News

ZigBee Alliance Expands Participation in EU Standards (9/4/2010)

Initial focus on energy management standards and integration of EU specific needs

The ZigBee® Alliance, a global ecosystem of companies creating wireless solutions supporting energy management in residential, commercial and consumer electronics applications, today announced its intention to expand its participation in the European Union’s various standardization efforts. The Alliance will focus on the European Union’s Smart Grid programs and on meeting the needs of the EU implementation of ZigBee Smart Energy in the Home Area Network (HAN).

To accomplish these objectives, and support a thriving membership base, the Alliance will establish a European headquarters. Today more than 90 European-based organizations from 19 different European countries are involved in the Alliance, representing 27 percent of membership. The European HQ will be tasked with ensuring that ZigBee standards meet the needs of the European standards organizations. It will also enable these participating organizations to more effectively understand, and respond to, the changing needs of the EU market.

“ZigBee has enjoyed widespread European support since its inception and expanding our efforts there will allow us to be more available to European standards organizations as they plan for the future,” said Bob Heile, chairman of the ZigBee Alliance. “We believe that deeper and broader collaboration will allow ZigBee Smart Energy to emerge as the best wireless HAN choice for European Smart Grid standardization.”

The ZigBee Alliance is focused on enabling more choice for consumers, energy service providers and regulators with the ZigBee Smart Energy public application profile, a broadly accepted energy management standard that allows in-home devices to communicate with each other to reduce home and business energy consumption. Today the ZigBee Alliance has agreements with the European Smart Metering Industry Group (ESMIG) and Device Language Message Specification (DLMS) User Association focused on this effort. The Alliance’s European HQ will also support European standards organizations in their work to develop plans to create market-•ready solutions and the evolving EU M441 mandate.

ZigBee Smart Energy enables wireless communication between energy service providers, utilities and common household devices such as smart thermostats and appliances. It improves energy efficiency by allowing consumers to choose interoperable energy saving products from different manufacturers and link them together, giving the consumer the means to manage their energy consumption more precisely using automation and near real•time information. It also helps utilities and energy providers implement new advanced metering and demand response programs to drive greater energy management and efficiency, while responding to changing government requirements.

www.ZigBee.org/SmartEnergy