DOE Sends Smart Grid Rule to OMB

On Thursday the OMB’s Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA) announced that it had received for review from the Department of Energy a final rule with regards to “ASHRAE 2016 Determination”.

This rulemaking was not listed in the Fall 2017 Unified Agenda, so it is difficult to be sure what this determination refers to. I suspect that it has to do with the recent adoption of the American Society of Heating, Refrigerating and Air-Conditioning Engineers (ASHRAE) standard on the Facility Smart Grid Information Model (FSGIM; ASHRAE 201-2016) by the International Standards Organization as ISO 17800. The DOE ‘determination’ would likely be about whether or not the standard will be incorporated by reference in appropriate DOE grid regulations.

NOTE: It interesting that this rulemaking was not listed in last week’s Unified Agenda update. The Trump Administration has taken the Obama Administration to task for lack of transparency for not listing planned regulatory actions on the Unified Agenda or its related lists. This reported action by DOE would certainly seem to fall into that lack of transparency category.