Centers of Expertise (CoE):

The Centers of Expertise (CoE) is an IES Standards initiative for interoperability and compliance testing and for educational services for industry and academia. CoEs are established by IES member institutions that actively develop IEEE standards under IES sponsorship, and provide regional support to industry and IES members world-wide.

The first CoE was established in Portugal (Universidade da Beira Interior), followed by CoEs in Japan (Keio University), China, North America and South America. Other regions are being planned.

Open resources provided by the CoEs for the IEEE 1451 family of standards:

• IEEE 1451 Playground – an online tool for reference implementations, validation and conformance/interoperability testing of IEEE 1451 (UBI, Portugal / NIST).
• IEEE 1451.1.6 (MQTT) hands-on material – Node-RED and Raspberry Pi based reference designs used in the INTEROP hands-on labs (Keio University, Japan).

INTEROP – Standards and Interoperability Plugfest:

Since 2018 the Standards TC has sponsored and organized the INTEROP Plugfest every year without interruption at IES conferences to focus on active standards development and related topics. This hands-on event allows the standards community to share results and running implementations in a face-to-face working environment, and provides onsite verification and validation platforms so that participants can test their applications for compliance and interoperability. Related activities include informal talks, hands-on labs (e.g. the IEEE 1451 Hands-On Lab) and Working Group meetings.

The event takes place yearly at the IES flagship conference, IECON, and is also held at other major IES conferences such as ISIE and ICIT (ISIE 2021, ICIT 2022, ISIE 2026). Attendance is included in the conference registration.

Past INTEROP Plugfest events:

• INTEROP 2026 @ ISIE 2026, Nagoya, Japan (23–26 June 2026)
• INTEROP 2025 @ IECON 2025, Madrid, Spain
• INTEROP 2024 @ IECON 2024, Chicago, IL, USA – program
• INTEROP 2023 @ IECON 2023, Singapore
• INTEROP 2022 @ ICIT 2022, Shanghai, China
• INTEROP 2022 @ IECON 2022, Brussels, Belgium – report
• INTEROP 2021 @ IECON 2021, Toronto, Canada (virtual, due to the COVID-19 pandemic)
• INTEROP 2021 @ ISIE 2021, Kyoto, Japan (virtual, due to the COVID-19 pandemic)
• INTEROP 2020 @ IECON 2020, Singapore (virtual, due to the COVID-19 pandemic)
• INTEROP 2019 @ IECON 2019, Lisbon, Portugal – program
• INTEROP 2018 @ IECON 2018, Washington, DC, USA

If you would like to demonstrate a standards-based implementation at the next INTEROP, please contact the TC officers.

Last updated: August 2026