OpenADR and Matter are collaborating to let your smart home talk to the grid - Engadget

"OpenADR and Matter are teaming up to make it easier for smart home appliances to talk to the energy grid. This is a big deal, as Matter is the most popular smart home connectivity standard and OpenADR is a connectivity standard used by the actual energy grid. In other words, this should allow smart home devices to automatically communicate with the grid without any effort on your part."

"What will this do for the consumer? It all falls down to demand response, which is a type of energy management that adjusts the demand in real time instead of the supply. This is already used by utility companies, as consumers can sign up for reduced energy bills by letting the provider change the temperature for a couple hours. This lets the company juggle demand across busy systems, instead of fiddling with supply."

"Demand response is also baked into newer smart thermostats, as they can communicate directly with the grid to automatically make adjustments to prevent blackouts and the like. Thermostats are just one product category. This new effort should bring a lot of other smart home gadgets into the fold."

"A big potential use case here is with EV chargers. If these devices can talk directly to a utility provider, it would be possible to find cheaper times to charge the car. This is a huge theoretical upgrade to just waiting until off-hours to plug in your vehicle. Obviously, this will only be useful for high-energy appliances like EV chargers, HVAC systems, laundry dryers and water heaters."

OpenADR and Matter are partnering to help smart home appliances communicate with the energy grid. Matter is a widely used smart home connectivity standard, while OpenADR is used for grid communications. The goal is to enable automatic demand response, which adjusts energy demand in real time rather than changing supply. Utilities already use demand response to reduce bills by allowing temporary changes such as thermostat adjustments. New smart thermostats can communicate with the grid to prevent issues like blackouts. The approach could extend to other high-energy appliances, including EV chargers, HVAC systems, laundry dryers, and water heaters. It may reduce or eliminate the need for external demand response boxes by embedding the communication capability in appliances.

Read at Engadget