Looking Ahead: Evolution of the End Node

So how will building systems fit together in the future? I have some pretty solid ideas about what it will look like, but it is hard to project the time sequence, or the time scale. Here’s what I see.

Embedded building systems become visible and controllable. Current integrated systems are “dis-integrated”. Systems that now are only accessible for the whole building will be accessible floor by floor, and perhaps mapped to tenants. Building systems will become as recognizable, to your computer, as networked printers are today. Like printers, they will not share their inner workings, but they may tell you “filter needs changing” in the same way newer printers inform you that toner needs replacing.

Systems, suites, and circuits will be able to report their current energy “burn rate”. Live pricing from the building service entrance, the electric meter, will be available to all systems. Each system and each suite will know and be able to report what they are costing per minute or per hour right NOW.

As the systems become better factored, and sub-metering is added to each floor and perhaps to every breaker, all electrical usage will be verifiable rather than calculated. As building systems become abstracted to the business services they support, their function and performance will be visible and understandable to the owner or the tenant. This will not happen overnight, energy intensive areas like the data center lead the way.

Customer centered areas get better understood as system sensors become visible to sales and customer relationship software. Door sensors (the little black mats going into a store) expose live foot traffic and occupancy to the enterprise. Comfort metrics drawn off the environmental controls are evaluated directly against customer traffic.

Special purpose spaces will have their own metrics. The conference room scheduled for tomorrow’s meeting will receive the invitation directly from the corporate calendar. The room’s support systems will review the attendance and make appropriate decisions about room cooling and humidity control. The room will read its own electric meters before and after the event and transmit usage and cost information directly to the corporate accounting or tenant management system.

Other special spaces will have their own needs. Medical clinic space, for example, will be driven by its own unique needs. Special purpose systems might include medical gas distribution or high energy diagnostic equipment. Patient scheduling for the use of such equipment will acquire components tied to time of day and energy pricing. Building system integrator niches will exist for each specialty business need.

Each of these changes will be compelling. The forces of inertia that today tell us “You can’t get there from here” will last only until we all ask “What took that so long?”

Solar Thermal Comes Out of the Dark (or is that in from the cold?)

Our culture always looks for the next big thing to be the same as the last big thing. In movies, we see this in sequel after sequel. In television, well, Star Trek was initially pitched as “Wagon Train to the Stars”. In solar power, we see it in the fascination of the press with photovoltaics, the solar silicon sequel to computers.

And so I like to see the rise of Thermal solar power, the less glamorous twin. Thermal power may be able to move out into site generation better, may shine a path to successful energy storage, and may be a better participant in the suite of technologies that will build the home or office microgrid. In the deserts of Arizona and Southern California, large new solar projects based upon thermal capture have recently come on-line.

In Spain, large mirrors with computer controls track the sun and focus the rays on tall towers where traditional steam generation occurs. In this case, the technology of the generation turbine could be that from a coal plant. Two other aspects make this worth notong. First, a considerable part of the effort was in developing the software that tracks the sun and controls the mirror array; this sort of investment scales out very well as the same software can be used repeatedly. More intriguing is a process whereby excess heat is captured and stored in liquid salt. The molten salt stores the heat to allow the production of electricity to continue during gaps in the sunlight.

In the southwest deserts of the USA, more traditional parabolic “satellite receiver” dishes with lots of smaller mirrors follow the sun. They focus the light at the center where Stirling engines generate the electricity. It may be in part sentiment that draws me to Stirling engines; they are Victorian-era technology that is at last useful – the same sentiment that finds me living in a 200 year old house. I also like Stirling engines because they work without the large pressures and temperatures required by turbines.

These two new solar installations are big, very big. Yet I think they might show us a path to decentralized systems that are small. Because they are each heat based, they illuminate what diversity brings to the local energy grid.

The Spanish system stores energy in molten salt. This innovative approach moves solar power away from “only when the sun shines” to a model that can move energy from when you can make it to when you need it. Energy storage is so much more than batteries, or than hydrogen. I’m glad to see heat storage for electrical energy buffering in a large scale application.

The southwestern system uses industrial production quantities of software-driven solar collectors. The dishes should be able to scale down the right size for the home or office. The software will certainly be able to scale down. But the industrial production of Stirling engines is as exciting. Traditional thermal generation requires high temperature differentials, the difference between ambient temperature and your energy source, and high pressures. Stirling engines work at low pressures. Stirling engines work when the temperature differential is low.

Many things in your home or office generate heat. Air Conditioning exhaust, data centers, the furnace chimney, even composting toilets could be producing heat to store in the heat battery. A software driven rooftop dish can be one more. That heat can then drive Stirling engines to produce electricity as needed.

How will we know when it is needed? That is where enterprise-aware software in the office, home-owner driven software in the house come in. Negotiations with the services available in embedded systems determine the need. Negotiations with the power grid about pricing complete the picture.

The third definition of battery is a “collection of related things intended for use together”. A battery of guns is used in war. A battery of electrochemical devices is used to store electricity. A battery of diverse energy storage devices, electrochemical, potential, hydrogen, or thermal may be the building battery – and software will make them work together as a one.

Something’s Gotta Give

Changing business models is hard work. All the new approaches discussed in this BLOG seem not quite justifiable today. They would offer great benefits if they were already set up, but the change, to many, doesn’t make sense. History, and the installed base of markets and technologies, seems to block change.

I work from the precept that long term historical trends do not easily change. The things that drive decision makers will not change. Economic principles are as certain as gravity. We must find solutions to the problems of Energy and Sustainability that acknowledge the reality around us.

I make three assumptions about energy, the use of energy, and the need to deliver energy.

Energy Use per person has been increasing through all of history. It will continue to increase. The number of people using energy will increase. This means that the end-user demand for energy will increase.

Legacy energy sources will get scarcer. The difficulties associated with siting traditional energy generation will increase. The costs of remediating energy siting will increase. This means that the costs of central generation of energy will increase.

Utilities will be unable to build sufficient transmission capability for the needs of the future using current technologies. (Transmission refers to the long distance, high voltage tall towers you see bringing electricity to the fenced-in gray objects at the edge of a neighborhood. From the fenced in area to your house is referred to as Distribution.) Siting new transmission corridors is getting tougher and the lead times longer. One reason that the grid is fragile is that Utilities have been unable to afford adequate transmission expansion; they will be less able to afford it in the future. Increasing energy use will make demands on an infrastructure that cannot keep up with the growth will lead to decreasing reliability.

These three trends, increasing demand, higher cost of generation, and decreasing reliability or transmission, will shake end users, whether in homes, offices, or factories, out of their complacence about current energy provision. This will create the market conditions for technologies and approaches that seem “too risky” today. The risk of standing pat will be seen as larger than the risk of innovation.

I believe innovation will include building systems responsive to enterprise needs and current pricing. I believe innovation will include on-site generation and storage. I believe this innovation will require approaches that accept the heterogeneity of systems legacy and new, of generation systems appropriate to each site, and of storage appropriate for the needs of each business and home. To accomplish this, the underlying processes of each system need to be exposed as discoverable services to agents that are responsible to the owner or tenant for running the building.

Any other approach will take too much customization to ever really grow into a market. Anything that does not grow into a market will leave the needs unmet.

Fred Houk - Thoughts under the Shade Tree

I received word this morning that Fred Houk died Sunday morning. He was a good man, well, respected, and a friend too many – I won’t write of that here. What I will write of is of the power of ideas, and of how formulating the right phrase transforms and magnifies an effort, and creates long term lasting change.

I met Fred as a fellow UNC Football fan. UNC football fans take the long view; we have to. Some fan bases are content to win or lose each week, to experience pain or delight on a short term basis. UNC Football periodically raises itself up as a national power, slowly building over a decade. Then, following a coaching change, it crashes again, and the fan base wallows in misery for another decade. I came to Carolina near the crest of one such cycle, have lived through another, and am beginning on my third. Watching Carolina football teaches one to take the long view on things, and there is a special kinship among those who would get together to talk Carolina football during one of the lean decades.

Fred was a devoted bird watcher. His household was deeply imbued with environmental sensibilities; his wife, Virginia, is one of the top scientific evaluators for EPA projects. He also, as noted above, took the long view on any project he worked in.

Fred’s last career, one of several, was as a coffee roaster. His tales of tastings in Central America were imbued with national figures, random gun lords, and keen observations of the local fauna. Fred was a frequent speaker in coffee related forums when he was back in the US. What he said at one of those forums is what I am writing about today.

As I said, Fred was a dedicated birder. Most North American birds overwinter in Central America; there is a direct link between habitat there and birds here. Fred wanted to do something that had a long term continuing effect. He did not want another short term program. He knew too well how often good intentions leaving the US as dollars arrive somewhere else than intended. So Fred decided to change the game.

Fred introduced the phrase “Shade Tree Coffee” to the coffee roasting world. Coffee is naturally an understory shrub, growing under the canopy. Modern mechanized agricultural practice had moved coffee growing out into the open, in clear-cut fields where it was easy to harvest. Many believe that such beans lose some flavor, becoming the “California tomatoes” of the coffee world. Fred knew that such coffee plantations offered minimal habitat for birds.

Shade Tree Coffee was introduced as a way to get coffee that is richer in flavor, as well as ecologically more sound. Because of its better flavor, it could get better prices, prices that made up for its more expensive production. By linking economic benefits to best practices and better product, he created a whole set of economic practices that are far reaching. By coining and publicizing a name that is easy to recognize, he created a self-sustaining brand for better ecological practices.

Fred has been out of the coffee business for years. His old Company, Counter Culture Coffee, continues to roast some very fine beans. But Shade Tree Coffee is found in gourmet stores all over. There are even Starbucks blends that feature it prominently on the label.

Ideas are important. To make them have effects, they need to have a nice handle for people to use them. Fred gave one such idea a handle and so continues to improve both the coffee we drink and the habitats for the birds he loved to watch. He lives on each time someone goes outside to watch the birds gather for migration in the Fall or to come back in the Spring.