, there are many new developments happening with OpenFMB^TM. To learn about where this exciting initiative is and what’s ahead, you can watch webinars by SGIP.

“SGIP Grid Modernization Summit OpenFMB™ Demo Preview” was a webinar from October 18, 2016, that shared the details on the OpenFMB™ demonstration that I and SGIP technology partners showcased last week at SGIP’s summit. The demonstration centered on a utility-focused distributed energy resource (DER) Circuit Segment Management use case to show how the framework can help manage distribution operations with a high penetration of DER. You can watch a free webinar reply here, or download the PPT here.

The webinar also discusses the collaboration site, but there will be another webinar on December 8, 2016, that talks exclusively about the online resource. Titled “OpenFMB^TM Collaboration Site and Repository Webinar,” the webinar will be held from 1:00 p.m. to 2:00 p.m. EST, and you can register here.

Update on the Catalog of Standards

There are five candidates finishing up reviews for the SGIP Catalog of Standards, and they will go to balloting soon for SGIP member approval. We have five priority action plans that are going through the paperwork to initiate the closing process: