NIST Collects New Group of Smart Grid Advisors

A few weeks ago I was very honored to receive an appointment to the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) Smart Grid Advisory Committee along with 12 other members from across the U.S. utility industry, as you can read about here. The purpose of the group is to serve as advisers to NIST Director Patrick Gallagher on the direction of NIST smart grid-related programs.

We had our first meeting last week and I can’t begin to tell you how impressed I am with the breadth and depth of the group that NIST has gathered. I can tell there was a lot of thought given to the selection of a diverse group of utility company, manufacturers, telecommunications, legal, grid and generation enabling companies, and academic representatives.  Today, Alstom Grid distributed a press release about my new NIST group colleague, Dr. Lawrence Jones,  so I thought this blog’s readers should know about my participation as well. 

As I said, it was a real honor to be named to this organization and it reminds me of the type of policy work I performed as a leader of the Edison Electric Institute’s task force on Y2k, which I reminisced on earlier this year in this blog. I will certainly dedicate myself to living up to the expectations for this group and to serve as an industry advocate for standards and practices that make sense. – Jon C. Arnold