USEF is a partnership between energy suppliers, network operators, electrical equipment manufacturers, consultancies and ICT companies created to develop specifications and guidelines for the energy market. Together these offerings help facilitate large-scale deployment of smart energy grids throughout the world.
The USEF Foundation* is a spin-off of the Smart Energy Collective, which was founded in 2010 by 21 companies to anticipate changes in the international energy landscape. About a year ago, the Smart Energy Collective participants set out to create a conceptual and universal framework for decentralised energy markets, based on international open standards that can be scaled and reproduced for national and local purposes and operating on a non-profit basis.
In the coming years, USEF will release an international market control mechanism as well as role descriptions for the different actors in a new energy system, from network operators through end consumers. By 2020 the foundation aims to connect 10 million end-users worldwide to USEF-compliant products, services and solutions.
*USEF intends to conclude cooperation agreements with Essent and IBM Nederland B.V. These parties are USEF participants from the beginning and will get the same status as the establishers of the Foundation.