GEISA complements other initiatives by creating the production-grade, secure technical foundation for a robust and open grid edge “app” ecosystem in constrained edge devices.

As the grid edge grows in complexity, scale, and power under management, optimizing grid edge assets through coordination of interoperable infrastructure becomes key. What was once one-way communication for telemetry and billing purposes has evolved to be a two-way communication, edge computing, and control ecosystem, including consumer assets behind the meter, grid assets in front of the meter, and software on the edge and in the cloud. While standards and software exist for telemetry and billing, a consistent approach to handling grid edge applications does not. This lack of uniformity results in the development of one-off solutions that result in increased cybersecurity risk, duplicative effort, extended timelines, and added cost.

GEISA (Grid Edge Interoperability & Security Alliance) creates the production-grade, secure technical foundation for a robust and open grid edge “app” ecosystem. GEISA specifies a uniform runtime environment for running applications. It creates a testing program to develop an industry-wide, consistent and interoperable approach to securely deploying grid edge applications, significantly reducing the audit burden on IT teams and accelerating the deployment of innovative solutions. Such a program will create a much larger and more vibrant market for applications developed by commercial vendors, while making it easier for researchers, academics, and utilities to share internally developed edge applications if desired.

The project will specifically address the following:

• Hardware Requirements
• Application Management & Deployment
• Application Isolation
• Shared Network Access Management
• Security Services
• Common Services
• Direct Access to Edge Device Sensors

The latest roadmap for GEISA development follows: