OREANDA-NEWS. Fujitsu Limited, Fujitsu Laboratories Limited, and Fujitsu Laboratories of America, Inc. announced that the Demand Response (DR) client (VEN: Virtual End Node) software they developed is one of the first in the world to receive certification of compliance with OpenADR 2.0b, the latest DR standard, which was released in July 2013.

The OpenADR 2.0 B Profile Specification (OpenADR 2.0b) was developed by the OpenADR Alliance, which promotes international DR standards. The software developed by the Fujitsu Group received OpenADR 2.0b certification in interoperability testing performed recently in the US by the OpenADR Alliance.

The introduction of DR in Japan is highly anticipated as it will help maintain a balance between the supply and demand of electrical power without increasing power generation, by requesting electricity customers to curtail their electricity consumption when supply is tight. It is hoped that the wide use of Fujitsu's software in residential or commercial energy management systems will bring about the creation of economical and stable systems for balancing electricity supply and demand as well as lead to the creation of new businesses relating to DR.

Currently, when electricity supplies are tight, electricity companies primarily use telephone calls or email messages to request commercial-scale customers to curtail their electricity usage. To expand DR to small- and medium-sized customers, including ordinary homes, an Automated Demand Response (ADR) technology is needed that enables quick and efficient coordination between an electricity company and its customers. To spread the adoption of OpenADR 2.0, which is the profile specification standard for ADR, it is important to rapidly develop and provide DR client software that can be included in home appliances and energy management systems of many electricity customers.

DR client software has message processing features for communications protocols that comply with OpenADR 2.0b and standard management features for clients. It also has an Application Programming Interface (API) to enable the efficient development of applications for each electricity customer, including building energy management systems (BEMS) and home energy management systems (HEMS). These features make it easy for the systems of customers to conform to OpenADR without the need for any further programming work on communications protocol software that complies with OpenADR.