An interview with Rolf Bienert, Managing Director and Technical Director of the OpenADR Alliance (link). The international organization has recently entered into a cooperation agreement with the Connectivity Standards Alliance. Both alliances aim to align their standards in order to improve the utilization of power grids and enable intelligent energy demand management. In this interview, Bienert explains the role that Matter plays in this context.
Dies ist die Übersetzung eines deutschen Interviews.
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Mr. Bienert, what is the OpenADR Alliance and what does it do?
Rolf Bienert: The OpenADR Alliance is – much like the Connectivity Standards Alliance – a standards consortium, a non-profit organization based in California. It focuses on solutions for demand response, meaning the flexible control of loads in power grids. Using the OpenADR standard, energy suppliers and customers can automatically exchange information – for example, about electricity prices. By shifting consumption to times of low grid load, costs can be saved and energy flows distributed more evenly.
The origins go back to a California energy crisis in the early 2000s, when rolling blackouts occurred along the West Coast. Back then, someone still had to pick up the phone and call large consumers when energy was in short supply. With OpenADR (Open Automated Demand Response), information flows automatically. The current version, OpenADR 3, is easy to implement and a key component of smart grids – because residential solar systems, battery storage, heat pumps, and electric vehicles are becoming increasingly important players in the energy system.
Where is the OpenADR standard already being used?
Bienert: About 50 percent of digital meters or electricity customers in the U.S. are connected to utilities that use OpenADR, mainly in California, Oregon, Washington, Colorado, and on the East Coast. That doesn’t mean that 50 percent of the population is already participating in flexibility programs, but the infrastructure is in place. In terms of memberships and certified products, Japan is likely the second most significant country. After Fukushima, work began very quickly there to make the power grid more flexible. South Korea and New Zealand use the standard, while China has developed its own adapted version.
“Europe is lagging behind … There is already flexibility in the market, but not so much on the customer side.”
Europe is lagging behind somewhat. For a long time, my impression was that energy suppliers here were reluctant to interact directly with their customers. There is already flexibility in the market, but not so much on the customer side. E.ON now has an OpenADR 3 server up and running in Sweden. The UK is aligning its regulations and utility sector with this approach. The Netherlands is driving the issue forward, and Austria is currently testing the use of OpenADR 3 as well. In Germany, Vattenfall, Stromnetz Hamburg, and others were already experimenting with it in 2019, apparently successfully. So far, however, there are no customer-oriented programs.
But Section 14a of the German Energy Industry Act mandates grid-friendly control: utilities must be able to curtail large consumers when necessary.
Bienert: I’m no expert on German law, and this is certainly helpful in emergencies. But in the long run, simply throttling the heat pump or EV charger hard cannot be a solution. OpenADR is designed with the consumer in mind: Customers should receive information and then decide for themselves. Not through manual intervention, but via an automation system like Apple Home or Matter. The system implements the desired strategy using data from the energy supplier. That is our vision.
Doesn’t OpenADR compete in this respect with standards such as OCPP, EEBUS, and others?
Bienert: The solutions complement each other. We are the information providers; other systems then take over on-site. For commercial buildings, that might be BACnet, for example, and in the residential sector, Matter. Public EV charging stations almost always use OCPP because it also handles things like customer accounts or credit card payments. For us, that doesn’t really matter, because we prefer not to address devices directly anyway.
The real competition is more on the utility system side, for example with IEC standards and the Common Information Model (CIM), which plays an important role in grid management. In theory, such models can extend all the way down to the customer level. From our perspective, however, that would have several disadvantages – especially in terms of cybersecurity. You don’t want millions of direct access points into the grid control system.
Matter is currently struggling to gain a foothold in energy management. Manufacturers of heat pumps and wall boxes have so far seen little incentive to integrate it into their systems. Can your partnership with the CSA change that?
Bienert: I obviously cannot speak for the Connectivity Standards Alliance, but the observation is correct. We have been talking about IoT for many years, and it is not really IoT if I have six different systems in my home and need six different apps to control them. That is more like an expensive collection of remote controls. But there are providers like EnergyHub in the U.S. that integrate APIs from many systems, thereby creating cross-vendor energy management – which is also open-ended with OpenADR.
“It is not really IoT if I have six different systems in my home and need six different apps to control them.”
My hope for the Matter collaboration points in the same direction: that within the next five to ten years, we’ll be able to explain to a wide range of companies – from Bosch to Google – what energy providers are aiming to achieve, how their data can best be transmitted to buildings, and how Matter systems can make use of it.
What gives you reason for this hope?
Bienert : When I first spoke about OpenADR at a CSA meeting in Chicago around a year ago, the basic concept was entirely new to many manufacturers of home automation products. They’re familiar with energy efficiency, but only from the perspective of saving energy. Here, the focus is on shifting consumption, and many weren’t aware of just how important an issue this is.
From OpenADR’s perspective, we hope that the home automation world will give more thought to how energy management can work according to the “set it and forget it” principle. If you want to ruin electric mobility for customers, you simply throttle their charger. But that’s precisely what shouldn’t happen. Load shifting must be seamless, understandable, and simple. Not all customers are tech-savvy. That’s why we see this partnership as an opportunity to better engage the building sector, making the whole system cost-effective and suitable for mass adoption in the long term.
How should we envision the ultimate goal or ideal outcome of this collaboration?
Bienert: My personal vision for the future – not next year, but rather in ten to fifteen years – would be a certification mark. A visible seal that shows customers: This works with your home energy system, and it offers you benefits. Similar to the GS mark in Germany or the Energy Star in the U.S. The customer doesn’t need to know all the technical details, just that a product has been tested, meets the necessary quality standards, and is compatible.
“My vision is a certification mark that tells customers: ‘This works with your energy system.’”
At the European level, that will likely only work with the involvement of the EU and its institutions…
Bienert: That’s why we try to work with the relevant bodies wherever possible. We have resumed our work with the IEC and are in the process of making OpenADR 3 an IEC standard, as was the case with the previous version, OpenADR 2. Countries like Austria or the Netherlands, where regulators and energy providers sit at the same table, are naturally helpful. And major players such as the state-owned energy provider EDF in France, Pacific Gas and Electric in California, or Orange as a service provider have already shown great interest in the cooperation between OpenADR and Matter.
Can nationally regulated energy markets even be standardized globally? That sounds like a challenge.
Bienert: It is a challenge. Fifteen years ago, many U.S. utilities told me they could not use OpenADR Alliance because their market works completely differently from others. My answer was always: So you’re not selling electricity for money?
Essentially, the same things are needed everywhere. Tariffs and customer contracts may differ, but the physical problems remain the same. Capacity flows through lines, and everywhere the question arises of how to relieve the strain on the grids. I hope that with OpenADR, the CSA, and other committees, we’ll be able to better synchronize these things in the future.
Mr. Bienert, thank you very much for this interview.
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