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 

Daniel Roesler, co-founder and CEO, UtilityAPI, and member of the Green Button Alliance’s Board of Directors, has been elected to serve as Vice Chair of the Board of Directors of the Green Button Alliance.  Roesler fills the position previously held by Mimi Zhang, Senior Product Line Manager, Itron, Inc. who served as Vice Chair of the GBA for the past two years.

The GBA thanks Mimi Zhang for her insightful service and welcomes Daniel Roesler to the position!

29 January 2019: "ComEd's Smart Grid Starts to Pay Dividends in Northern Illinois", T&D World.

15 January 2019: "Software Solutions Help Installers Sell More Solar + Storage," Solar Power World. EnergyToolbase featured.

14 January 2019: "Energy Data Portability," Report by Mission:data Coalition; Green Button Connect My Data growth featured.

11 January 2019: "Con Edison Unveils Unique Residential Smart Energy Pilot," Smart Energy International.

10 January 2019: "Can Private Industry Solve Our Climate Crisis Where Governments Fail?", Forbes. OhmConnect featured.

07 January 2019: "ZOME Wins Best of Show, Launches New Products," ZOME press release.

01 January 2019: "Growing a Sustainable Food System: How Entrepreneurs Are Applying Advanced Technologies to Reinvent Our Approach to Food Security and Sustainability", Village Capital. Wexus Technologies featured.

05 September 2019: "CHEC and CustomerFirst Sign Advocacy Partnership Agreement", CustomerFirst news.

Green Button Alliance Announces Results of 2019 Board of Directors Election

The Green Button Alliance has concluded its third annual Board of Directors election. John Anderson, Director of Energy Markets, OhmConnect was elected by the GBA's Participating Membership to serve in a two-year seat and Bill Pfister, Director Financial Analysis, Edison Electric Institute (EEI) was elected to serve in a one-year seat.

The GBA welcomes the new directors who join the GBA Board of Directors on 01 January 2019.

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.

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.

Do You Know?:

Green Button "Usage Summary" Capability Enables Utilities to Provide Non-energy Billing-statement Information and All Utility Billing Categories

Do you know the Green Button “Usage Summary” capability enables utilities to provide non-energy billing-statement information and contains all billing categories including:

• Payments; generation and distribution charges; tariff name; demand charges; third-party charges; administrative adjustments; etc.
• Green Button Usage Summary enables utilities to provide billing consumption for energy units, including cost, enabling energy managers to easily capture data from multiple locations to significantly simplify energy reporting.
• Green Button Usage Summary enables third-party applications to provide customers with a finer-breakdown of their monthly energy usage.

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:

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.

05 September: ZOME Energy Networks announced its free cloud-based energy program “ZOMEHOME” to further a household’s ability to reduce energy consumption with industry-standard smart home equipment.

30 August: "Nest and OhmConnect Partner to Bring Grid-Responsive Smart Thermostats to Scale" by Jeff St. John, Greentech Media.

29 August: The Public Utilities Commission of Ohio (PUCO) released its "PowerForward" report - a roadmap to Ohio's electricity future.

28 August: The U.S. Department of Energy's Better Buildings Home Energy Information Accelerator released a new toolkit: "Bringing Home Energy Information to Real Estate".

12 August: "Innovator's Spotlight: Wexus Technologies, Empowering Farmers with Data-Driven Insights" by Leanna Sweha, for The Vine blog.

07 August: "Artificial Intelligence-based Data Monitoring Helps ETS Clients Control Energy Costs", by Steve Lubetkin, GlobeSt.com. Article includes podcast interview with Jeff Hendler, CEO, Logical Buildings (formerly ETS).

07 August: Smart Energy Consumer Collaborative is now taking nominations for its "2018 Best Practices Awards" to be presented at its 2019 Consumer Symposium on 04 February 2019.

27 July: "Interview with David Havyatt, Architect of Australia's Consumer Data Right" by Michael Murray, Mission:data Coalition.

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. 

John Gurski, founder & CEO of GBA Participating Member company Energy Toolbase is awarded with a spot on Renewable Energy World’s inaugural “Solar 40 Under 40” list at Intersolar; highlighting leaders under the age of 40 in the solar industry: 

https://www.renewableenergyworld.com/articles/2018/07/renewable-energy-world-announces-its-inaugural-solar-40-under-40.html

In-case you missed it, the GBA has just launched a Career Center.  We’ve been hard at work to offer this job-board resource to our members (and to our non-members) to further the Green Button ecosystem and success of your firms; and we’re excited to announce its official release.

Whether you’re looking for your next career move or looking for that next great hire, we believe our Career Center is your best source.

"Texas Smart Meter Settlement Could Grow Market for Energy Products," by Robert Walton, Utility Dive, notes that Texas regulators have approved recommendations to improve and streamline the state's smart meter data portal, including standardizing data transfers to be more in line with the Green Button Connect My Data standard.  Recommended reading: "Texas Decision Enhances Customer Choice of Enhanced Energy Providers" by Michael Murray, Mission:data Coalition.

"Survey: Solar Companies Want Software to Speed Growth, Manage Utility Rates," by Julia Pyper, Greentech Media.  Survey finds access to standardized Green Button energy usage data is a priority for solar software market and and also notes GBA members Energy Toolbase and UtilityAPI as popular software platforms.

"KWHCoin Aims to Build an Advanced Energy Economy that Connects Us All," by Tech Company News.  Interview with GBA member Girard Newkirk, CEO of GBA Member company: KWHCoin, regarding KWHCoin technology, partnerships and vision.

"NEM's 21st Annual Restructuring Conference Focuses on Next Phase of Consumer Choice Innovation and Opportunities in Energy Markets," Jeff Hendler, CEO of GBA member company: ETS - Energy Technology Savings, spoke at the Washington D.C. conference and discussed the importance of consumer access to consumption and demand data to enable consumer decisions to reduce energy costs and achieve clean energy goals.

"Snugg Home's Snugg Pro Adds Support for Green Button," discusses benefits of standardized Green Button energy data and how it speeds the home energy auditing process, with a two-minute demo.