Two big announcements in recent weeks highlight the increased acceptance and implementation of Green Button across the energy sector. Smart Grid Interoperability Panel (SGIP) and its members continue to make important contributions to the effort. SGIP members have been very active in advancing Green Button Initiatives from many different perspectives, including Green Button Download My Data, which allows consumers to easily download their energy data, and Green Button Connect My Data, which uses a new, Business-to-Business Paradigm for the energy sector.
Green Button Initiative
A recent White House call-to-action has spurred the Green Button initiative. It is an industry-led effort to provide utility customers with easy and secure access to their energy usage information in a consumer-friendly and computer-friendly format. Customers are able to securely download their own detailed energy usage with a simple click of a literal ‘Green Button’ on electric utilities’ websites.
All consumers want to save on their energy bills and now, with their own data in hand they can take advantage of a growing array of online services to help them manage energy use. Voluntary adoption of a consensus industry standard by utilities and companies across the country both enables and incentivizes software developers and other entrepreneurs to build innovative applications, products and services which will help consumers manager energy use. For example users can program their home energy management devices, determine the size and financing of rooftop solar panels, and help contractors verify their home energy savings in a more cost-effective manner.
Adoption of the Green Button data standard will also benefit utilities that receive numerous requests for data, are administering energy efficiency programs, are looking for avenues for greater customer engagement, and in many other ways.
What has been the success and progress on the initiative to date?
The Green Button initiative was officially launched in January 2012. To date, a total of 35 utilities and electricity suppliers have signed on. In total, these commitments ensure that at least 36 million homes and businesses will be able to securely access their own energy information in a standard format. This number will continue to grow as utilities across the continent voluntarily make energy data more available to their customers in this common, machine-readable format.
What is the Green Button data standard?
Green Button is based on the Energy Services Provider Interface (ESPI) data standard released by the North American Energy Standards Board (NAESB) in the fall of 2011. The data standards development process was facilitated by the Smart Grid Interoperability Panel (SGIP), a public private partnership that is facilitated by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST).
The ESPI standard consists of two components:
- A common XML format for energy usage information
- A data exchange protocol which allows for the automatic transfer of data from a utility to a third party based on customer authorization.
All of the utilities that have committed to Green Button will implement the common XML data format in an easy to download manner.
What does Green Button data include?
The Green Button data standard is flexible enough to handle different types of energy data and time interval usage. Applications are being developed for both residential and commercial customers. The data can be provided in 15-minute, hourly, daily, or monthly intervals depending on what a utility decides to make available and what level of detail they are able to provide. The Green Button Initiative is not limited to utilities that have deployed smart meters that produce very detailed information about energy consumption, but also includes utilities that are able to provide only monthly billing data. In the future, the ESPI data standard is being explored with a view to supporting natural gas and water usage information amongst other uses.
What is Green Button Connect My Data?
Many utilities are implementing:
- Green Button Download My Data which means that the utility customer can download their own energy consumption data directly to their own computer, and if they so choose, upload their own data to a third party application
- Green Button Connect My Data is a new capability which allows utility customers to automate the secure transfer their own energy usage data to authorized third parties, based on affirmative (opt-in) customer consent and control.
What about data access, privacy, and security issues?
Green Button is consistent with current privacy and security practices, since customers have to first authenticate themselves on a utility portal with a login and password before they see and download their own information. If they want, customers can share their own data that they have downloaded, by independent choice and action, with those they trust. As some utilities deploy Green Button Connect My Data (the full ESPI standard) in the future, automated transfers of Green Button data from a utility to a third party service will be allowed. Such transfers will happen only if a customer has granted explicit permission. Ed.
As described in this March 2012 article, SGIP Plays Key Role in White House’s Green Button Initiative, SGIP’s PAP-10: Standard Energy Usage Information was instrumental in laying the groundwork for this highly visible and successful initiative. SGIP’s involvement continues with PAP-20: Green Button ESPI Evolution. As organizations in SGIP’s stakeholder community – from utilities and manufacturers to government agencies and energy service providers – move Green Button into the marketplace, consumers are starting to reap the benefits.
One of the first groups seeing benefits will be American taxpayers, because the Federal Government is embracing Green Button technology as a key element of its plans to improve energy efficiency and sustainability.
On May 28, at a White House-sponsored ‘Datapalooza’ event, Secretary of Energy Ernest Moniz and OSTP Director John Holdren announced a successful federal pilot applying Green Button to help building managers achieve greater efficiencies. General Services Administration (GSA) Administrator Dan Tangherlini said, “Creating a more sustainable government is vital to our mission and drives the agency’s priorities. As one of the largest real estate managers in the country, adopting Green Button technology across our real estate portfolio allows us to improve building performance and save taxpayer dollars.”
For this pilot project, the GSA, with the support of the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and the Department of Energy (DoE), worked with private-sector partners Schneider Electric, Pepco Holdings and FirstFuel Software to demonstrate the opportunity for building managers to use innovative tools to manage energy usage and reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
The DoE’s Federal Energy Management Program will use the results of this pilot to develop government-wide guidance, and the EPA is working to integrate the Green Button standard into its ENERGY STAR® benchmarking tool. With these strong endorsements of the Federal Government on its behalf, Green Button implementations in the marketplace are likely to accelerate in the coming months.
Green Button’s second major announcement came on June 20, when a public-private partnership unveiled a Green Button Test and Certification Program, which will help ensure interoperability of the broad range of Green Button deployments across the nation. The partnership members include UCA International Users Group (UCAIug), Underwriters Laboratories (UL), The American National Standards Institute (ANSI), NIST, and the DoE.
UCAIug stated that it will certify Green Button in two categories:
- Service providers such as public, municipal and co-operative utilities cvvs and energy efficiency organizations who provide data to energy consumers
- Product vendors that provide Green Button software solutions to service providers Service providers require certification even if they use a vendor’s product offering that has been separately certified
In an important first step for the new program, UCAIug announced that it has completed a trial run for the Green Button Download My Data Certification. Two implementations of the UCAIug Green Button Test and Certification process for Download My Data have now been completed and one is pending:
- Seattle City Light is the first Electric Utility to receive certification.
- The Schneider-Electric Energy Profiler Online (EPO) product is the first commercial software product to receive certification.
- Wake Electric is working with UCAIug to certify its Green Button program.
The design of Green Button Connect My Data Certification is currently under way, with target Certification of Green Button machine-to-machine Connect My Data to occur in late 2014.
Green Button Certification is an essential underpinning of the national Green Button initiative. In the certification’s absence, non-interoperable implementations will result in customer and vendor frustration and additional support costs for parties exchanging data, making data use difficult.
Additionally, a reliable certification mark will allow a robust ecosystem of data providers and users to grow, which will help consumers optimize the efficiency of their energy usage and better manage their energy cost.
SGIP will be hosting panel sessions at its Annual Conference in September in Nashville TN, to learn more visit http://www.sgip.org/SGIP2014-Annual- Conference.
For more information on Green Button, visit http://www.greenbuttondata.org/
For more information on the White House’s Datapalooza announcements, visit http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2014/05/28/fact-sheet-harnessing-power-data-clean-secure-and-reliable-energy-future.
For more information on the Green Button testing and certification program, visit http://www.gbitca.org.
About the Author
Mr. Gannon is Executive Director and President of SGIP 2.0, Inc., the international non-profit Smart Grid Interoperability Panel. SGIP is driving the collaboration, coordination and promotion of smart grid standards interoperability for the energy sector on a global basis. He served as President of Warning Systems, Inc. from 2008 to 2013, and as President and CEO of OASIS Open from 2001 to 2008. Mr. Gannon was appointed in 2006 as a high-level Advisor to the United Nations Global Alliance for ICT and Development (UN GAID). He also served from 2000 to 2005 with the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE), as Chairman of the Team of Specialists for Internet Enterprise Development, which advised governments in transitional economies on best practices for electronic business. Gannon served as a member of the US Election Assistance Commission (EAC) Technical Guidelines Development Committee (TGDC) from 2004 to 2006 where he worked closely with the NIST Director and staff. He served as Vice President of Strategic Programs for the CommerceNet Consortium in Palo Alto, California, directing research and development efforts in new Internet commerce standards such as XML in the mid-1990s. While at CommerceNet, he became the first Project Leader for RosettaNet and served as Executive Director for the Open Buying on the Internet (OBI) initiative. Mr. Gannon is co-author of the book: Building Database-Driven Web Catalogs, and is an international speaker on electronic business and Internet software standards.
