1 Scope

The Focus Group (FG), established in accordance with Recommendation ITU-T A.7, aims to

• identify potential impacts on standards development;
• investigate future ITU-T study items and related actions;
• familiarize ITU-T and standardization communities with emerging attributes of smart grid, and
• encourage collaboration between ITU-T and smart grid communities;

The Focus Group will collaborate with worldwide smart grid communities (e.g., research institutes, forums, academia) including other SDOs and consortia.

2 Rationale

According to the agreement of the October 2009 high level industry representatives meeting (WTSA Resolution 68), ITU-T study groups were invited to accelerate their work to support smart grid. The term “smart grid” is used for a concept of “intelligent” electricity networks aiming to save energy and to reduce CO2 emissions.

Further, in WTSA-08 Resolution 73 (Information and communication technologies and climate change) ITU-T called for the development of appropriate Recommendations within its mandate and competency in order to support the reduction of CO2 emissions and the impacts of climate change.

A smart grid concept will need harmonized support from telecommunication/ICT and electric power technologies and may result in the need for flexible network and service capabilities to accommodate demands.

Smart grid principles may also be applied to the telecommunication/ICT system itself, consisting of networks and service platforms, in the course of providing services with more efficient use of energy not only for the core network and access domains but also for home networks.

The Focus Group will interact with the various research activities in order to familiarize ITU-T and standardization communities with the emerging attributes of smart grid.

3 FG objective

The objective of the Focus Group is to collect and document information and concepts that would be helpful for developing Recommendations to support smart grid from a telecommunication/ICT perspective. Therefore, the objective is limited to the telecommunication/ICT aspects of smart grid, i.e., things like the standardization of metering aspects of smart meter devices and work within the responsibilities of energy standardization bodies are out of scope.

To achieve this objective, the Focus Group will

• update living list of standards bodies, forums, and consortia dealing with smart grid
• collect visions and value propositions for the smart grid
• provide terminology and taxonomy necessary to support smart grid
• analyze communication networking requirement functions and capabilities to support smart grid
• gather new ideas relevant to and identify potential study areas to support smart grid
• identify use cases of smart grid that can be used to derive communication network requirements
• suggest future ITU-T study items and related actions
• identify potential impacts on standards development, e.g., for
  • ICT and climate change
  • Gaps of standards for communications networking to support smart grid.
  • NGN including mobile
  • Numbering, Naming and Addressing issues
  • Control requirements including signalling
  • Transport layer technologies including home network
  • Security and privacy
  • Home gateway and USN
  • PLC/PLT issues
  • Interoperability
  • Terminals and application aspects over integrated broadband cable and television networks

4 Relations within and outside ITU-T

The FG should work in close collaboration with all ITU-T study groups (e.g., through collocated meetings, see clause 11), for instance on the coordination of respective work programmes in order to avoid duplication and overlap of work, and on the coordination of seminars and workshops according to Recommendation ITU-T A.31.

The FG will also cooperate and coordinate its work with the other ITU sectors (ITU-R, ITU-D), and with other relevant bodies outside ITU-T (universities, research institutes, SDOs, forums/consortia, regulators, policy-makers) in accordance with Recommendation ITU-T A.7.

Special attention will be paid to collaboration with SDOs (in particular IEC) and the energy sector.

Of particular relevance for this Focus Group are the NIST Smart Grid Interoperability Panel and the JTC 1 Special Working Group on smart grid.

5 Specific tasks and deliverables

• A living list of standards bodies, forums, and consortia dealing with telecommunication/ICT aspects of smart grid, including information concerning their activities and documents in the context of smart grid standards framework
• Collect and summarize vision and value propositions of smart grid with a focus on telecommunication/ICT aspects
• Terminology and taxonomy
• Analysis of communications networking requirement functions and capabilities to support smart grid (including QoS/QoE, security and reliability)
• Contribute in this regard to the studies undertaken in response to WTSA Resolution 73 (ICTs and Climate Change) and Council Resolution 1307 (ICTs and Climate Change).
• Gap analysis of standards for communications networking to support smart grid
• Use cases of services and reference models for telecommunication/ICT to support smart grid
• Roadmap to guide further developments of relevant ITU-T Recommendations

6 Parent group

The parent group is TSAG.

7 Leadership

See clause 2.3 of Recommendation ITU-T A.7.

8 Participation

See clause 3 of Recommendation ITU-T A.7. A list of participants will be maintained for reference purposes and reported to the parent group.

9 Administrative support

See clause 5 of Recommendation ITU-T A.7.

10 General financing of the FG

See clauses 4 and 10.2 of Recommendation ITU-T A.7.

11 Meetings

The frequency and location of meetings will be determined by the Focus Group and the overall meetings plan should be announced as soon as possible. The Focus Group should use remote collaboration tools to the maximum extent, and collocation with existing meetings (e.g, study groups and research activities). The meetings will be announced by electronic means (e.g., e-mail and website, etc.) at least 4 weeks in advance.

12 Technical Contributions

Technical contributions are to be submitted at least 10 calendar days before the meeting takes place.

13 Working language

The working language will be English.

14 Approval of deliverables

Approval of deliverables will be taken by consensus.

15 Working guidelines

Working procedures will follow the procedures of Rapporteur meetings. No additional working guidelines are defined.

16 Progress reports

See clause 11 of Recommendation ITU-T A.7.

17 Announcement of Focus Group formation

The formation of the Focus Group will be announced by TSAG via ITU publications and other means, including communication with the other organizations and/or experts, technical journals and the World Wide Web.

18 Milestones and duration of the FG

The Focus Group lifetime is one year from the 1st meeting.

The following milestones are proposed:

• Holding of the first Focus Group meeting (14-16 June 2010)
• Presentation of the first draft of the deliverables as identified in clause 5 at the TSAG meeting in 8-11 February 2011

19 Patent policy

See clause 9 of Recommendation ITU-T A.7.