The Green Button Alliance, through its comprehensive Green Button Testing and Certification program, has tested and certified several new utility-provided energy data exchange platforms in the United States and Canada as compliant to the North American Energy Standards Board’s (NAESB) Retail Energy Quadrant Book 21 (REQ.21) Energy Services Provider Interface (ESPI) Model Business Practices standard, version 3.3, commonly known as the Green Button standard.

Published by NAESB in January 2020, version 3.3 of the Green Button standard includes the structure and definitions for Personally Identifiable Information (PII); revised structure and definitions for Energy Usage Information (EUI); updated security requirements; and a simplified customer authorization process. To ensure secure sharing of PII data, the Retail Customer (RC) schema of the standard enables those data from a customer's account to be carried in a single stream with a separate, parallel EUI stream linking specific meters to the PII data.

   
To ensure the Green Button standard is implemented correctly—and the numerous key benefits of the standard are gained by utilities, customers and third-parties—regulators are increasingly calling for Green Button implementations to be tested and certified by the GBA as compliant to the standard. For example, as part of Ontario’s Regulation 633/21: Energy Data, energy providers province-wide must implement Green Button Connect My Data (CMD) and Download My Data (DMD) solutions – and certify the solutions through the GBA by 01 November, 2023.

Utilities interested in providing Green Button standards-based energy data exchange platforms should obtain the latest version of the standard, version 3.3, from NAESB prior to solution testing by the Green Button Alliance. Utilities offering Green Button solutions can pre-test their files for free using the GBA’s Download My Data Validator prior to applying for Green Button Certified testing.

25 October: "Green Button Advances in Ontario," Smart Energy International.

25 October: "Utility Spending on Smart Meter Analytics to Triple Through 2030," Smart Energy International.

21 October: "NYSERDA Announces Selection of Program Manager and Utility Data Advisor to Develop Integrated Energy Data Resource," NYSERDA press release.

19 October: "New Regulation Requires Ontario Utilities to Adopt 'Green Button'," PowerGrid International.

13 October: "DOE Awards NARUC $14.2 Million to Train State Utility Regulators," Daily Energy Insider.

30 September: "The Pitch from Oakland Start-up OhmConnect? Save Energy and Get Paid For It," San Francisco Business Journal.

29 September: "Utilismart's Big Data Analytics Just Got a Little 'Greener'," Electricity Distributors Association (EDA) blog.

27 September: "New 24/7 Carbon Free Energy Compact Encourages Businesses to Decarbonize," Environment + Energy Leader. ClearTrace, a founding signatory.

20 September: "ENGIE Launches Ellipse, World's Most Comprehensive Carbon Intelligence Platform," ENGIE North America press release.

17 September: "Deadline Set for Energy-Use Data Availability," REMI Network.

15 September: "Ontario Pilot Program Tests Future of Advanced Hybrid Heating - London Hydro and Enbridge Tout Energy Efficiency and Carbon Reduction," Enbridge news post.

07 July: "Energyworx Announces $6M Investment Led by Eneco Ventures," Energyworx press release.

In Ontario, Canada, the government has passed Ontario Regulation 633/21: Energy Data, filing the regulation on 02 September.  Ontario’s new energy data regulation will go into effect on 01 November 2021 and requires electric and natural gas utilities across the province to implement Green Button Connect My Data (CMD) and Download My Data (DMD) energy data access and sharing solutions that adhere to the North American Energy Standards Board’s (NAESB) REQ.21 Energy Services Provider Interface (ESPI) version 3.3 standard, commonly known as the “Green Button,” by 01 November 2023.  Read the GBA’s announcement.

New Hampshire is poised to move forward on a statewide, multi-use utility-customer energy-data platform that includes the benefits of the Green Button Connect My Data standard. Governor Christopher Sununu has signed Senate Bill (SB) 284—a bill introduced at the request of the Office of the Consumer Advocate (OCA). The OCA represents the interests of New Hampshire’s residential ratepayers.

The statewide, utility-customer energy-data platform would allow utilities, their customers, and authorized third parties to access the online platform and participate in the secure sharing of energy-usage data. The bill requires the platform to be certified by the Green Button Alliance and specifies that the platform supports the Energy Service Provider Interface of the North American Energy Standards Board and the Green Button Connect My Data data-access and -sharing initiative of the Green Button Alliance.

“Green Button is the gold standard,” explained Don Kreis, Office of the Consumer Advocate. Kreis worked with his director of finance, Jim Brennan, to draft a bill that strikes the right balance between data accessibility and data privacy.

“We built our data-platform proposal on top of the strong data-privacy protections our office previously persuaded our legislature to adopt,” Kreis explained. “Individual customers will have to give specific permission before third parties access their PII – personally identifiable information.” At the same time, the bill calls for the platform to make aggregated and anonymized data widely available.

The scalable and flexible platform will be a boon not just to innovative companies looking to develop energy-related services but also to municipalities seeking to make the benefits of retail electric choice available to their residents. A separate bill, also just signed by Sununu, allows cities and towns in New Hampshire to create “community choice aggregation” (CCA) plans—arrangements for securing lower energy prices or an energy-source mix that includes more renewables—on an opt-out basis; changing from out-in to opt-out has led CCA to explode in popularity in neighboring Massachusetts.

The New Hampshire data platform will be developed according to a collaborative process involving the state’s three investor-owned electric utilities and stakeholders with oversight by the state’s Public Utilities Commission (PUC). The PUC must open a proceeding by year’s end to begin the process of determining how the platform will be governed, designed, and operated. There is also a provision that allows the PUC to pause the project if it is too costly.

“We’re confident we can demonstrate that a statewide, utility-customer data platform will not just be cost-effective but will help secure the benefits of deregulation and grid modernization for consumers at long last,” said Kreis.

UtilityAPI Gains Green Button CMD and DMD Certifications!

Green Button Alliance member UtilityAPI is the first U.S. company to achieve Green Button Connect My Data (CMD) certification through the GBA's recently launched CMD testing program.

UtilityAPI also received certification for Green Button Download My Data (DMD).  UtilityAPI's EE/DER Engagement Platform now features its newly certified Data Exchange Platform that leverages Green Button data and CMD protocols to offer third-party access and secure sharing of data with complete customer authorization and control.

Through the Green Button Alliance's testing program, UL confirmed UtilityAPI's platform meets both the Green Button CMD and DMD Certification requirements.  UtilityAPI is now assured its "Green Button Certified CMD" utility platform will seamlessly and securely provide access to customer energy-usage data; with solutions that are positioned to work with third-party offerings supporting the Green Button data and protocol format.

GBA Launches Green Button Connect My Data Certification Program

The Green Button Alliance announced the launch of its Green Button Connect My Data (CMD) Certification Program for electricity, natural gas, and water utilities (data custodians).

The availability of the Green Button CMD Certification Program comes at a key time for the industry as utilities look to provide proven, standards-based solutions for secure customer data-access and sharing. Green Button CMD certification will assure utilities their implementations are Green Button standards-compliant and will ensure customer privacy and the seamless and secure transmission of data to third-party solutions.

A GBA-founding member, UL Verification Services (UL), is a GBA-authorized test laboratory and conducts the ANSI-audited Green Button Certified CMD testing process. London Hydro's cloud-based energy service platform is the first utility implementation (.PDF) to be certified Green Button CMD standards-compliant by UL. The "Green Button Certified CMD" mark on London Hydro's site now assures the utility, its customers, and third-party solution providers, that London Hydro's implementation is standards-compliant and new data-driven services and applications will seamlessly and securely work-together, while ensuring customer privacy. Learn more about the Green Button Connect My Data standard and the Certification program and the benefits to utilities here (.PDF).

Utilities that have Green Button Connect My Data implementations, or are in process of developing CMD offerings, can apply for certification here.