Between the Poles

DoE and NIST Announce Initial Set of Interoperability Standards for the Smart-grid

An initial set of 16 National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) interoperability standards for the smart-grid have been announced by the Department of Energy and Department of Commerce, which is responsible for NIST.

The standards cover 

• Advanced metering infrastructure (AMI) and Smart Grid end-to-end security
• Revenue metering information model
• Building automation
• Substation and feeder device automation
• Inter-control center communications
• Substation automation and protection
• Application level energy management system interfaces 
• Information security for power system control operations
• Phasor measurement unit (PMU) communications
• Physical and electrical interconnections between utility and distributed generation (DG)
• Security for intelligent electronic devices (IEDs)
• Cyber security standards for the bulk power system
• Cyber security standards and guidelines for federal information systems, including those for the bulk power system
• Open Automated Demand Response (Open ADR): Price responsive and direct load control
• OpenHAN: Home Area Network device communication, measurement, and control
• ZigBee/HomePlug Smart Energy Profile: Home Area Network (HAN) Device Communications and Information Model

The Energy Department has contributed $10 million it received for development of interoperability standards under the Recovery Act (ARRA) to the NIST to accelerate development of these standards.  Public comments on the initial standards will be accepted for 30 days after their upcoming publication in the Federal Register. 

DoE Smart-grid Grant Maximum Raised to $200 million

The Department of Energy has announced that it will raise the cap on grants for the development of smart-grid projects to $200 million from $20 million. 

The Recovery bill (ARRA) included $4.5 billion for smart-grid technologies which I blogged about here and here.  FERC has released a policy statement and action plan to accelerate development of smart-grid technologies for the US power grid.

Raising the maximum to $200 million will make this program attractive to the larger power utilities who were doubting whether applying for grants in the range $500 K to $20 M was worth the overhead.  

Autodesk Partnering with Clinton Climate Initiative To Support Project Two Degrees

At the Seoul C40 Large Cities Climate Summit 2009, Autodesk announced it is partnering with the Clinton Climate Initiative (CCI) to provide visualization technology for Project Two Degrees. Project Two Degrees is an Internet-based application that provides cities with tools to measure, compare, and reduce greenhouse gas emissions.  The project’s Web-based software enables cities to calculate the carbon footprint of municipal operations and the communities they serve in a uniform way. In the pilot phase participants in the C40 will be the first to be invited to use the Project Two Degrees emissions tracking software.  Autodesk will provide the technology based on Autodesk MapGuide Enterprise used to view, evaluate and compare the results of analysis and monitoring emissions. 

Clinton Foundation Announces Climate Positive Development Program

Bill Clinton in Seoul, South Korea for the C40 Summit, an annual meeting of some of the world's largest cities committed to addressing climate change, announced the Climate Positive Development Program in partnership with the U.S. Green Building Council.  The program will support the development of large-scale urban projects that demonstrate cities can grow in ways that are “climate positive.” Climate Positive real estate developments aim to reduce the amount of on-site CO₂ emissions to below zero.

Japanese Stimulus Reaches 3% of GDP

The Japanese government has announced a 15.4 trillion yen ($150 billion) stimulus package that includes measures to support fuel-efficient vehicles and consumer electronics.  This is the third stimulus package announced by the government in the last year. Japan intends to be a world leader in energy efficient technology. The stimulus is intended to create upto two million jobs over the next three years.

Ottawa Tulip Festival with a Nikon P6000 Digital Camera with Built-in GPS

I've blogged here and here about the Nikon P6000 with a built-in GPS.  Here are some pictures taken at the Ottawa Tulip Festival.  Select the "Map" option to see the locations of all the pictures.

During WWII Princess Juliana and her husband left the Netherlands with their two daughters.  Juliana took the children to Ottawa, where she lived in Stornoway House,  now the residence of the Leader of the Opposition, in Rockcliffe Park, now part of Ottawa.

When her third child Margriet was born, a special law was passed by the Canadian Parliament declaring Princess Juliana's rooms at the Ottawa Civic Hospital as extraterritorial so that Margriet would have exclusively Dutch citizenship, which is required for her to be in the line of succession.

After the war in 1945 Juliana sent the city of Ottawa 100,000 tulip bulbs in recognition of the thousands of Canadians who died liberating the Netherlands.  Then in 1946, she sent another 20,500 bulbs and promised to send Ottawa an annual gift of tulips during her lifetime. And that is the origin of the Ottawa Tulip Festival.

FOSSLC: Introduction to OpenStreetMap

At FOSSLC Summercamp, Richard Weait presented an overview of OpenStreetMap.  You can watch his presentation here.  He relates a fascinating story about a map edit disagreement in Cyprus where two contributors disagreed about the name of a town, Greek or Turkish.

Greenland and Antarctica Not Affected by Economic Downturn

I came across a blog post by Joe Francica that injected a bit of humour into the otherwise marginally encouraging economic news.

FOSSLC: Introduction to Git and GitHub

At FOSSLC Summercamp, John Duff presented an overview of Git and GitHub.  You can watch his presentation here.   Git is an open source, distributed version control system similar to CVS and SVN.  The major advantages are that Git is fully distributed so that you can modify and commit without network access because every Git clone is a full-fledged repository with complete history and full revision tracking capabilities. Also unique to Git is virtually single click forking.  Git is used for some very well known projects including Linux Kernel, Perl, Gnome, Ruby on Rails, Android, Wine, Fedora and Git itself.

GSA to Spend $4.5 billion on Greening Federal Buildings

The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) has allocated $5.55 billion to the General Services Administration (GSA) for federal public building projects. Of this $4.5 billion is targetted on converting federal buldings into model green buildings.  The GSA has submitted a list of proposed projects to Congress. Buildings were prioritized based on the speed at which jobs could be created and the magnitude of improved energy efficiency.  

The GSA has been a major proponent of building information modeling (BIM) since 2003.  For all major projects receiving design funding in 2007 and later, "GSA requires spatial program BIMs be the minimum requirements for submission to OCA for Final Concept approvals by the PBS Commissioner and the Chief Architect. At the same time, all GSA projects are encouraged to deploy mature 3D, 4D, and BIM technologies—spatial program validation and beyond—at strategic project phases in support of specific project challenges."  Among other benefits BIM facilitates the sustainability analysis of buildings.