The National Institute for Standards and Technology has divided the users of the power grid into workgroups for each different area. Industry to grid (I2G), Commercial Building to grid (B2G), Home 2 grid (H2G) and even Vehicle to grid (V2G). Clearly there is a lot of overlap. The large home may have more sophisticated responses than the small office. When we are all done, I hope we have one common set of interfaces for all of them.
Each have their strengths. I2G hosts the most advanced conversations relevant for distributed generation (DG), with its long experience of local steam plants and of cogeneration. B2G, sometime called Business to grid by its members, has the most advanced expectations of the arms-length negotiations with the power grid. V2G presents the clearest models for distributed identity and lifestyle interactions. But I think that H2G has the most advanced system architecture, driven by the diversity of technology and personal preference in the home market.
The model adopted by the H2G seems the closest to a service oriented architecture relying on loose choreography. Homes have appliances and entertainment systems as well as environmental controls. Homes are values driven, and so are early adopters of generation technology that may not yet make economic sense. Homes are personal, encompassing all the different life styles, sleeping patterns, and everything else that makes each household different.
This model relies on the autonomous agents plugged into the HAN, each defending its mission, each interacting with prices from the grid. When I say agent and mission, I’m thinking of Gail Horst’s (head of grid responsiveness for appliance maker Whirlpool) that a washing machine cannot respond to the grid unless it knows there is no bleach in the current load. There is also the concept of the home agent, coordinating the responses and programs of each.
This master agent (“Your personal Energy Day Trader Friend!”) might run on your PC or MAC, use WS-DD (Device Discovery) to feel what’s on the HAN, WS-DP (Device Profile) to understand their capabilities, and instruct them as to the homeowner’s wishes. This model maps well to the findings of the Olympic Peninsula Project as well on to developing visions for the NZE (Net Zero Energy) home.
Lynne Kiesling described the inside the building energy market as the most efficient clearing mechanism with the lowest technology bar to integration at the B2G summit sponsored by NIST in Chicago last week. This makes for some extremely interesting home generation distributed generation, agent-by-agent prioritization concepts. (What if the dishwasher can never outbid the grid for the solar panel energy?)
Is HAN leading the way for B2G with this vision? The master agent for the commercial building would have to be enterprise aware, or perhaps tenant aware, depending upon model. Is HAN leading the way for I2G in this model? The master agent for I2G would need to be aware of manufacturing schedules and other enterprise functions, perhaps even labor contracts.
Do these other entities need what is architecturally already part of the HAN?
Daedalus was the mythical engineer and artificer of the classical world. What would he do with digital tools and digital concerns?