Bringing DER Order from DER Chaos

See you at DistribuTECH!!

We are sending a number of invitations to meet at next week's DistribuTECH in San Antonio. This year we are focusing on working with utilities and their consultancies to insure that those who need to understand the DER communication landscape can benefit from QualityLogic's world class expertise in the technology of communicating between utilities and DERs. 

Our focus has always been on the use of international standards such as OpenADR, IEC 61850 and IEEE 2030.5 for this kind of communication. We are gratified to see the leadership of the California electric power industry adopting a standards strategy and implementing it the right way - e.g., with a robust test and certification program. We supply the test tools used by the Authorized Test Labs and have a pivotal role in making the concept into a reality.

But there is so much more to be done to create a truly successful, global DER eco-system based on standard communications. A critical element is simply education: what are these standards? What can you do with them? How do you do it? And how do we move beyond the engineered systems conventional wisdom of the industry to adopt an efficient and effective plug and play world for DER management.

We are finding a growing appetite among our utility and consultancy partners for in-depth training on the protocols themselves and on the challenges of designing a successful infrasatructure and selecting the right protocols. We have chosen an interesting marketing phrase: QualityLogic is the difference between DER Chaos and Order". We are at heart enigneers and technologists so making such a claim makes us cringe a bit. So why do we make such a bold claim? Not because we can single-handedly solve everyone's problems. But we believe that helping the industry understand and adopt standards for the interactions between the grid operators and the behind-the-meter DERs really does bring some order to what can reasonably be called "chaos".

The DER chaos is a function of hundreds (thousands) of different ideas, interests and approaaches to managing DERs. And globally there are major competing blocks with their own unique needs, approaches and vendors. All competing to be the "standard". The research, demonstration projects, pilots, simulations, etc., are overwhelming in their volume of information and conclusions.

Fortunately, there are also dedicated individuals, companies and regulators all working in different ways to try to bring order out of this chaos. We see in the work of the IEEE (IEEE 1547, 2030.x, etc), IEC (CIM and 61850), and various industry alliances such as OpenADR, SunSpec, UCAiug tremendous efforts to bring the industry together to standardize approaches to the DER management challenges.

How does QualityLogic help bring order from chaos? In the end, it doesn't matter how good a standard is on paper. What makes it a positive force for achieving the promise of communications standrdization is the education, test plans and test tools that every participant can use to insure compliance and gain a certification of that compliance. And that is our role. We take that role seriously as a critical path to achieving the order needed to succeed.

We are certainly happy to have a discussion to show you more on how we can help.