Many of our members and partners will have seen this week that the Alliance announced significant growth in our membership and worldwide adoption of the OpenADR standard.

As the industry continues to evolve and adapt to the growing number of DER – from EV managed charging networks and energy storage to grid-interactive technologies and the integration of renewables – we’ve seen around 60 organizations join us in the last year. This is around one new company a week, unprecedented since the Alliance was formed 15 years ago – and is an acknowledgement of the work of our growing ecosystem.

The adoption of open communication standards is now recognized worldwide, with governments and policymakers specifying open standards for energy demand flexibility requirements. European countries are choosing OpenADR as their demand side flexibility technology standard. In the UK, the Energy Networks Association recently specified the use of OpenADR, while in Japan, they have introduced additional requirements for OpenADR.

The VPP opportunity

What’s remarkable about our growth is the type and specialism of the organizations joining – it makes fascinating reading. The headline though is one of diversification.

There’s a growing number of really interesting and innovative startups developing advanced technologies for grid-interactive buildings and building energy management systems. This is alongside companies developing grid-connected HVAC systems, battery storage, EV charging platforms, and so much more.

One particular area that we highlighted in our latest news was the opportunity to play a role in the virtual power plant (VPP) market, predicted to grow from $5.6bn in 2025 to $39.5bn by 2035. While the first-generation implementations for OpenADR in VPPs was through rooftop solar and storage, we’re seeing more cross-DER integration as companies develop technologies for solar system integration and AI-based predictive load balancing.

While there are just too many to list in full (and apologies to those not included), I wanted to mention a few of our new members: Ennowell (state-of-the-art smart building management solutions); Edo (innovative energy and demand optimization solutions); Shadow Power (energy infrastructure technology); LOXONE (intelligent building automation); and DynaChrge Inc. (advanced EV charging solutions).

We have also welcomed leading U.S. water heating technology manufacturers, A. O. Smith and Bradford White, together with American Standard Water Heaters, Rheem Manufacturing Brands - Commercial, LG Electronics, Rinnai America Corporation, and ECO2 Systems.

Major milestones

We also announced some key milestones as part of our momentum story, from industry and technology partnerships to the growing number of OpenADR 3 certified products. An impressive 335 OpenADR-certified products are now available, while more than 5,000 companies have downloaded the OpenADR specification.

I also want to mention our recently published OpenADR specification version 3.1.0, which includes adjustments requested by the industry and support of the MQTT IoT messaging standard for subscription models. This makes OpenADR one of the few, if not the only, standard in the space that can support this model.

As we further strengthen our ties with standards and industry bodies and government and policy organizations and continue to grow our membership, I look forward to reporting more good news over the coming months.

For those of you attending Enlit Europe 2025 in Bilbao, Spain (Nov 18-20), we look forward to connecting with you there – the Alliance is on booth 3.H94. Otherwise, we hope to see many of you at our next OpenADR Users Conference in Arnhem, Netherlands next March.

More information about our latest milestones is available on our press release page.