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This week’s most important announcement? SEP 2 interoperability moves forward

By Jesse Berst

A brief press release that received little attention may have important long-term implications for home energy management and demand response. An interoperability consortium for an important standard announced its formal incorporation along with several milestones.

Smart Energy Profile 2.0 defines standards to connect devices in the home with the grid. The Consortium for Smart Energy Profile Interoperability is a group of competing home automation specifications that is working together to ensure that their various products will all plug and play with SEP 2.

Until recently, HomePlug, Wi-Fi and ZigBee were competing to be the sole way to communicate in a home. Now they’ve abandoned that proprietary approach and are working very hard to make sure they can all talk SEP 2 to each other. They’ve even completed an interoperability Plugfest to measure their success.

Now we just need the SEP 2 specification to be completed, which is supposed to happen by the end of the year. Once that’s in place and supported by devices, homeowners, utilities and vendors will be able to move forward with confidence on home energy management and on “automated DR.” They’ll know that any SEP 2-certified device will be able to communicate properly, regardless of its underlying transport.

Read more from SmartGridNews.com.

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