James Mater Receives GWAC Best Paper Award

The GridWise® Architecture Council (GWAC) has awarded its “Best Paper” honor to James Mater, co-founder of QualityLogic, at the Grid-Interop 2009 forum’s closing ceremonies. The paper “Creating a Smart Grid Interoperability Maturity Rating System,” which Mater co-authored with Rik Drummond, CEO of Drummond Group, was chosen “Best Paper” in the category “On the Ground Experience.”

First, the paper proposes implementation of a Smart Grid Interoperability Maturity Model (SGIMM) as a standardized method for assessing and rating an organization’s likelihood of achieving easy systems interoperability (similar to “plug-and-play” ease of interfacing). Such a system will be useful in predicting the outcome of projects that require interoperability, as well as in helping participating organizations map out their own paths to achieving a viable interoperability capability.

Second, Mater and Drummond propose a Smart Grid Interoperability Capability Maturity Model (SGICMM) to focus on the behaviors, processes and characteristics of organizations’ capabilities to implement interoperable technologies. The SGICMM’s goal is to develop an interoperability improvement roadmap for implementing organizations.

“Recognition of this paper by conference organizers was an unexpected honor,” said Mater. “Since smart grid systems will comprise complex components from a huge spectrum of vendors and technologies, interoperability maturity is an important subject for the GridWise Architecture Council. I’m glad we could make a contribution to this critical effort.”

The US Department of Energy (DoE) requires Smart Grid Interoperability Maturity Rating Systems as part of Regional Demonstration Projects. QualityLogic and Drummond Group are members of a team selected by the DoE last week to create a $178 million demonstration project in a five-state Pacific Northwest region. QualityLogic and Drummond Group are responsible for interoperability testing and certification of Northwest Smart Grid Demo technologies.

For more about the GWAC awards, see: grid_interop_2009_best_paper_final