EL Highlights March 2015

Programmatic/Technical Accomplishment

NIST Leads Successful Cyber-Physical Systems Public Working Group Update Webinar

EL, together with ITL and PML, led a public webinar on Jan. 15, 2015, updating progress of the NIST Cyber-Physical Systems Public Working Group (NIST CPSPWG). The NIST CPS PWG brings together experts to help define and shape key aspects of CPS to accelerate its development and implementation within multiple sectors of our economy. Cyber-physical Systems (CPS) are smart systems, in which essential properties and functionalities emerge from the networked interaction of cyber technologies—both hardware and software—co-engineered with physical systems. The Jan. 15 update webinar for 100 participants featured a CPS PWG progress overview, upcoming plans and report-outs from the five subgroups: Reference Architecture, Use Cases, Cybersecurity, Timing, and Data Interoperability, as well as a question and answer session. Progress to date includes the delivery of Framework Element reports by all of the CPS PWG subgroups. These reports have been combined into a draft integrated CPS Framework document,which is currently under review by the NIST CPSPWG leadership team and will be released for public comment after review and initial revisions are completed. The presentation from this update webinar is on the web at: www.cpspwg.org, and additional information on the NIST CPS PWG is available at http://www.nist.gov/cps/cpspwg.cfm.

Contact:  David Wollman 301-975-2433

EL Celebrates Launch of Green Button Ecosystem

As the electric power grid is modernized to incorporate21st century information technology, consumers are playing a more active role in understanding and managing their energy usage. A key element of this emerging smartgrid is "Green Button." At its heart, Green Button refers to an energy usage data standard that is being used by utilities, app developers, and consumers to unleash a wave of innovation in the energy sector. Over the past several years, NIST staff in EL have been leading the technology development for Green Button and have worked closely with colleagues at the White House's Office of Science and Technology Policy(OSTP) and at the Department of Energy to encourage and enable utilities to implement the Green Button standard. The Green Button initiative has grown rapidly, and it has already been embraced by over 60 utilities who serve more than 100 million customers in the United States and Canada.Leaders from government and industry gathered in southern California at San Diego Gas and Electric's Energy Innovation Center on Feb. 6, 2015, to celebrate the successes and to envision the path forward for Green Button, including the launch of the industry-led Green Button Alliance. The NIST Green Button team, consisting of David Wollman, Marty Burns, and John Teeter, organized an event, "The Birth of the Green Button Ecosystem." Speaking to the 120 attendees by video, U.S. Chief Technology Officer (CTO) Megan Smith(OSTP) said, "Green Button is an amazing initiative. The industry has really collaborated brilliantly together with the support of the Department of Commerce NIST team to get this standard moving. And you guys are starting to scale on this incredibly important topic. "Smith's welcome was amplified by Nick Sinai(former OSTP deputy CTO), Chris Irwin (DOE), and David Wollman (NIST), who, working together in former U.S. CTO Aneesh Chopra's team had engaged industry and enabled the first Green Button implementations by California investor-owned utilities in 2012, with key technical support from Marty Burns. In his welcome and presentation, Wollman highlighted NIST and industry contributions to the Green Button "foundation for innovation," including the development of the North American Energy Standards Board Green Button standard in coordination with the Smart Grid Interoperability Panel; the establishment of testing and certification with UCAIug and Underwriters Laboratory; and the development of web technology/open source tools to support utilities and third-party application developers. In subsequent sessions, utilities, vendors, trade organizations, and application developers highlighted their Green Button implementations, experiences, and future plans, and announced the establishment and future direction of new Green Button testing and certification programs. The final speaker, California Public Utility Commissioner Catherine Sandoval, gave an enthusiastic presentation in support of Green Button and shared her vision of its potential to spark additional data-fueled innovation in the energy and water sectors. For more information about Green Button, here are four useful links:

• The Green Button Initiative website[www.greenusa-buttondata.org]
• "Building an Interoperable Ecosystem," an article in the current issue of Energy Biz magazine, written by the NIST Green Button team. [http://energycentral.fileburstcdn.com/EnergyBizMagazine/2015/EBWinter2015.pdf]
• "The 'Green Button' Energy Data Movement Grows Up," an article by Nick Sinai, a fellow at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government and former U.S. Deputy Chief Technology Officer at the White House. [https://medium.com/@ShorensteinCtr/the-greenusa-button-energy-data-movement-grows-up-ea6dd1f5494b]
• The Green Button Alliance [http://www.greenusa-buttonalliance.org/] 

Contact: David Wollman 301-975-2433 and Marty Burns 301-975-6283