A proposed standard to create smart facilities supporting smart grids, written by ASHRAE and the National Electrical Manufacturers Association, is open for public review until Oct. 6. ASHRAE/NEMA Standard 201P, Facility Smart Grid Information Model would provide a common basis for electrical energy consumers to describe, manage and communicate about electrical energy consumptions and forecasts.

The 201P also is being considered for adoption as an international standard through the International Organization for Standardization. In addition, the standard coordinates with and uses content from the International Electrotechnical Commission’s Common Information Model (CIM) standards. It also coordinates with the North American Energy Standards Board’s basic energy usage data model standard, informally known as Green Button, that facilitates consumer access to energy usage information for residential, commercial and industrial buildings.

The effort to substantially modernize and transform electric grids is an intentional effort involving hundreds of organizations and companies and will have an impact on billions of people, says Steve Bushby, who chairs the Standard 201P committee. The standards infrastructure that will be needed to support this may include over 100 standards by the time it is fully in place, he adds.

The proposed standard defines an object-oriented information model to enable appliances and control systems in residential, commercial and industrial buildings to manage electrical loads and generation sources in response to communication with the smart electrical grid and to communicate information about those electrical loads to utility and other electrical service providers.

The standard is part of ASHRAE’s supporting efforts for the Smart Grid Interoperability Panel, a private-public partnership initiated by the National Institute of Standards and Technology to speed development of interoperability and cyber-security standards for a nationwide electric-power smart grid.