In September, the U.S. Department of Commerce presented Martin J. Burns, John A. Teeter, and David A. Wollman of the Smart Grid and Cyber-Physical Systems Program at NIST, with the Silver Medal award for leadership in the White House Green Button initiative, giving consumers the vital information they need to manage their own energy usage. Working closely with industry and other agencies, the team led the development of the technology foundation for Green Button, including standards, testing and technical support for implementers. The GBA congratulates them on this well-deserved recognition, and thanks them for their continued work on the Green Button initiative.

The Advanced Energy Centre (AEC) at MaRS Discovery District (MaRSDD) announced it has joined the Green Button Alliance and Sasha Sud, senior manager, Smart Grid & Energy Data, has been elected to GBA's Board of Directors. The AEC, MaRSDD, and the Ministry of Energy have actively been facilitating the adoption of Green Button standards in Ontario and have supported the creation of 41 customer-facing applications. The AEC will provide strategic insights to GBA as we work to expand the Green Button ecosystem internationally.

Chai Energy provides an innovative new mobile app that collects Green Button energy data and shows users how much energy they use, its costs, offers customized energy savings tips, and alerts users when additional opportunities for savings emerge--it even analyzes energy use and local weather to see if solar is an option. The Chai Energy app can be paired with a customized solar system from Solplicity to help users become even more energy-efficient.

The Enel Group announced that it is the first European utility to join the Green Button Alliance, and Livio Gallo, Enel's Head of Global Infrastructure and Networks was elected to GBA's Board of Directors. Enel will make Green Button Download My Data and Green Button Connect My Data available to selected customers in Italy via Enel's Energy Management System (EMS).

Energyworx exhibited at European Utility Week 2015 this week from November 3-5 in Vienna. The company presented four of its most-popular use cases in the exhibition hall: Meter Data Management, Social Energy, The Solar Connected Home, and Energy Balancing for Smart Grids. See the full program here. Congratulations to the Energyworx team on a great event!

UtilityAPI is an enterprise software company that provides solar, storage and energy management professionals with simple access to energy usage data. UtilityAPI has also worked with utilities to implement Green Button standards and also recently announced compatibility with EnergyToolbase, a leading software platform that leverages Green Button energy data for third-party cost analysis of Solar PV and advanced energy storage projects. UtilityAPI CEO, Elena Lucas, recently presented at the White House about the company's experience with the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE's) SunShot Catalyst program.

The GBA administers a testing and certification program to make it easier for an energy provider to ensure its Green Button implementation complies to the Green Button standard, while also assuring developers they can write a single application that can work across many utilities. If your company is in the process of developing a Green Button Download My Data (DMD) solution to provide Green Button energy data to your customers, or already has a DMD implementation, you can apply for Green Button DMD Certification here.

For utilities interested in learning about how an open-platform-based utility service could increase revenues through a combination of service-provider and customer engagement, see the Rocky Mountain Institute's insightful article: "How Open Platforms with Demand Flexibility offer Utilities New Revenue Opportunities," which notes Green Button data as part of an open Data-as-a-Service platform.

Chai Energy launched its mobile app that shows customers their energy use in real-time, includes a new Demand Response (DR) feature that notifies users of a DR event in their area, provides customized energy-saving tips, and estimates how much users will save on their bill and receive in DR incentives--it can even tell if solar energy is an option for them! Chai Energy's mobile app is now available in SCE, SDG&E and PG&E service territories.

Energyworx offers a big-data aggregation and analytics cloud-software service for the energy and utilities industry. I t's powerful platform which supports open standards including Green Button, was stress tested on the Google Cloud Platform, and was proven to scale to handle millions of meters and billions of values! Register now to attend Energyworx' Webinar on Sept. 30th: "Enabling the Energy Evolution, Changing the Way the Energy Sector Understands Data Through Real Time Insights".

In August, Alliance founding member London Hydro formalized its partnership with MaRS Advanced Energy Centre (AEC)—one of the newest members of GBA—to help advance the Green Button platform with utilities and customers.

UtilityAPI, a winner of DOE's SunShot Catalyst Demo Day, is a software service provider that downloads bill and interval data for solar and energy efficiency companies, and also offers a secure hosting service for utilities. UtilityAPI's hosted service provides compatibility with various Green Button utility interface implementations and it is currently available at PG&E and SDG&E.

Green Button DMD Certifications

The GBA is now accepting applications for certification of Green Button Download My Data (DMD) implementations. If you are developing, or have already implemented, a DMD solution, you can apply for certification here.

Testing your DMD files takes only a few minutes and a "Green Button Certified DMD" logo on your DMD page assures customers and app developers that your solution provides consistent Green Button data and will interoperate with other certified Green Button products and services. Your DMD solution will also be listed on the GBA's Green Button Certified Solutions page on our forthcoming new website.

Want to help shape the future of the standard?

The Green Button standard is currently being enhanced and the GBA is on the forefront of the development. Please feel free to participate in our working group calls:

• Weekly OpenADE Meetings: Open Automated Data Exchange (ADE) meetings are currently focused on defining specific implementation details of the Green Button Connect My Data (CMD) standard. Meetings take place every Tuesday from 3-4pm ET.
    
• Monthly EnergyOS OpenESPI Meetings: Meetings take place the first Monday of each month at 12-1pm ET.

Meeting details for both working groups can be found here. 

For app developers looking for a great overview on how to leverage Green Button data for energy consumption apps, see ProgrammableWeb's excellent new article.