Emerging energy management standards and technologies — Challenges and application prospects

The continuously rising costs and the environmental impact of energy generation, transmission and consumption are a major concern for governments, industry and society alike. Among research in renewable energy sources as well as in energy efficiency of buildings, electrical appliances, vehicles etc., a considerable amount of attention has been devoted to effective energy management. In this paper, we present a survey on emerging energy management standards with focus on enabling application layer Information and Communications Technologies (ICT) that are a central part of these standards. The presented work includes an analysis on the challenges, future trends, security and application prospects of energy management standards. As part of the survey, the emerging Open Automated Demand Response (OpenADR) version 2.0 and Smart Energy Profile (SEP) version 2.0 were identified as the most promising and complete solutions. The presented survey provides an important insight on the future developments in the area of energy management protocols and highlights a number of key ICT solutions and challenges.