The International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) is a non-profit international board which drafts and publishes standards for a huge range of electric and electronic technologies. Among the hundreds of standards put out by the IEC, some of the most notable include VHS/S-VHS video cassette technology (IEC 60774), digital audio based on compact discs (IEC 60908) and electromagnetic compatibility (IEC 61000).

You may not be familiar with ZigBee just yet, but if the IEC gets its hands on it, that could change. ZigBee is a low-power wireless protocol similar to Bluetooth that fits under the 802.15.4 personal area network standard. Its current largest deployments are in home utility wireless networks and smart meters, and because of its conservative use of electricity, the ZigBee Alliance is attempting to make it the preeminent standard for smart energy metering. Today, the group announced that it will be submitting its ZigBee Smart Energy profile to the IEC for as the basis of a new standard in smart grid technology.

Ideally, all your home appliances would be able to communicate their energy consumption to your wireless router, where you could track usage, and subsequently transmit that data to the utility company for more granular billing.

The IEC's Technical Committee 57 is dedicated to developing and maintaining the standards for an interoperable communication architecture for power systems and control equipment in such systems as Energy Management Systems (EMS) and Supervisory Control and Data Aquisition (SCADA).

Greg Robinson, of TC57's working group 14, said the ZigBee Smart Energy profile could, "improve data fidelity and minimize overall life cycle costs for exchanging information among home area networks, metering systems and utility back office systems."