Five companies active in the energy market – ABB, Alliander, DNV•GL, ICT Automatisering and Stedin – have formally established the USEF Foundation. Its mission is to offer a future-proof framework for the development of smart energy products, services and solutions. The Foundation intends to conclude cooperation agreements with Essent and IBM Nederland B.V. These parties are USEF participants from the beginning and will get the same status as the establishers of the Foundation.
The USEF Foundation (USEF: Universal Smart Energy Framework) is a partnership between energy suppliers, network operators, electrical equipment manufacturers, consultancies and ICT companies. This foundation develops specifications and guidelines that enable partners to develop smart energy products, services and solutions for a future-proof energy market. Together these offerings allow the large-scale deployment of smart energy grids throughout the world.
The USEF Foundation is a spin-off of the Smart Energy Collective (SEC) that was founded in 2010 by 21 companies to anticipate changes in the international energy landscape. The above mentioned SEC participants set out a year ago, to provide for the creation of a conceptual and universal framework for decentralised energy markets, based on international open standards that can be scaled and reproduced for national and local purposes and operating on a non-profit basis (the Universal Smart Energy Framework).
In the coming years, USEF will release an international market control mechanism as well as role descriptions for the different actors in a new energy system, from network operators through end consumers. By 2020 the foundation aims to connect 10 million end-users worldwide to USEF-compliant products, services and solutions.
