Collaboration accelerates Smart Grid adoption

LONMARK international and OpenADR Alliance agreement enables building-to-grid connectivity, facilitates ubiquitous energy conservation and management.

April 17, 2012

Commercial buildings will soon be able to connect to the Smart Grid with ease, thanks to a strategic relationship between industry alliances LONMARK International and OpenADR. LONMARK, a non-profit association for the certification, education, and promotion of interoperability standards for control networking, and the OpenADR Alliance, a nonprofit corporation created to foster the development, adoption, and compliance of a Smart Grid standard known as Open Automated Demand Response (OpenADR), have announced that they are working together to enable interoperability between certified products that will better enable commercial buildings to manage their energy uses on the Smart Grid.

The Smart Grid is designed to keep these buildings from overtaxing the power grid or having to reduce power consumption. Today, more than one-third of U.S. commercial buildings have some form of energy management and control systems installed, which makes them ideal candidates to participate in utility mandated Demand Response programs using standard interfaces such as OpenADR.

LONMARK allows buildings connected to the Smart Grid to use granular automation and enhanced control strategies to better maximize energy efficiency, without impacting client comfort and productivity. Buildings participating in an OpenADR program can leverage the existing building automation systems and protocols through a well-defined, standard interface to accept the OpenADR signal using a common language over any existing IP-based communications network such as the Internet. Through a pre-programmed set of events, the BAS can reduce load according to the messages it receives. In addition, it may bring real-time energy consumption information back to the utility or service provider.