Standards Development

Scope

The scope is defining the requirements to ensure interoperable data exchange of metrologically relevant data for flexibility billing purpose of revenue grade sub-meters. This standard will be an additional set of requirements over the standard (also at NP proposal stage) on requirements for data model and data format for revenue grade sub-meters used for billing of electrical energy, with specific additions to allow billing of flexibility services through sub-meters.

It also covers the topics of proof of work needed to demonstrate fulfilment of the flexibility services and the necessary control aspects of the Smart Appliance, as one possible solution to guarantee it fulfils the committed services.

The scope includes preparing the amendments of the IEC 62056 standard series in order to include the needed changes to cover these new sub-metering requirements.

 The proposed amendments shall be communication protocol agnostic (as defined by IEC 62056-1-0). The telecommunication channels that could be used should be aligned with the industry standards and if needed and relevant, communication profiles shall be added into the scope (upon discussion by the working group).

The scope should take into consideration regional regulations and directives on billing-grade sub-meters, such as in Europe and North America (see further details below).

The scope shall further include requirements for data flow (both directions, including possible time constraints, actors), with main use cases illustrated, proposed data model (classes, structures, codes) with required processing/data conversion (methods), data protection and privacy (mandatory/optional, including key handling), data exchange & supported profiles (if any) as well the underlaying cybersecurity requirements complying to the international standards and legislative frameworks.

 Information required to be able to reconcile data between Smart Meter readings (e.g. every 15min) and Sub- Metering data (e.g. transactional spread across one or several 15min periods) shall be covered.

Define how the sub-meter will connect to the energy retailers/suppliers and other market stakeholders shall be covered. Various scenarios are to be included. Alignment of the architecture with other ongoing activities in the standardisation area is necessary to ensure coherence of the solutions beyond the pure scope of revenue grade sub-metering.

Communications protocol layers adaptation (if any) shall be discussed but standardisation of the telecommunication protocol is out of scope.

The resulting requirements and amendments of the existing standard shall not be in contradiction with, or conflicting with, the other proposed NP on Data Exchange for Electrical Energy Billing. The metrology and measurement systems are out of scope of this proposal, however the close collaboration with TC13 WG11 and other standardsation bodies is needed to ensure a proposer alignment of the work and avoid contradictions or overlaps with other standards.

Purpose

While the focus of IEC is international, it should still take into consideration the legislative frameworks of the major regions to avoid having contradicting standards wherever possible. It is therefore important that IEC now initiates new work to identify the gaps and update the existing standards, if necessary, to ensure that IEC standards do not contradict or do not overlap, and if possible, supports, the major legislative changes by providing an up to date and adapted international standards framework.

In Europe, the recent amendments to the Regulations (EU) 2019/942 and (EU) 2019/943 and Directives (EU) 2019/944 as regards improving the Union’s electricity market design, will push towards opening the energy supply and flexibility markets for Smart Appliances. The legislative framework requires these Smart Appliances be eligible to individual energy supply and flexibility contracts independently from the home energy supply contract. To achieve this, billing-grade sub-meters with data exchange capabilities are defined (and referred as a Dedicated Measurement Device by the EU commission).

In the United States, a new regulation for submeters used in billing applications has been finalized. It is defined in the NIST Handbook 44 and is in process of being published by the National Conference of Weights and Measures.

The proposed approach is to break the work down into three main tasks: metrology aspects, data exchange for billing of electrical energy by sub-meters and data exchange of billing of flexibility and control of smart appliances by sub-meters. These three work streams will each be the scope of a separate NP which shall be submitted to IEC TC13.

Currently, there are no international standards covering the data model and data format for data exchange of metrological billing of revenue grade sub-meters. While this is not fundamentally different from DSO grade billing, three are some particularities which require some adaptation of the existing standards.

As of today, in grid digitalization and smart metering, the IEC 62056 standard series has been used for over a decade and deployed in over 300 million devices to date. It is hence an already established and recognized standard for data exchange of metrologically relevant information used for billing purposes for smart meters and amending it to suite the needs to sub-metering will allow this industry to benefit from a proven solution.