The OpenADR Alliance, which came into force in 2010, was formed by industry stakeholders to foster the development, adoption and compliance of the Open Automated Demand Response (OpenADR) Smart Grid standard, utilizing existing standards from OASIS, UCA and NAESB. The alliance recently welcomed Siemens (News - Alert) as the new sponsor member and has also been offered a place in the board of directors list.

Others on the board of directors list are Southern California Edison (News - Alert) (SCE), Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Pacific Gas & Electric (PG&E (News - Alert)), AutoGrid, EnerNOC and Honeywell.

"Over the past several months, the OpenADR Alliance has experienced tremendous momentum worldwide. The addition of Siemens to the Board will provide a valuable perspective as industry support and adoption of the OpenADR standard expands globally," said Carl Besaw, chairman of OpenADR Alliance.

The main mission of alliance is to build on the foundation of technical activities to support the development, testing, and deployment of commercial OpenADR and facilitate its acceleration and widespread adoption. Siemens has pledged to support these ideas and will collaborate with user groups for the continued enhancements of the OpenADR profile specification.

Pierre Mullin, Head of Demand Response Product R &D within the Siemens Smart Grid Division and member of the board of directors for the OpenADR Alliance, said that Siemens is committed to industry standards, and they feel OpenADR is critical in maximizing their strategic demand response offerings.

“As a Sponsor Member of the OpenADR Alliance, we will bring an international perspective that will help promote OpenADR adoption while giving Siemens a platform to represent the needs and requirements of our customers," Mullin added.

The OpenADR Alliance welcomes interested stakeholders involved in fast-tracking the adoption of the OpenADR standard for price- and reliability-based demand response. The Alliance already has more than 100 members and is enabling all stakeholders to participate in automated DR, dynamic pricing and electricity grid reliability.