Did You Know? | Flexible Green Button Standards Support Multiple Resources

Flexible Green Button Standards Support Multiple Resources

The North American Energy Standards Board's (NAESB) Energy Services Provider Interface (ESPI) REQ.21 standard – the core of the Green Button set of standards – is the industry's open utility-data standard, designed to provide secure access to standardized customer utility data for electricity, natural gas, and all types of water usage (potable, gray/reclaimed, and waste/sewage). But, did you know that the powerful, flexible Green Button framework was specifically designed to be extensible to support multiple resource data types – all as separate resource/commodity types in the Green Button format?

The Green Button standard can represent the following utility resource types today:

– Electricity (primary metered, secondary metered, transmission "metered")

– Natural Gas

– Water (potable; gray; irrigation; non-potable; waste water/sewer)

– Steam

– Propane

– Heating / Cooling Fluid

– Non-commodity measurements including Insulative Gas and Oil

Extensible Utility Data Standard

In addition to standardizing electricity, natural gas, and water -usage data, the Green Button utility-data standards can be extended to standardize a wide range of additional data types and measurements – including numerous, key environmental measurements:

– Carbon & Carbon Dioxide

– Hexachlorocyclohexane

– Methane

– Nitrous Oxides

– Perfluorocarbons

– Sulfur Dioxide & Sulfurhexafluoride

Data Integration from Non-Utility Sources, Support for DERs

The open Green Button standards can also integrate data from non-utility sources, such as from solar arrays, community wind farms, or other distributed energy resources (DERs). It can also represent aggregated data from multiple meters and building tenants in a single, standardized Green Button data file or stream. The extensible design of the Green Button standards ensures they can adapt to meet future energy-data needs, supporting residential, commercial, and industrial customers; plus, utility services and DERs to enable secure and efficient energy management, resource use, and decarbonization.

The Green Button Alliance-hosted OpenADE Task Force technical committee works to determine and develop, by consensus, the next Green Button data resource/measurement types and innovation. The committee is currently considering including additional commodity/resources such as Hydrogen, Petrol/Gasoline, and Diesel, as well as greenhouse gas information – including energy-source provenance. The OpenADE committee meets monthly, online, and is open to anyone in the industry to participate at no cost.

For the full list of resources, commodities, and measurements the Green Button standards can represent, see the GBA's FAQ's.