[UPDATE 2/15/2023 Congratulations to the DOE and the National Labs for reaching consensus on a nationwide "Grid Services Standard" recommendation today within NAESB]
On May 2, 2022, the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL), and Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) jointly submitted a request for standards development to the North American Energy Standards Board (NAESB) seeking to harmonize grid service terminology and definitions supporting distributed energy resources offered by the organized markets and distribution systems. As described in the request, the effort is intended to create standardized, technology-neutral grid service definitions that can benefit both wholesale and retail electric market interactions. Such a step will advance interoperability and integration of distributed energy resources while recognizing the diverse needs of differing markets and regions. The request was submitted to support the U.S. DOE’s Grid Modernization Laboratory Consortium (GMLC) efforts to modernize the nation’s electric grid.
GMLC Principal Investigator (PI) Richard Brown, LBNL, and Co-PI Steve Widergren, PNNL, said “LBNL and PNNL are excited to utilize the NAESB process to take this step on behalf of the DOE-funded GMLC grid services, energy services interfaces, and grid connected devices team. A lack of common industry terminology regarding grid services can be a roadblock to the interoperability of distributed energy resources and the development of other standardized practices. NAESB standardization of grid service definitions could provide a foundation for a common framework that would simplify distributed energy resource integration and enable the comparison of grid service usage across the markets, leading to improved accuracy and consistency of information concerning grid service performance and metrics.”
As indicated in the request, the NAESB standards development effort will promote more efficient wholesale and retail electric market operations while also advancing market utilization of distributed energy resources. The request proposes to build upon existing wholesale market structures by standardizing common grid service names, definitions, and performance characteristics that align with the market product taxonomies and definitions identified in the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) Electric Quarterly Reports
The complete press release is available on NAESB's website, along with the DOE's "Grid Services Standards Request".
You may also be interested in the US DOE report on the "System in Transition".