The effort sought publicity for its attempt to unify smart grid plans under a common standards umbrella to form a viable cleantech industry with a relatively level playing field.
[7] As NIST and NERC were committed to the OpenADR approach all along and the National Broadband Plan (United States) required (in its "goal 6") open access to consumer power use data by ADR providers, there was probably little doubt of the standards influence.
The California energy crisis of 2002 served as the impetus for the effort that ultimately led to the creation of version 1.0 of the OpenADR standard.
Shortly after 2002, the DRRC worked with the California IOUs (SCE, SDG&E and PG&E) to jointly develop this technology through pilots and actual program implementations.
The intention of the data model is to interact with building and industrial control systems that are pre‐programmed to take action based on a DR signal, enabling a demand response event to be fully automated, with no manual intervention.
The OpenADR specification is a highly flexible infrastructure design to facilitate common information exchange between a utility or Independent System Operator (ISO) and their end‐use participants.
For example, commercial customers might be notified of a change in Time‐of‐Use pricing during a peak period, and the Energy Management System (EMS) might be programmed to temporarily offset building temperatures by several degrees and dim or turn‐off non‐essential lights.
If prices continue to climb higher the EMS may escalate the DR program by reducing or turning off rooftop air handlers during the same peak period.
The OpenADR Alliance will enable all stakeholders to participate in automated DR, dynamic pricing, and electricity grid reliability.
In performing its work, the Alliance will adhere to industry best practices as detailed in the Interoperability Process Reference Manual (IPRM) created by the SGIP Testing and Certification Committee (www.sgip.org).