IEEE creates Web portal on smart grids

SAN JOSE, Calif. — The IEEE has launched a new Web site that consolidates information about smart electric grids from it various societies. The portal is one of many activities from an IEEE smart grid initiative coordinating the organization's work on the transition to digital, networked power systems and services.

The smart grid is "so interdisciplinary," said Wanda Reder, chair of the IEEE Smart Grid Task Force and former president of the IEEE Power & Energy Society. "We have the gamut covered in technical interests, but we needed a way to facilitate communications between our many entities to link information on all the conferences, papers and standards we have in this area," she added.

The Web site lists many of the estimated 100 existing IEEE standards related to smart grids. It also includes pointers to the IEEE 2030 group started last year that aims to release a draft guide to smart grid design in early 2011.

The 2030 group will conduct its next meeting January 26-29 in Detroit, working with the SAE J2293 Task Force working on issues around electric vehicles.

In December, the IEEE launched the P1815 work group to set a formal standard based on the Distributed Network Protocol widely used to link supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) systems used in electric and water networks. The group aims to draft and ratify the P1815 spec by December 2010.

In terms of conferences, the IEEE plans to sponsor nearly a dozen events related to smart grid in 2010. They include a conference this week (Jan. 19-21) in the Washington D.C. area co-sponsored by the National Institute of Standards and Technology. At that event NIST is expected to release the first draft of its framework for smart grid standards and name additional members to its national smart grid interoperability panel.

The IEEE also plans to launch by mid-year two peer-reviewed technical journals related to the field, one focused on smart grid and the other on renewable energy. The new publications will come out once a quarter and add to what the IEEE estimates is as many as 2,500 existing technical papers on smart grid now in its database.

"One of our long range plans is to divide and map our content so people can get at it by domain areas to further facilitate communications," said Reder.

The IEEE is also working with Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University to create a clearinghouse for smart grid information. Virginia Tech won a Department of Energy grant to set up the clearinghouse and had its first meeting to plan out the project on December 7.

In addition, the IEEE has created an online site for anyone who wants to get involved in its smart grid initiative.