Standards, and more standards

“The nice thing about standards is that there are so many of them to choose from .” --attributed to Prof. Andrew S. Tanenbaum (author of MINIX, the source of much open-source code I ported to my old CP/M machine, the first such to be a registered Internet site, back in the days of store-and-forward bang-path-routing, but I digress).

There are many, and last week I acquired and reviewed two more. ANSI/GBI 01-2010, "Green Building Assessment Protocol for Commercial Buildings," was developed by the Green Building Institute under ANSI rules and published in April. Among its many provisions it shows a number of ways in which a commercial building automation system can be used to save energy and money. This, of course, is the subject of my talk "Energy Standards and Energy Efficiency" and GBI 01 will provide more material for the next time I deliver it, at Facility Decisions Conference in early October, in the BACnet International tracks. So I'll have to work this one in somehow.

Draft ISO Standard 50001 (ISO/DIS 5001), "Energy management systems - Requirements with guidance for use" just completed an official public review, but I was given a copy to review regardless. This is a very different kettle of fish and will require further study to see how it fits in my areas of work. It seems to cross many other areas and documents including IPMVP (International Performance Measurement and Verification Protocol, which is referenced and blogged on the Efficiency Valuation Organization's blog along with useful links.