The panel will review the primary outputs emerging from the Smart Grid architecture defined by NIST and its Priority Action Plans, noting the use and re-use of open standards in demand-response transactions, grid-to-device interaction, grid security and other areas. The panel will describe the application of openness, transparency, licensing, interoperability and SOA methods to strike a balance between the conflicting policy goals of rewarding patents and innovation, and making Smart Grid technology available to the greatest number.

Chairperson:

James Bryce Clark
General Counsel
OASIS

James advises on legal and policy matters as well as the consortium's extensive liaison efforts. He is an e-commerce and information technology attorney who began his practice as a financing and corporate restructuring lawyer with Shearman & Sterling at 53 Wall Street in New York. He represented high technology companies in their banking, trade finance, acquisitions and securities transactions throughout the 1990's, and served two terms as chairman of the American Bar Association's business law subcommittee on electronic commerce.

Speakers:

David Wollman
Smart Grid Team Lead, Group Leader Quantum Electrical Metrology Division
National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST)

Dr. David Wollman is one of NIST's smart grid team leads and manages programs to maintain and advance the Nation's electrical standards and provide measurements to support the electric power industry. Dr. Wollman received his Ph.D. in physics from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, holds three U.S. patents, and has received many awards including the U.S. Department of Commerce Gold Medal and the NIST Applied Research Award.

 

Rob Ranck
President
HomePlug Powerline Alliance

Since 2002, Rob Ranck has supported the HomePlug Powerline Alliance as its executive director and became president in 2008. In addition to in depth knowledge of technology consortia and the development, certification and marketing of industry standards, he has over 25 years experience within the technology sector in marketing, business development, product engineering and business operations.

 

Erich W. Gunther
Chairman & Chief Technology Officer
EnerNex Corporation

After 25 years in energy industry development and consulting and key roles in various IEEE and utilities standards projects, Mr. Gunther now gives leadership to the overall federal SmartGrid initiative as leader of Enernex's efforts as the contractual administrator for NIST's SmartGrid interoperability standards development and harmonization program.

 

Zahra Makoui
Supervisor, Smart Grid Communication Standards
Pacific Gas and Electric Company

Ms. Makoui is the Supervisor leading PG&E's Emerging Smart Grid Communication Standards Activities at Pacific Gas and Electric Company. As part of PG&E's Strategic Planning & Architecture Technology Innovation Center, she is responsible for developing Smart Grid standards strategy as well as driving industry standards to completion in order to meet customer's needs and associated deployment schedules. Ms. Makoui and her team have been actively involved in driving execution for many key standards in the UCA International Users Group, the ZigBee Alliance, the HomePlug Alliance, IETF, and several international standards development organizations. She is currently the co-chair of the SG Conformity Working Group under UCAIug OpenSG. Ms. Makoui is also the vice chair of the OpenHAN 2.0 task force. She was previously involved in PG&E's SmartMeter project, defining the technology strategy to incorporate a Premise Area Network interface for communication to customers and performing systems analysis in SmartMeter Engineering.

 

Sila Kiliccote
Program Manager, Building Technologies Department
Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory

Ms. Kiliccote works in the Building Technologies Deparment and the CEC PIER's Demand Response Research Center at the USDOE's Berkeley Lab. She is co-author of the OpenADR specification, developed by LBL and NIST as a starting model for dynamic, automated demand/response (DR) energy usage transactions for the SmartGrid. She has a BS in electrical engineering and a Masters Degree in building science.