IEEE has announced the availability of IEEE P1547.8 standard which is a draft standard establishing a common technical platform for distributed resources interconnection applications.

IEEE P1547.8 expands on IEEE 1547 and also incorporates National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) recommendations for improved interconnection performance functionality

The standard aims to ‘future proof’ the existing framework of IEE 1547 by incorporating support for emerging storage technologies as well as other industry driven recommendations. It aims to establish a common technical platform to address functionality for the interconnection of distributed resources across the power grid.

To put this into perspective, in August 2009, NIST established an initial set of priority actions plans (PAPs) for developing standards necessary to build an interoperable Smart Grid. IEEE P1547.8 will support NIST PAP07 Energy Storage Interconnection Guidelines (pdf).

My view is: This point release of a standard is significant for two reasons. Firstly, it addresses important areas of future significance – ie, by incorporating certain aspects of plug-in electric vehicles (PEV). But it also demonstrates that the NIST framework is a ‘stack’ and designed to incorporate many technologies and applications which we don’t know much about today as long as they are within the broad PAP framework.

To be sure, nothing of this kind has been attempted by any government before and the NIST Smart Grid efforts on standardization bring together many diverse domains(technical and functional).

Hence, I am watching it’s evolution with interest. Right down to specific point releases of standards