The Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC), part of the smart grid standards framework, and the Technical Committee 287 of the European Committee for Standardization (CEN/TC 287) that focuses on standardization in the field of digital geographic information for Europe, announced its Smart Grid location interoperability workshop on October 6-7 in Italy.

The two-day workshop called “Smart Grid and Spatial Data Infrastructure - Interoperability Challenges Now and in the Future” is expected to review the current status of geospatial standards in the electric utility industry.

Members of this industry and the standards community will get an opportunity to discuss a path forward to a standards framework.

The workshop organized by CEN/TC 287 and OGC is significant as smart grid standards efforts are focused on standards from the International Electronic Commission and the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers that support the definition of power distribution technologies.

The communication of spatial information in grid applications is yet to be standardized. In order to address this gap, the smart grid standards community needs to take standards from the International Organization for Standardization, the European Committee for Standardization.

The workshop, sponsored by Sparx Systems, will be part of the EnviroInfo Ispra 2011conference at the European Commission's Joint Research Centre.

Recently, the U.S. agriculture secretary Tom Vilsack unveiled a loan program that will grant $900 million in funding to rural electric cooperative utilities for smart grid technologies and upgrades to generation and transmission systems. The grant is expected to benefit over 19,000 rural consumers in 14 U.S. states.

Provided by the USDA Rural Development’s Rural Utilities Service (RUS) responsible for funding energy conservation and renewable energy projects, the loans will support electric utilities to upgrade, build out, maintain and replace the country’s existing electric infrastructure.

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