Electric Cars
I spent some time last week down a country road, watching the local power. I watched three phases that were greatly out of balance. I observed trapezoidal wave forms. We could see the home appliances of everyone else on the road, as they each turned on and off.
Together, we watched the power coming into his lab. They were his neighbors, and he knew them from observation. He could relate...
All the Smart Grid attention is on Demand Response, that is, on the half dozen times a year when the grid runs out of energy or has to turn to expensive energy sources. All the building attention is on efficiency, using the least energy inside the building possible. Neither approach supports renewables, or distributed energy resources. Efficiency may reduce the ability to respond to Demand Response signals. Buildings should turn to...
Intelligent energy use acquires energy at the right time at the right price for the right reason. Intelligent buildings provide customer amenities and customer services at the right time. Collaborative energy works with the smart grid to minimize the incompatibilities of these two problem sets. Systems on the grid and in the building need to do a better job of sharing information to improve the performance of these functions.