CEA announces new standard group for connected home and smart energy

USA: The Consumer Electronics Association (CEA) announced that it is forming the R7.8 Working Group 2 to develop a new standard to enable home electronics to communicate energy use data to smart energy management systems and apps.

The new standard will be called CE-Energy Usage Information (CE-EUI) and will conform to the North American Energy Standards Board Energy Usage Information (NAESB -EUI) model, which forms the basis for the national Green Button initiative.

“Product manufacturers already understand how much energy a device will use during operation, based on its design,” said Brian Markwalter, senior VP of research and standards at CEA. “By programming that information into the device and enabling the device to calculate how much energy it uses over time, manufacturers can help homeowners accurately capture the data for their energy management systems and applications.”

The standard will be compatible with the new Green Button “Download My Data” and “Connect My Data” initiatives. Green Button defines how consumers and authorized third-party services can access a history of their home’s total energy usage and cost based on smart meter readings.

By enabling each device to report its own energy usage, consumers will be able to see the energy each CE-EUI-compliant device consumes and make better informed decisions. The standard will be network agnostic, operating over networks, such as Wi-Fi, Ethernet, ZigBee and Z-Wave, that are an existing part of the home ecosystem.