Smart Grid Consortium Research

Austin has a successful “consortium history.”  In the 1980s, the MCC and SEMATECH consortia helped put Austin on the map as a center of excellence in the computer and semiconductor industries.  That spirit of collaboration and shared expertise is what launched the Pecan Street Project initiative in 2008, and it continues on in the Pecan Street Consortium.

In 2011, several companies joined the Pecan Street Consortium as Industry Advisory Council members.  These companies – Best Buy, Freescale, Intel, Landis+Gyr, LG Electronics, Oncor, Oracle, SunEdison, Sony, Texas Gas Service, and Whirlpool – will work closely with Pecan Street staff, University of Texas researchers and experts from the Galvin Electricity Initiative and Underwriters Laboratory to test, evaluate and endorse consumer smart grid architectures, metrics, systems interoperability and applicable industry standards.

Pecan Street Inc.’s technology director Bert Haskell and Dr. Robert Hebner, the director of UT’s Center for Electromechanics and former acting director of NIST, will lead the consortium research agenda.

Unique Work

The consortium engages in the following work:

• Bring together utilities, researchers, standards organizations and private sector companies to collaborate on testing, evaluation and endorsement of consumer smart grid architectures, interoperability and points of interface
• Inventory applicable industry standards for automobiles, consumer electronics and wireless home area networks
• Carry out field tests of existing and emerging smart grid industry standards and evaluate and recommend these standards
• Serve as a clearing house on standards information and evaluation to help utilities and private sector companies make good choices from the portfolio of standards available to them
• Carry out consumer behavior research to better understand the value propositions that appeal to consumers and the system impacts of different consumer-technology architectures
• Research on the types of data and data flows that are required for different modes of functionality and the performance of these systems and data

Unique Value

The Pecan Street Standard Consortium provides unique value to member companies, including:

• Technically excellent, neutral third-party based research and evaluation – not controlled by any one industry stakeholder
• Member access to researchers and students from Pecan Street Inc., The University of Texas, Environmental Defense Fund and National Renewable Energy Laboratory
• Close proximity to policymakers and regulators in Texas – the research is being conducted less than 2.5 miles from the Texas PUC and the Texas Capitol
• Access to a community of volunteer participants in smart grid field trials
• Access to an actual electric grid for product and system testing

Membership in the Pecan Street Consortium is by invitation only.  For more information about the Consortium, please contact Bert Haskell at 512-782-9213.