Alcance
This document specifies a protocol for energy management agents (EMAs) to facilitate communications among these agents for demand response (DR) energy management applications. The EMA protocol (EMAP) provides a logical connection among EMAs in community housing such as an apartment building or a campus of houses or apartment buildings. This document also specifies interaction procedures and message formats for DR energy management as introduced in ISO/IEC 15067-3-3. The EMAP supports interactions among EMAs at OSI (Open System Interconnection) layer 7 with a message transfer protocol. An EMA can be embedded in devices such as a thermostat, a smart appliance, or other consumer products. The choice of interconnection depends on the system and the network topology, which can be arranged in a mesh or hierarchical tree structure. An intermediate EMA may relay messages sent between EMAs.