OGC ad hoc meeting on geospatial standards for smart grid

21 March 2012 Geoff Zeiss

The first Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) ad hoc meeting on geospatial standards related to smart grid in the electric power utility industry was held at the OGC TC/PC meeting in Austin March 20.  The turout was about 25 people representing the vendor, services, government, standards and academic communities including AIST (Japan), Autodesk, Intergraph, Oracle, GE Energy, Trimble, ESRI, Synaptitude, Northrup-Grumman, Hitachi (Japan), Secure Dimensions, Geoconnections (Canada), Canmet Energy (Canada), Geonovum (Netherlands), and universities from Belgium, the Netherlands and Japan.

There are a number of standards that are related to smart grid, some of which of which are already compliant at some level with OGC geospatial standards, such as Geography Markup Language (GML) and Web Featuure Service (WFS).

  • OASIS eMIX (Energy market information exchange) used GML
  • International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) Common infirmation model (CIM) uses GML
  • IEC CIM is harmonized with WXXM (Weather information exchnage model) which is based on GML

The objective of the proposed OGC domain working group (DWG) is to coordinate and develop standards to enable efficient gespatial communication within smart grids and between smart grids and neightbouring activities such as emergency response, disaster management, urban planning and building energy management.  It has been proposed that the effort will be in close cooperation with ISO/TC 211 standards organization.

Related standards/activities that were mentioned include GeoBI (SAP), SGIP eMIX, IndoorGML, Canmet Energy (NRCan), NIST/SGIP, ETSI M2M, IEC 61850 (smart substations), BALLADE (smart meter networks), eMobility (EV charging stations networks), and ASHRAE.

The immediate objectives are to create a mission statement and domain working group charter to enable the group to be recongnized as an OGC Working Group (WG).

Margaret Goodrich (SISCO), who gave a presentation on extending CIM to include environmental data such as weather information (an effort sponsored by Southern California Edison), made a strong case that to attract the attention of the utility industry, developing the technical specifications for standards is not enough.  Use cases and a strong business justification are essential or the standards will languish on the shelf.

Geoff Zeiss

Geoff Zeiss

Geoff Zeiss has more than 20 years experience in the geospatial software industry and 15 years experience developing enterprise geospatial solutions for the utilities, communications, and public works industries. His particular interests include the convergence of BIM, CAD, geospatial, and 3D. In recognition of his efforts to evangelize geospatial in vertical industries such as utilities and construction, Geoff received the Geospatial Ambassador Award at Geospatial World Forum 2014. Currently Geoff is Principal at Between the Poles, a thought leadership consulting firm. From 2001 to 2012 Geoff was Director of Utility Industry Program at Autodesk Inc, where he was responsible for thought leadership for the utility industry program. From 1999 to 2001 he was Director of Enterprise Software Development at Autodesk. He received one of ten annual global technology awards in 2004 from Oracle Corporation for technical innovation and leadership in the use of Oracle. Prior to Autodesk Geoff was Director of Product Development at VISION* Solutions. VISION* Solutions is credited with pioneering relational spatial data management, CAD/GIS integration, and long transactions (data versioning) in the utility, communications, and public works industries. Geoff is a frequent speaker at geospatial and utility events around the world including Geospatial World Forum, Where 2.0, MundoGeo Connect (Brazil), Middle East Spatial Geospatial Forum, India Geospatial Forum, Location Intelligence, Asia Geospatial Forum, and GITA events in US, Japan and Australia. Geoff received Speaker Excellence Awards at GITA 2007-2009.

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