13 July: "Revel Turns to Software to Keep its e-Moped Fleet Powered without Straining NYC's Grid," TechCrunch. Logical Buildings’ GridRewards featured.

06 July: "New Zealand Government Agrees to Establish a Consumer Data Right," New Zealand Government press release.

29 June: "Consumers Satisfied with Smart Home Devices, But Data Privacy Concerns Linger," Smart Energy Consumer Collaborative press release.

23 June: "'A More Sustainable and Equitable Society': Enbridge Releases 20th Annual Sustainability Report," CSRWire. Enbridge featured.

21 June: "AES Ohio Secure Green Light for $249M Smart Grid Project," Smart Energy International.

15 June: "OhmConnect Bets $100M That Free Smart Thermostats Can Prevent Summer Blackouts in California," Canary Media. OhmConnect featured.

27 May: "Essential Information About Energy Usage in the State is Elusive, and That's a Costly Problem," New Hampshire Bulletin. New Hampshire statewide energy data access platform.

25 May: "25 Years - A Story of Evolution - 2011-2015", Smart Energy International. Green Button Initiative featured in timeline of significant industry evolution markers, launch profiled in the 04/2012 issue of SEI.

19 May: "California Mayors Partner with OhmConnect to Prevent Blackouts this Summer," OhmConnect press release.

14 May: "London Hydro Customers Participate in EV Charging Pilot," Canadian AutoWorld. Green Button Connect My Data platform.

03 May: "For the Business World, Carbon is starting to Hit Where It Hurts," GreenBiz, by Lincoln Peyton, ClearTrace.

26 April: "New York Regulators Address Data Access Issues In Bid to Grow Clean Energy Development," UtilityDive. Green Button Connect My Data platform.

16 April: "Unlocking Ontario's Energy Data - Rodan Energy Welcomes Ontario's Green Button Announcement," Rodan Energy press release. Green Button Initiative.

15 April: "PSC Further Strengthens Safe and Fair Access to Data to Meet New York's Clean Energy Goals," New York State Public Service Commission press release.

06 April: “ENGIE and Georgetown University Launch Partnership to Promote Energy Sustainability,” ENGIE North America press release.

02 April: “What Biden's Infrastructure Plan Means for the US Energy Sector,” Power Engineering International.

26 March: “Increasing Numbers of Utility Customers Care About the Climate and Want Action, New Report Shows,” POWERGRID International. Smart Energy Consumer Collaborative (SECC) report featured.

08 March: “Digital Platform Regulations for Electric Utilities: Part 1,” by Michael Murray, T&D World. Green Button Connect My Data.

08 March: “Jigar Shah's Plan to Manage DOE's $40B Loan Program,” Greentech Media.

03 March: “Energy Hedging: A New Way to Make Demand Response Pay in California?” Greentech Media. OhmConnect featured.

02 March: “E & C Leaders Introduce the CLEAN Future Act, Comprehensive Legislation to Combat the Climate Crisis,” U.S. House Committee on Energy & Commerce press release.

10 February: “ClearTrace Builds a Truly Connected Energy World Through Technology That Empowers Trust, Transparency and Security,” SuperbCrew. ClearTrace featured.

03 February: “The 50 States of Grid Modernization: 2020 Review and Q4 2020 Quarterly Report,” by NC Clean Energy Technology Center.

31 January: “Energy Data Management as a Business Strategy Best Practice,” Sustainability, Unitil’s January 2021 Newsletter. Green Button Download My Data featured.

11 January: “Energyworx Announces Maher Chebbo as Chairman of Customer Advisory Board,” Energyworx press release.

12 October, 2020: “ZOME's Consortium DOE Project Team Member Wins the 2020 Nobel Prize in Economics,” ZOME press release.

Green Button Alliance Announces Results of 2021 Board of Directors Election

The Green Button Alliance concluded its sixth annual Board of Directors election and is pleased to announce the addition of its new board members:

• James “Jay” Lewis, CEO, Big Data Energy Services was elected to serve in a two-year seat;
• Jeff Hendler, CEO, Logical Buildings was elected to a one-year seat and
• John Anderson, Director of Energy Markets, OhmConnect was re-elected to another one-year term.

In addition, on 12 January, Officers of the board…

• Syed Mir, London Hydro (GBA Chair),
• Daniel Roesler, UtilityAPI (GBA Vice-Chair), and
• John Anderson, OhmConnect (GBA Secretary)

13 January: "ENGIE North America Adds Nearly 2 GW of Renewable Energy in the U.S. in 2020," ENGIE North America press release.

13 January: "CTA Announces 2021 Smart Home Division Mark of Excellence Award Winners," CE Pro. “Energy Efficiency Product of the Year” - Logical Buildings, GridRewards.

08 January: "New Jersey Approves PSE&G's $778 Smart Meter Rollout," Greentech Media. Approval comes with regulator demand for energy data sharing.

31 December: "Top 10 Utility Regulation Trends of 2020," Greentech Media. #10 [Energy] Data Platforms Take Shape.

16 December: "Energy Department Announces $45 Million in Funding for Solar Technologies," U.S. Department of Energy post.

16 December: "Op-Ed: Smart Energy is Smart Policy," NJ Spotlight News.

14 December: "S&P Global Platts Names ENGIE 'Energy Company of the Year'," ENGIE Resources blog post.

07 December: "Companies Announce New Residential VPP for California," Power Magazine, OhmConnect.

03 December: "Fort Collins Utilities Launches MyData, Powered By UtilityAPI," UtilityAPI blog post.

02 December: "PUC Approves CUBs Petition for Open Data Access Standards," Minnesota Citizens Utility Board (CUB) blog post.

10 November: "Techstars Alabama EnergyTech Startup Spotlight: Virimodo," Alabama NewsCenter, Virimodo.

27 October: "London Hydro Builds on Past Success to Launch New Pilot," London Hydro Press Release.

09 September: "EnerWisely Confirms Energy Star Partnership for Energy Efficiency," EnerWisely press release.

2020-01-06: Corrected for Staffing changes at Logical Buildings.

The Green Button Alliance has concluded its fourth annual Board of Directors election, by the GBA's Participating Membership, and is pleased to announce the addition of two new board members:

Mark Gilbreth, Chief Technology Officer, Agave Systems will serve in the two-year seat and Bill Pfister, Senior Director of Business Analytics, Edison Electric Institute will remain on the board and serve in a second one-year seat.  The GBA welcomes these candidates who will join GBA’s existing Board of Directors on 01 January 2020!

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.

13 September: "Pason Power, Energy Toolbase Merge to Create Comprehensive Energy Storage Platform," Solar Power World.
11 September: "EPA Recognizes Green Energy Solutions for Leading Green Power Use," Green Energy Solutions press release.
04 September: "London Hydro Sees Revenue Promise in Data-Crunching," London Free Press.
16 August: "BGE Named Among Nation's Utilities Most Trusted by Business Customers," Energy Central.
06 August: "NYSERDA, Con Edison to Launch Program to Award Providers for Energy Efficiency Upgrades," Daily Energy Insider.
06 August: "CUB Petitions PUC to Unleash Consumer Energy Data in Public Interest," CUB Minnesota Blog.
25 July: "NCS Pushes the Envelope with UtilityAPI Partnership," NCS press release.
10 July: "Demand Response is Dead. Long Live Flexiwatts!" OhmConnect Opinion article, Utility Dive.
03 June: "KERI Invites Japan's Power-Related Institutions to Seek Bilateral Cooperation," Korea IT Times.

John Anderson, Director of Energy Markets, OhmConnect, Inc., and member of the Green Button Alliance’s Board of Directors, has accepted to serve as Secretary of the Board of Directors of the Green Button Alliance.  Anderson fills the position previously held by Natalie Martinez, Senior Manager of Regulatory Affairs and Compliance, Southern California Edison, who served as the Interim Secretary of the GBA.

The GBA thanks Natalie Martinez for serving and welcomes John Anderson to the position!

NAESB Ratifies Standard for Green Button

On 8 April, the North American Energy Standards Board (NAESB), a member of the Green Button Alliance, ratified the latest revision of the NAESB Energy Services Provider Interface (ESPI) Retail Energy Quadrant Book 21 (REQ.21) standard, commonly known as the Green Button standard. Updates and enhancements to the standard were submitted to NAESB by the OpenADE Task Force, hosted by the Green Button Alliance, which included:

• Replaced OAuth 1.0 with OAuth 2.0 for “Confidential Clients”
• Updated security requirements to TLS 1.2 as a minimum
• Revised the Energy Usage Information (EUI) data structure and definitions
• Created the Retail Customer (PII) data structure and definitions
• Deprecated original Use Cases that do not meet OAuth 2.0 data security requirements
• Added Use Case for Download My Data (DMD)
• Simplified Use Case 2: “Customer Authorization process”
• Documented Standard ESPI Application Program Interface (API) formats

The current standard is now available for purchase from NAESB for $250.00 USD as the Final Action R13001 – Request for Corrections and Enhancements to the NAESB REQ.21 Energy Services Provider Interface (ESPI).

OpenADE Task Force: 

The GBA hosts the OpenADE Task Force technical meetings every Tuesday at 3:00pm ET, both GBA members and non-members are invited to attend.  See the GBA calendar for logistics.

The Green Button Alliance’s 2019 Annual General Meeting to be held at CS Week

The Green Button Alliance’s Annual General Meeting will gather digital utilities, energy-efficiency innovators, governmental agencies, research institutes, and affiliate organizations interested in learning about the latest on the industry’s Green Button energy data-access and secure data-sharing standard.

GBA members and non-members are invited to attend the 1-hour face-to-face meeting being held at CS Week in Phoenix, Arizona, on Wednesday, 10 April, from 8:30-9:30 am MST (arrive at 8:15 to meet everyone).

Those that are unable to attend in-person may participate remotely; RSVP either way. 

The meeting will address:

• Green Button 2018 Accomplishments
• Green Button Connect My Data Technical Update
• Green Button 2019 & Look Ahead

RSVP to participate in the GBA’s Annual General Meeting — whether you’re attending in-person, or via web/dial-in. 

https://www.evite.com/event/0220D53JEYEWAAWNYEPJI5JU4KF2UY/rsvp 

Voting for representatives from the Participating Member tier of the Green Button Alliance ends Thursday. 

Two seats are available for the 2019 year on the GBA Board of Directors to be filled by Participating Members.  Candidates are elected only by the primary representative of other Participating Member companies/organizations but anyone from a Participating Member firm in good standing can run for election. 

The voting closes on November 15th, 2018, so if you are the representative from a GBA Participating Member company, please cast your ballot today.  Not sure if you are the right person; give us a call.

Nominations opened today to all Participating Members of the Green Button Alliance (GBA) for election to the GBA Board of Directors for the year 2019.

Participating Member companies/organizations are eligible to have a representative elected to the Board of Directors; to serve a one- or two-year term representing their firm and representing the Participating Member category within the GBA. 

If you or someone at your firm is interested in participating as a voting member of the Board of Directors, please express your interest by replying to the email message sent with the subject of  “GBA Participating Member Elections - Nominations” to employees of Participating Member firms that were in our database as-of today.  If you did not receive an email message inviting you to run for election, and you work for a Participating Member firm, please contact us for assistance.

Nominations must be received before the close of the 30th of October 2018.

Details:

Did You Know?

The Green Button Standard Ensures Customer Privacy & Secure Transmission of Energy Data

The Green Button standard is designed to enable utility customers to easily access and securely share their electricity, natural gas, and water-usage information in a consistent format. The standard also ensures the energy-usage information data stream does not contain any Personally Identifiable Information (PII) and must be transmitted using a secure-transmission process thus paving the way for utilities to meet requirements for customer privacy set forth in the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) for the European Union as well as the principles outlined in the U.S. Department of Energy's voluntary DataGuard Energy Data Privacy Program.

• The Green Button standard’s Retail Customer schema function requires utilities to transmit PII in a separate, secured transmission apart from the data stream used to transmit a customer’s energy-usage information and it requires the receiving application to logically connect the two, separate data streams.
• The Retail Customer data stream transmission also must be authorized by the utility’s customer.
• Green Button’s Retail Customer schema enables utilities to protect customers’ PII while allowing them to meet regulators’ and third party non-energy information requirements.

The Green Button Alliance & the Smart Energy Consumer Collaborative jointly hosted a webinar explaining the DataGuard Energy Data Privacy Program of the U.S. Department of Energy, with the leader of the program as a speaker and UtilityAPI explaining what their adoption of the program has meant to them.  View the recorded webinar to learn more. 

GBA Members spoke at the SECC’s 2018 Consumer Symposium (The Smart Energy Consumer Collaborative is a GBA Affiliate Member organization).  Members of the Green Button Alliance, including the Ontario Ministry of Energy and Pacific Gas & Electric (PG&E), participated on the “Enabling Consumers with Access, Choice and Control of their Energy Data” panel, moderated by Jeremy J. Roberts, General Manager, GBA at the Consumer Symposium: “Transforming the Customer Relationship.”

The Symposium was co-located with DistribuTECH and took-place at the Henry B. Gonzalez Convention Center in San Antonio, Texas. 

Advocacy group, Mission:data announced that utility Xcel Energy will Bring Smart Meters and Green Button Connect My Data to Colorado.

The Green Button standard is featured in the article “How Focused Data Use Analysis Leads to Energy Efficiency” by Klaar De Schepper in this June 2017’s issue of Buildings Operating Management magazine.

Green Button Alliance member the Smart Grid Consumer Collaborative’s (SGCC) consumer education site features a page dedicated to educating consumers about their Green Button data.

The Green Button Alliance (GBA) announces that Ms. Mimi Zhang of Silver Spring Networks is filling the role of Vice Chair of the Green Button Alliance, a position left vacant when Mark Podosky, of Southern California Edison (SCE), retired from SCE. Ms. Zhang also heads the Alliance's member-led Global Marketing Committee.

Ms. Kim Cresencia of San Diego Gas & Electric (SDG&E) is filling the role of Secretary and Ms. Amy Kight Costadone of Pacific Gas & Electric (PG&E) is filling the role of Treasurer.  Previously, the roles of both Secretary and Treasurer were held by Ms. Zhang.

ProgrammableWeb, a widely known source of news and information for Internet-based application programming interfaces (APIs), just published a series in their API University section written by Dr. Martin J. Burns, with an introduction by Dr. David A. Wollman, both of the U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) on Green Button and its use of OAuth: 

• Intro:  Understanding the Green Button API Initiative and Why It Matters
• Part 1:  Getting To Know The Primary Use Cases of The Green Button API initiative
• Part 2:  Understanding The Requirements and Standards Behind The Green Button API Initiative
• Part 3:  How Green Button Ingeniously Extended The OAuth Standard Without Forking It
• Part 4:  How The Green Button API Initiative Takes Advantage of OAuth's Scope Parameter
• Part 5:  How Green Button Made The "Pull-Only" OAuth Standard Support Push APIs Too
• Conclusion:  How Can Other API Implementations Benefit From Green Button's OAuth Inventions?