SIP Forum Creates Smart Grid Special Interst Group

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SIP Forum has created a Special Interest group to support Smart Grid;

The Smart Grid is the modernization of the electricity grid using communication technology with the primary goals of reducing energy consumption, reducing cost (utilities and consumers), increasing reliability and the creation of new services for all participants in the value chain.
While the current focus is on electricity, similar concepts can be applied to other utility systems such as water, gas, etc. Such a modernization has recently become a significant focus for governments, vendor communities (utility companies and partners) as well as Industry/Standardization organizations such as NIST, GridWise, IPSO, IETF and IEEE.
The Smart Grid architecture requires a ‘communications overlay network’ which can help facilitate ‘intelligent communication’ (discovery, session establishment, routing, addressing to name a few) between various nodes of the heterogeneous Smart Grid network.
Several of the standards bodies and organizations mentioned above are working towards identifying standards and protocols that meet the goal of a robust, secure and interoperable Smart Grid network.

 The SIG aims to deliver;

1. Create a ‘requirement feasibility matrix’ that maps the various smart grid requirements created by NIST, GridWise, DoE etc. with a mapping to whether SIP meets the requirements to be considered for further study (along with brief reasoning).
2. Outline usecases and sequence diagrams where SIP can be used vis-à-vis existing smart grid use-case diagrams already published (example, from GridWise).
3. Create and end-end network diagram of the smart grid network specifically depicting where the role of SIP could be.
4. Create a document that brings out areas which can be met with existing SIP standards and areas that need new extensions to SIP.
5. Create a whitepaper on how using SIP could bring in new & innovative services for the smart grid network in the future (while this may not be in the forefront of requirements by the smart grid industry, a peek ahead always helps in setting an appropriate vision of the future).

 We are in it, as we really like and envision the smart grid!
Smart Grid SIG at SIP Forum via Rich Tehrani