Quick Take: As we say over and over, standards don't necessarily equal interoperability. Nowhere is that more true than in the home energy management space which either has too few standards or too many, depending on who you ask. Either way, the home energy standards to date have NOT resulted in anything anywhere near plug-and-play compatibility.

One of the bigger elephants in the room for home energy management is communications, or better said, the lack of communications. There is no guarantee products from different manufacturers will be interoperable or that they will be interoperable with the electric grid. If they can't work together or with the grid, they aren't much use to consumers.

The Energy Information Standards Alliance, formed to further the cause of interoperability, energy efficiency and security, is pushing for the development and adoption of and compliance with customer energy management systems standards, is working with industry partners to solve those interoperability issues.

The EIS Alliance says the different manufacturers and groups use different ways to signal equipment energy use, resources and availability. Also, companies are often reluctant to share detailed information about their products with equipment from other manufacturers or outside service providers. Those different ways of doing basically the same thing, along with the reluctance to share product information, generally prevents them from working together.

"The development of a common expression of fundamental, or abstract, information for home energy management systems (HEMS) is crucial for manufacturers and service providers to develop systems that allow for different appliances, HVAC, lighting, entertainment and other home systems to work together. This is true not only for equipment entering the marketplace now, but for products still on the proverbial 'drawing board,'" said Chris Kotting, EIS Alliance executive director.

The EIS Alliance is working with appliance and HVAC manufacturers as well as home entertainment and home automation companies, retailers, utilities, service providers and consumer groups to come up with a solution.

They also are working with the Alliance on a parallel project on communication between customer-owned systems and utilities and other service providers to provide the capability for different systems and architectures to work both inside and outside the home, and still allow for the necessary communication and coordination.

In both projects, the EIS Alliance is taking advantage of published data models from the North American Energy Standards Board and the American Society of Heating, Refrigeration and Air conditioning Engineers "as a basis for developing an abstraction that allows for needed communication, while protecting different manufacturers' design integrity," Kotting said.

EIS Alliance members include A.O. Smith, Aruba Networks, Coulomb Technologies, Ecotality, Generac, Honeywell, Johnson Controls, and ParkPod.

Jesse Berst is the founder and chief analyst of Smart Grid News.com, the industry's oldest and largest smart grid site. A frequent keynoter at industry events in the U.S. and abroad, he also serves on advisory committees for Pacific Northwest National Laboratory and the Institute for Electric Efficiency. He often provides strategic consulting to large corporations and venture-backed startups. He is a member of the advisory boards of GridGlo and Calico Energy Services.

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