9 February 2012 - Synaptitude Consulting, an international Information Technology consulting services company, and the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC�) have signed a Memorandum of Agreement to cooperate in promoting the use of open geospatial standards in Smart Grid software and services. The two organizations plan to leverage their strengths to enable Smart Grid stakeholders to make the best possible use of the Smart Grid's ubiquitous location information.

"Synaptitude will enable us to better understand the language and needs of the diverse Smart Grid communities and help those communities understand their need for open geospatial standards," explained Mark Reichardt, President of OGC said. "Our members have done a great job of providing the necessary technology. Synaptitude will help us bring these to a Smart Grid world that needs them."

"The Smart Grid by definition has geospatial information at its core," said Eric Nelson, Managing Principal at Synaptitude who leads their utilities work. "OGC's open geospatial information interoperability messaging standards can be a key enabler of the Smart Grid's real-time location-based messaging layer."

An OGC Smart Grid Ad Hoc meeting, Geospatial Standards for the Smart Grid, will be held Tuesday, March 20, 8-10 a.m. as part of the OGC Technical Committee meeting in Austin, Texas. The public is invited. The OGC Smart Grid Ad Hoc meeting is free, but registration is required (please contact via email: register at opengeospatial.org).

Every Smart Grid component -- transformer, meter, air conditioner, power plant, electric car, solar panel, etc. -- has a location on Earth. In addition, every grid event or phenomenon -- brownout, demand variability, power surge, regulation, transmission loss, etc. -- occurs within some place or space on the grid�s physical network. The same is true for every external event or phenomenon that affects the grid, such as weather alert or cyber-attack. Communicating location, proximity, distribution boundaries etc. will become increasingly important as the power inflow/outflow metering function and associated transactions enter our homes, businesses, cars, and mobile devices. Also, first responders, civil engineers, street crews, and many others will ask "where" questions that can only be answered through inter-process communication between the their systems and the Smart Grid. Similarly, gas and water utilities will need open geospatial standards as their businesses become more complex and IT-intensive.

The OGC Geography Markup Language (GML) Encoding Standard is included in the US National Institute for Standards and Technology (NIST) "Framework and Roadmap for Smart Grid Interoperability, v1.0," and it is included as a spatial encoding in OASIS Energy Market Information Exchange (eMIX) and EnergyInterop standards documents. However, the Smart Grid standards framework involves the participation of many different standards organizations, and much work remains to be done to ensure transparent communication of location and geospatial queries and responses across the Smart Grid universe.

About Synaptitude Consulting

Synaptitude is an enterprise and IT systems consulting services company. We deliver transformational solutions to our clients� most critical business challenges. Today�s business is deeply interconnected with the technology that supports it. Yet, many organizations struggle to focus their business and technological concerns on the same goals; sometimes it's as if they are speaking two separate languages.

Synaptitude excels in providing real-world IT consulting in the following areas and verticals:

- Utilities
- Media and Telecommunications
- Revenue Assurance and Cost Management
- Public Utility Commission Expert Witness testimony
- Back office operational and customer-facing architecture
- Vendor-agnostic package selection
- Trusted Advisor IT Implementation Program Management

For more information, visit: http://www.synaptitudeconsulting.com/solutions/smart_grid_solutions_center

About the OGC

The OGC is an international consortium of more than 435 companies, government agencies, research organizations, and universities participating in a consensus process to develop publicly available geospatial standards. OGC standards support interoperable solutions that "geo-enable" the Web, wireless and location based services, and mainstream IT. OGC standards empower technology developers to make geospatial information and services accessible and useful with any application that needs to be geospatially enabled. Visit the OGC website at http://www.opengeospatial.org/contact.