GWAC Decisionmaker’s Interoperability Checklist

The GridWise Architecture Council (GWAC) has developed the Decision-maker’s Interoperability Checklist to help expedite the adoption of interoperability across the electricity value chain.        

Interoperability is a necessary foundation of the Smart Grid. Interoperability is the capability of systems or elements to provide and receive services and information between each other, and to use the services and information exchanged to operate effectively together in predictable ways without significant user intervention. Within the electricity system, interoperability means the seamless, end-to-end connectivity of hardware and software from customers’ appliances all the way through the T&D system to the power source, enhancing the coordination of energy flows with real-time flows of information and analysis. 

There are three types of interoperability. Technical interoperability covers the physical and communications connections between and among devices or systems (e.g., power plugs and USB ports). Informational interoperability covers the content, semantics and format for data or instructions flows (e.g., the accepted meanings of computer languages or electrical metrics). Organizational interoperability covers the relationships between organizations and individuals and their parts of the system, including business relationships (e.g., alliances or market structures) and legal relationships (e.g., regulatory requirements).

Investing in interoperability

Recent predictions suggest that the U.S. electric industry may invest $300 billion in new T&D facilities (including advanced meters) over the next decade and $400 billion in new power plants over the next 25 years. If we start now, we can build interoperability principles and capabilities into those investments and hasten the improvements in reliability, costs, innovation and value that interoperability can deliver. If we do not, more resources will be wasted, more assets stranded, and reliability threatened by our failure to move ahead with grid modernization and interoperability.

But not everyone who makes decisions about the grid understands interoperability and how to achieve it. GWAC developed the Decision-Maker’s Interoperability Checklist to help regulatory and utility decision-makers evaluate whether a project’s characteristics and attributes contribute to interoperability – i.e., facilitate and enhance the transactions and flows of energy, information and money from electricity use through delivery to production. Decision-makers can use the checklist to review electricity-related policy or asset investment proposals such as T&D asset purchases, advanced meters specification, new energy end-use device standards or system software acquisition.

The Decisionmaker’s Checklist

            The Checklist asks 14 specific questions that address and explain various elements of interoperability:

Architecture and design

1.         Information, functionality and technology requirements at and between interfaces

2.         Open architecture

3.         Technology neutrality and performance/functionality specifications

4.         Supply by multiple vendors

5.         Open, published standards and compliance with national, international electrical and communications standards

Interconnectivity and security

6.         Physical and electronic connectivity and information exchange capability

7.         Use of standard communications protocols and data formats

8.         Key data available to all authorized users

9.         Manage multiple devices using common command or info feed

10.        Use basic NERC or better cyber-security measures and IT industry security and privacy measures

11.        Redundancy and failure mechanisms that protect the user and the grid

Evolutionary capability and service life

12.        Can be upgraded via software download

13.        Backward-compatible with earlier hardware and software

Collaborator independence

14.        Give users and collaborators wide latitude for independent decisions and actions

Alison Silverstein is an independent consultant and member of the GWAC. She has held senior positions at the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission and Public Utility Commission of Texas and worked for 10 years at Pacific Gas & Electric. 

The GridWise Architecture Council was created by the U.S. Department of Energy to promote interoperability principles and standards for grid modernization. GWAC is a group of cross-industry experts representing organizations across the electricity value chain, including utilities, B2B, demand response, building automation, information technology, and more.

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