Press Release | GBA Certifies New Utility Platforms to v3.3
Green Button Alliance Certifies New Utility Energy Data Exchange Platforms as Compliant to the Green Button Connect My Data version 3.3 Standard
Green Button Certified Solutions Empower Utility Customers with Easy Access to their Energy Data; Meet Regulatory Requirements for Standards-based Secure Data Access and Customer Privacy
August 19, 2022–The Green Button Alliance (GBA), which fosters the development, compliance, and adoption of the industry-standard Green Button energy and water data-access and –sharing protocol, announced it has tested and certified several new utility-provided energy data exchange platforms as compliant to the North American Energy Standards Board’s (NAESB) Retail Energy Quadrant Book 21 (REQ.21) Energy Services Provider Interface (ESPI) Model Business Practices standard, version 3.3, commonly known as the Green Button standard.
Published by NAESB in January 2020, version 3.3 of the Green Button standard includes the structure and definitions for Personally Identifiable Information (PII); revised structure and definitions for Energy Usage Information (EUI); updated security requirements; and a simplified customer authorization process. To ensure secure sharing of PII data, the Retail Customer (RC) schema of the standard enables those data from a customer's account to be carried in a single stream with a separate, parallel EUI stream linking specific meters to the PII data.
The Green Button Alliance, through its comprehensive Green Button Testing and Certification program, has recently tested and certified several new utility Green Button data exchange platforms in the United States and Canada as compliant to the Green Button version 3.3 standard for both Energy Usage and Retail Customer data functionality including:
- Silicon Valley Clean Energy’s Data Hive, California, powered by UtilityAPI;
- London Hydro, Ontario, powered by London Hydro;
- National Grid, New York, powered by UtilityAPI;
- Fort Collins Municipal Utilities’ MyData, Colorado, powered by UtilityAPI;
- Peninsula Clean Energy’s Data Connect, California, powered by UtilityAPI;
- ERTH Power’s GB Connector Tool, Ontario, powered by Savage Data Systems.
To ensure the Green Button standard is implemented correctly—and the numerous key benefits of the standard are gained by utilities, customers and third-parties—regulators are increasingly calling for Green Button implementations to be tested and certified by the GBA as compliant to the standard. For example, as part of Ontario’s Regulation 633/21: Energy Data, energy providers province-wide must implement Green Button Connect My Data (CMD) and Download My Data (DMD) solutions – and certify the solutions through the GBA by November 1, 2023.
The GBA’s Green Button testing and Certification program fully examines utility-provided Green Button energy data access and exchange implementations, including the mapping of PII data structure back to EUI and vice versa. The GBA’s test harness supports the latest Transport-Layer Security (TLS) version, operating system upgrades, and modern web browsers.
Utilities should obtain the latest version of the standard, version 3.3, from NAESB prior to solution testing by the Green Button Alliance. Utilities offering Green Button solutions can pre-test their files for free using the GBA’s Download My Data Validator prior to applying for Green Button Certified testing.
About Green Button Connect My Data (CMD)
Green Button Connect My Data (CMD) is an open-data standard that enables utilities to safely provide access to interval usage and billing data and allows utility customers, or customer-authorized third-party solutions, to seamlessly and securely obtain detailed and highly accurate interval meter data to inform energy- and water-management decision-making—while ensuring customer data are protected and privacy is maintained.
About Green Button Download My Data (DMD)
Green Button Download My Data (DMD) standard is an open-data standard that enables utility customers (residential, commercial, energy managers, etc.) to manually download their electricity-, natural gas-, or water-usage data from an energy or water provider’s website in an industry-standard XML data file format that can be opened by software applications of their choosing.
About the Green Button Alliance
The Green Button Alliance (GBA) is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization formed to foster the development, compliance, and global adoption of compliant Green Button implementations. The GBA is comprised of leading utilities, governmental departments and agencies, solution providers, and affiliated organizations that collaborate to advance the Green Button initiative of enabling energy consumers around the world to access and share their energy- and water-usage data for managing their consumption. The GBA educates the market on the broad benefits of the Green Button standard, encourages standards-based application development, and administers the Green Button Testing and Certification Program to accelerate the delivery of standardized Green Button technologies to energy consumers. For more information, or to join the Green Button Alliance, please visit https://www.greenbuttonalliance.org.
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