Transfer Autonomy to the End User

The fundamental problem with most of the “demand limiting” or “load control” programs out there is that they remove autonomy from the end user. We like choice. We like control. We do not like other people to make choices for us. We do not like to cede control to anyone.

All of the energy saving practices that transfer control of our lives to someone else, be it the Power Company or the Government, will have only short-lived support. We want to wash and dry a shirt this afternoon to wear to the party tonight, and we will pay for it. We want to take a long hot soak in the tub this afternoon, either because of a hard day at work, or to ward off an impending cold. We want to be in charge.

Any energy allocation model that ignores these facts about us as a people will fail. It will suffer from non-participation. If regulated, it will be subject to malicious compliance and sabotage. We must build energy allocation models based upon choice.

The micro-circuitry of GridWise allows appliances to identify themselves and report their individual power usage. The appliances must share their capabilities for saving energy with the house. The web services interfaces of oBIX will allow home, office, and third party applications to discover building systems as they do printers. The smart grid will deliver live electricity pricing to the house.

Software agents, working in our behalf, and under our direction, can negotiate power needs with the systems and appliances, and live pricing with the intelligent grid, to most economically meet our desires.

The house must be guided by its inhabitant. You should wash and dry that shirt you want to wear tonight, fully aware of what doing so at the last minute cost you. You should decide whether to follow the economic rules you set up, or to override them to soak in that tub. The decisions of Comfort vs. Economy, of Amenity vs. Cost, should be made explicit.

And the end user must be in charge.

EnergyStar Systems and Data Centers

Data centers consume huge amounts of electricity, much of it wasted. Data centers convert electricity to heat, so all energy used for computing is paired with a similar load for heat removal. Rethinking data centers is a good way to make a strong impact on energy usage in a hurry.

All computers use direct current (DC) to actually run. So does most consumer electronics. That little brick, or wall wart on the power cord transforms power from the alternating current (AC) of the power grid to DC to be used by the computer. In most desktop computers and servers, that “brick” is internal to the computer. Improving this process is straight-forward, and does not require any fundamental re-engineering of the computers.

Recently I was reading that the EPA is proposing higher efficiency standards for power conversion efficiency in computer systems. Most systems today still have not met the current version of these standards, called EnergyStar. What caught my eye was how much power is wasted even in today’s EnergyStar compliant systems. The numbers are so large that they make the case for re-thinking power systems for data centers far stronger than I had thought.

EnergyStar standards require power supplies are that no more than 80% efficient or better. This means that to be compliant, no more than 20% of the A/C power coming to your data center computer be converted to heat and lost before it even gets to the computing circuitry. This lost power is converted to heat before it ever gets to support actual computing.

This increases the arguments for Direct Current (DC) data centers. DC Data Centers convert Alternating Current (AC) power to DC before it is distributed to the servers. Telecommunications has longed used DC distribution for its big racks. There are several processes that can be improved by re-thinking power distribution in data centers around the principle of DC distribution.

All of that power lost by conversion is today heat lost in the data center. That heat must then be removed to keep the computing equipment sufficiently cool. Air conditioning is one of the most significant costs of a operating a data center. Many estimate that it takes up to 1.7 times as much energy to remove heat from conditioned space as the initial energy that generated the heat.

By simple moving the AC/DC conversion outside of the conditioned space of the data center, 20%-40% of the heat is moved out of the data center where it will not need to be air conditioned away.

Many reputable companies sell data center batteries to support uninterrupted power. These usually have AC converted to DC to charge batteries, with the same losses as above. The servers run off batteries. The batteries supply DC, which is converted to AC (5-15% loss of power as heat) to support the AC servers. The power supplies in the servers then convert the AC to DC (as above, with loss of power and generation of heat).

When people discuss the efficiency of this process, they usually describe the efficiency of the battery storage as the limiting factor. What the process above shows, however, that as much as half of the power stored may be lost as heat though the double conversion before it ever gets used for computing.

In a DC data center, the batteries still supply DC power, but all of it goes directly to the servers. Not only does this generate less heat, but it can as much as double the effective efficiency and life of the batteries by removing the double conversion for the last yard of distribution.

This increase of efficiency comes with today’s technologies, without waiting on the perfection of any novel or exotic battery technology.

It is hard to use the waste heat from Air Conditioning. A large AC/DC transformer, however, concentrates the energy lost as heat into one place. It is easy to harvest heat from a single very hot location. I have even seen proposals for fueling a steam distillation chiller off waste heat from a transformer to provide supplemental air conditioning for a data center. You could run domestic hot water heating off the external transformer. I suppose you could even hook a Stirling engine to the transformer and light the building using the waste heat.

We do not have to wait for exotic technologies, although they will come. We need to re-think processes with an awareness of power at each step. Transactive pricing for energy will encourage us to do just that.

Information Stewardship

A design firm came on to campus the other day to begin conversations on the new School of Information and Library Science (SILS). Library Science has been one of the more interesting areas of IT in the last few years, as they are positioning themselves as the side of Information Technology (IT) not concerned with the bits and bytes, nor with the collection of data, but with delivery of information.

The Art of the Librarian has always been about the delivery of the right information in the right format at the right time. Google delivers vast amounts of references at your fingertips, each information set and document only a click away. Little Billy in the second grade asks the school Librarian for a book about frogs and his handed a book with lots of pictures and small words. Nine years later, William, now taking AP Biology, asks the school Librarian for a book about frogs and gets an entirely different set of volumes. Librarians know that context determines the correct information.

The design firm knows a little something about its audience, and they presented a pitch that the project use new approaches based information stewardship. New approaches can be a difficult sell to someone who has one chance once to build a building. Even so, it seems to me the Information Stewardship is a good line to take with Librarians.

Information Stewardship appears include keeping all design information on-line and electronically readable. All commissioning information will also be kept on line. Making a statement that speaks to me, the firm also asked that they have access to live operating data for at least a year, to make sure that the building delivers the energy and performance goals that are specified in the design.

This last point is particularly important. One of the worst failings of first generation LEEDS Green Buildings was their long term performance. Platinum building performance was never verified. Innovative designed were never adequately explained to maintenance and operations personnel. At last, that nettlesome vibration is solved putting a brick on the damper. At last, that noise in the duct is blocked by shoving a file cabinet in front of the oversized return. A year after delivery, the performance is poor.

Regular readers will recognize the goals of this project as being similar to those of the National Building Information Model Standard (NBIMS), now known as buildSmart. It is interesting that the design firm professed no awareness of NBIMS, and in particular, no awareness of the Common Operations Building Information Exchange (COBIE) which specifies the hand-off of information from design and construction to operations.

SILS has recently begun offering concentrations in Bioinformatics. There is some discussion about adding a concentration in Business Informatics. Perhaps, with the aid of Building Information Stewardship, we can begin the development of Building Informatics. If so, this could be the missing piece in developing the abstractions needed to develop truly responsive buildings for the transacted energy grid.

Is anyone else as confused as I about the differences between Informatics, Infomatics, and Analytics? They seem to be used interchangeably, but in different conversations. Please post if you can define the distinctions.

AMR, AMI, and Autonomy

Automated Metering is one of the critical for changing how we think about and use electricity, both within and outside buildings. Sean Dempsey pointed out ( /articles/ami-doesnt-make-much-difference-without-fundamental-process-.html ) that I had elided AMR (Automated Meter Reading) and AMI (Advanced Metering Infrastructure. AMR is simply automating the old meter reading process, reducing head counts and reducing dog bites, but not essentially different from old processes. AMI (Advanced Metering Infrastructure) refers to more advanced systems that enable dynamic pricing mechanisms, new payment and customer service options, and control of electrical loads within the home. One source of confusion is what the electric companies are actually doing. Many utilities are installing AMI-capable equipment to support AMR.

Not even AMI, as usually implemented, fundamentally changes the traditional relationship between buildings and the grid. Neither process puts the building inhabitant, whether home or business, in control. Neither one creates the change in markets and attitudes that will create fact-based building operations. Fact-based building operations will create the open markets needed to power innovation. Without control by the inhabitants, fact-based operations will not create sustainable drivers of market-based innovation.

The information of AMI must be accessible in real time and fully trusted by both the power company and the building inhabitant. Rights to AMI information and control must be securely assignable to whatever agents the inhabitant chooses.

The power company must not have privileged position in managing the facility. The power companies interests are not and never will be aligned with the desire for maximum amenity and control desired by the inhabitant. The power company’s interest is in maximizing its own revenue by eliminating peaks; it will never have a strong interest in limiting off-peak demand. That is as it should be.

The inhabitant, of the building, whether a home owner or a business, should be in charge of the buildings responses to the information made available through AMI. The building inhabitants will be the customers for diverse markets in demand response and price reaction. Building inhabitants will have the proper incentives to manage the overall economic and reliable provision of power-based services. Building inhabitants will be the market for integrating local power storage, on-site generation, and time-based energy purchases. Electric companies can only commit to technologies guaranteed no to fail in large scale installation; building habits can afford to gamble on innovation.

The inhabitant may choose to mange this internal energy portfolio internally. The inhabitant may choose to outsource this portfolio management to any of a number of vendors which already have a connection to the building, from industries such as telecommunications, or home security, or cable. The inhabitant may even decide to let the power company bid on providing these services.

What would you do if you had full access to your own AMI infrastructure?