Avi Gopstein is the smart grid program manager and group leader at NIST, the US federal government’s National Institute of Standards & Technology, which has played and still plays an ongoing key role in the development of interoperability standards and testing in the smart grid world. He explained how standards enable the smart grid, especially behind the meter as the energy world works to abolish carbon emissions completely with renewables, demand response, and electric vehicles, and much more – and he shared examples of where the industry is headed with standards profiles that help bring order where existing or new standards can cover a complex variety of use cases.