Following passage last year of the Energy Independence and Security Act, which requires the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) to develop interoperability standards both for smart grid functionality and for interstate power transmission, FERC has issued a draft policy statement and is now soliciting comments.

According to the draft issued on March , the purpose of the policy is to “prioritize key interoperability standards, provide guidance to the electric industry regarding the need for full cybersecurity for Smart Grid projects, and provide an interim rate policy under which jurisdictional public utilities may seek to recover the costs of Smart Grid deployments….”

The Commission’s draft statement, citing progress already made by electric cooperatives and others toward the goal of interoperability, acknowledges that the Commission is not working with a blank slate. At the same time, the statement notes that “the electric system may require several of the new capabilities of the Smart Grid before interoperability standards have been developed.”

The National Rural Electric Association’s MultiSpeak® Initiative, a project initiated by the Cooperative Research Network (CRN) for the over 800 electric distribution co-ops, has been working for over a decade on a set of specifications to enable the integration of automation software.

While MultiSpeak specifications were initially developed for software used by distribution cooperatives, the Initiative is now testing a new version intended to harmonize MultiSpeak with standards developed by Technical Committee 57 of the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) used by transmission and wholesale power utilities.

As of this year, over 300 utilities, including electric cooperatives, municipal utilities and investor-owned utilities in the United States as well as a number of utilities in North America and Europe, are using MultiSpeak interfaces developed in consultation with the 45 vendors who make up the MultiSpeak Initiative.

According to the FERC statement, the EPRI and NRECA “standards represent the best work to date and will be an essential building block in realizing the most significant early benefits for the bulk-power system. These standards are also key to the attainment of renewable power and climate policy goals and can help enable customers to manage their energy usage and cost.”

Policy experts at NRECA anticipate that the Association will be submitting comments to the draft policy statement.