The OpenADR Alliance, a nonprofit corporation created to foster the development, adoption and compliance of the OpenADR and related communications standards, today announced it has seen significant progress in global market adoption of the OpenADR standard for use in effectively and securely managing Electric Vehicle Supply Equipment (EVSE) in electric grids. Sunil Goyal from Ford Motor Company has joined the Board of Directors and Alliance membership over the last two years has grown 40 percent with a large part of new members in the EVSE industry. With the increasing growth of the EV market and the resulting implications for the power system, managed charging programs are crucial. Utilities are developing programs based on open standards like OpenADR that will avoid distribution upgrade roadblocks resulting in unnecessary costs for utilities.

"We are seeing more utilities across the globe expand their managed charging programs to include new technologies, from simple price and capacity management to vehicle-to-grid (V2G) integrations," said Rolf Bienert, Technical and Managing Director, OpenADR Alliance. "This has resulted in an uptick of interest to join the Alliance by EVSE companies including one of the industry's largest automotive companies."

"Today the Alliance's membership is mostly control manufacturers and utilities so having Mr. Goyal will bring a new viewpoint as well as provide valuable insights to define and expand new services for OpenADR," Bienert added.

According to Sunil Goyal, Advance Project Leader - Energy Service, Ford Motor Company, "Ford supports open standards as a way to overcome interoperability challenges in young but maturing markets - like what we have today for VGI. This aligns well with OpenADR's mission. Ford is looking forward to the opportunity to lend our voice to this effort. "  

Connectivity and interoperability of customer owned resources are critical requirements for smart grid modernization, and with increased growth of EV applications there will be continued utility interest and adoption of the OpenADR standard. OpenADR has already been leveraged in EV charging use cases (Detroit use case) by several utilities like Detroit Edison and Xcel Energy in partnership with automotive OEMs like Ford and GM. OpenADR is increasingly specified by utilities and city developers to enable interoperable and secure networks. The OpenADR Alliance has seen its influence grow, with more than 250 OpenADR certified products as service providers deploy applications and services for EV infrastructures.