There is a fundamental disconnect concerning the systems that manage building performance between what the system integrator can do and what the owner asks for. Building service performance is not handled well during building design because there is currently no accepted way for owners and designers to discuss the services desired and the performance expected for each service in simple general terms. Our construction processes deliver diverse technical systems each discussed using concrete physical attributes whose effects are understood only by those with
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Social interactions will define success of Electric Cars
This was the post I started writing a couple days ago until the first paragraph just metastasized to fill up the page. Once we have more than a few electric cars in town, then those cars will be potentially the biggest stress on the grid.
The peak stress on the power grid starts during the afternoon, during heat-of-the-day air conditioning and work, but it continues through the early evening. Offices are still turned on. Programmed houses are kicking in with their air conditioning in preparation for their owner’s arrival. Families are cooking dinner. The power grid is still working nearly as hard as it can.
Now let’s posit the electric cars coming home, drained from ...
Read MoreEdison was Right – or – Green up with DC
Sustainability initiatives come in four kinds. No harm initiatives accomplish something, but perhaps not as much as their proponents think. Let’s pretend initiatives make people feel good, but with reckless disregard for the actual results. Let’s pretend initiatives, like corn ethanol, may well do more harm than good. Yeah but initiatives would work well, maybe very well, but for some reason, you can’t get there from here. Usable initiatives are the few remaining that are simple, cost effective, and uncontroversial.
DC (Direct Current) in buildings has long been a “yeah but” technology. DC is clearly superior for the home and office. Almost all modern equipment is already DC. We all convert power from AC (Alternating Current) to DC again and again in our homes and offices. Every frustratingly unique power cord, every rectangular wall wart with its glowing green eye is a transformer producing DC power.
Larger appliances, such as televisions and computers, perform the same conversion. The transformers in these devices are hidden inside the cabinet, but the process is the same. There are some exceptions, such as the washer and refrigerator, but certain characteristics of DC motors might push them in to DC in time; already their control consoles are moving to DC. Surely, we already live in DC homes and work in DC offices.
This plethora of AC/DC transformers is a problem. It is easy to get them lost or confused. Each manufacturer selects a transformer as cheap as he can get away with; power, too much power, is lost in every one. That lost power is released in the home and office as heat. In the worst cases, the power used is too much the same whether the device is on, off, or even detached. These transformers have become a significant part of the power use in every building.
If power in buildings was distributed by DC, all these transformers could be eliminated. Better, more efficient, building-scale transformers would convert power from AC to DC more efficiently. Even efficient transformation from DC to AC loses energy, and that energy is lost as heat. In a building-scale transformer, all that heat would be concentrated in one location. In one collection it can be captured and recycled for new use.
Zero net energy buildings come closer fast if we have DC buildings. Solar, wind, and other local power generation technologies produce DC power. Today, that DC power is subject to an AC tax. All DC power must be converted to AC, distributed, and then converted back to DC. This tax may consume as much as 30% of the power available. Even batteries, which store DC power, are subject to this tax. Without the AC tax, every battery that loses just too much energy during storage, is now effectively 30% better without waiting for new technology.
Yeah but...
But buildings are wired for AC. Everything I own today plugs into AC. Even if I could afford to re-wire my building, I cannot afford to replace all the equipment inside. Where would a landlord find someone willing to move into such a building? You can’t get there from here.
I have seen technology that changes all that. Technology that is almost a product enables cost effective installation of a hybrid AC/DC power system in the existing office building. The system uses DC to immediately reduce lighting and networking costs. The solution provides a means to reduce the costs of all building systems that rely on networking. The system can make each room in a building more responsive to the tenant. And the tenant can continue to use his existing equipment as the market matures.
It is time to move DC buildings from the category Yeah But to the category Usable. Migration from AC to DC in commercial space will soon be simple, cost effective, and uncontroversial.
SaaS and Power and Service Oriented Energy
A recent editorial in Baseline used today’s electrical grid as the model for future computing. The article suggested because of the rise of Software as a Service (SaaS), local computing would disappear just as local generation did. Just as the rise of AC allowed generation to move a long way away, the article claimed that SaaS will push all computing off site. Models for computing and generating are converging, but the mode of that confluence is considerably more interesting.
Computing is actually become local. Microwaves and DVD players are not leaving the building. Service oriented computing is moving computing power into building systems and cell phones as well as into the remote data center. Service oriented computing also means that we can now choose the data center that hosts our services, by price, or by reliability, or by security, or even by social conscience as we please.
Today’s electrical grid is more akin to mainframe computing. End users have little choice as to hosting or to distribution, and local options are limited, often by government policy. (DEC originally named their devices programmable data processors, [PDP], to get around federal grant restrictions on buying computers). In the same way. On-site generation is crippled, poor economic information blocks the development of storage technologies, and in so many way, await the “internet revolution” in power.
Ameliorating this, energy is finally about to take advantage of pervasive computing. Electrical power is just beginning to go through the most radical transformation since is became a regulated natural monopoly 100 years ago. Back then, there was no way to measure power usage except by aggregate use between meter readings. All communication was one way by mail (Here is your bill – pay it!). Autonomous systems that can manage power, that can track consumption, that can manage generation are just arriving in the home and office. Today, groups are just sketching out how to use SOA to re-invent the grid; AMI is starting to provide the most critical first service.
Building systems are becoming safely accessible by enterprise programmers using oBIX and other WS-[building systems] variants. The service oriented building is just beginning to be sketched out with telecommuting, hotelling, and carpooling interacting with access control, building ventilation, and tenant QOS agreements. Building access control services feed carpooling recommendations. Worker hotelling reservations inform heating and ventilation strategies. Policy-based security using SCA is extending from IT to building security.
At the same time, the unregulated power providers are starting to define the service oriented grid. Two way communication centered around the new digital meters make time of day pricing and billing possible. Peak shaving standards such as California’s OpenADR (Automated Demand Response) are teaching the regulated electricity providers to exchange web services with the buildings.
On the table are direct purchases from your power provider of choice over the grid. SOA negotiations for pricing and delivery let enterprises opt for power that is cheap, or reliable, or green. Green will be whatever attributes the buyer wants, creating a “Whole Foods” market in generated power.
Service Oriented buildings will be able to remain provably green rather than ostensibly green on the day of delivery. Self commissioning buildings will become perpetual commissioning systems run by autonomous agents, for participants in and scheduled by enterprise operations. SensusMI uses web services to perform remote diagnostics and building analytics to let the building owner understand his costs and control his maintenance decisions. Componentized access control and intrusion detection are being cast through SCA into policy-based physical security, part of the IT security infrastructure. New markets in Service Oriented Buildings are arriving.
TheGreenGrid.org puts the data center in the middle of this transition. Power cost and reliability are factored through web services into the WSDM-based operations console. Building cooling and capacity and electrical distribution capacity are brought in the same way. SaaS combined with prices enable sun-downing, wherein virtual computing follows cheap time of day power prices around the world. Demand/Response, wherein pre-brownout price signals request load shedding, will soon automate the same type of load shifting.
SOA is freeing up power markets to unleash what Fred Krupp has described as “the mother of all venture markets”. SOB meets SOG in a free-for-all of innovation and high-tech investment. It’s all small today, but watch for it to get big soon. Real big. Real soon.