Abstract
Homes, commercial buildings and the industrial sector together represent 100 percent of the load on the electric grid. Beyond load, these facilities provide a growing amount of electric generation and storage in the form of distributed energy resources. What is the proper relationship of the facility, whether home, commercial or industrial, to the grid? Is the facility a "demand response" resource best controlled by the grid operations domain, or is it an autonomous entity that responds to signals from a grid-side service provider? This paper presents some governing principles that lead to a clear facility interface conceptual architecture. Following that, the communications crossing this interface are examined with reference to the standardization work underway as part of the NIST Smart Grid effort priority action plans.
http://www.gridwiseac.org/pdfs/forum_papers09/holmberg.pdf