Showing posts with label infotricity. Show all posts
Showing posts with label infotricity. Show all posts
Friday, May 1, 2015
What the Smart Energy Technology Solution Project Award to Glasgow Means
1:51 PM | 
Posted by
Billy Ray |
By
now we hope you have heard that Glasgow EPB’s proposed Smart Energy Technology
Solution (SETS) was chosen for funding. That immediately means that money will come to our community, but it also means that our community will
reap long term benefits. Our proposed demonstration of what the next generation
of electric utility should look like was judged to be the most likely to
provide really new ideas for all local power companies. We are excited as a
team, and we are ecstatic that the community is working together to bring these
research dollars into the local economy. In
the history of our community, this direct injection of capital exceeds nearly
every other grant that has ever landed here. But perhaps now it is time to fill
the community in on more of just what this money is going to buy us.
This research was announced several years ago. From the very
beginning, the EPB team felt our community was perfectly situated to
demonstrate smart energy technology. The EPB mission statement dictates that we
provide our services “at costs that make them practical and improve the
standard of living for all of the people of Glasgow.” We take that mission
statement to heart in everything we do. Glasgow’s municipally owned broadband
network, and all of the other advanced technology deployed by EPB, flow from
our determination to accomplish that mission. Now the SETS will add to our
process of innovation in support of our mission.
The
basis for our move to build a broadband network in 1988 flowed from our
“infotricity” theory. Simply put, infotricity is the combination of broadband
networks (information) and electricity to produce a system that manages
energy - minute by minute. The goal is to contain consumption to the generation
capacity that can be operated most efficiently. This idea is a complete change
from the way we have operated electric power systems for the last century.
Since the beginning, we have allowed the random demand for electricity to
dictate the construction of a constantly growing set of generation plants. As
those plants grew, so did the cost of electric power to pay for the additional
plants. Even worse, we have really never paid for all of the costs (which
include healthcare, depletion of fresh water, and environmental impact of
acquiring the fuel necessary to run the plants) associated with our increasing
demand for electricity during only a few hours of some days.
We
proposed a project that connects infotricity theory, new infotricity retail
rates, and several elements of research already performed here in Glasgow, to
even newer technology ideas that are evolving presently. Glasgow EPB customers
will get the opportunity to apply for extreme energy make-overs to their homes,
ecobee Wifi enabled thermostats, GE Geospring heat pump water heaters, as well as
very new home battery systems that will store off-peak energy and supply that
energy to home energy needs during on-peak hours. We think we can install these
technologies, control them with new software that builds upon everything we
have already learned about predicting Glasgow’s monthly peak demand using the
best available weather prediction and load prediction tools, to prove that
Glasgow’s total electric demand can be reshaped to better fit within the
capacity of generation plants - with a much lower impact on our economy and our
environment. If we are right, Glasgow residents will benefit greatly and the
utility industry as a whole will have a model for each of them to follow for
their respective communities.
All
of this work is on a very tight schedule. After we get contracts with our
vendors executed, we will evaluate customers who indicate an interest in this
project. They will be asked to provide extensive data so that we can evaluate
what technologies, or ultra-efficient improvements, might work to reshape their
daily demand. Those customers determined to be a good match for the project
will be offered contracts that will cover the details of participation in SETS,
and those that choose to sign, will be receiving some or all of the
technologies we want to study.
Here
is how we think all of the elements of our SETS project will work together.
Every day Glasgow EPB will use weather forecasts and load projections to
attempt to predict the likely days and times for Glasgow’s monthly peak hour
demand. Using those predictions, we will help customers who agree to be a part
of the research reduce their demand during the predicted peak times by
instructing the water heater to heat water the night before, the thermostat to
pre-warm (or pre-cool) the house before the predicted peak, and the battery
system to charge with off-peak energy and discharge energy to the home during
peak hours. All of these functions should work together, using Glasgow’s
broadband network and EPB’s internet-connected electric meters, to dramatically
reduce the Coincident Peak Demand charge that is an element of the new
Infotricity Retail Rates.
Beyond
just helping Glasgow customers reduce their bills under the new rates,
reshaping a community’s total energy demand will help our energy supplier run fewer generation
plants to supply our needs. When other communities replicate our work, the
reduction in generation needs should come down dramatically. As fewer
generation plants are needed to supply our energy needs, the door will swing
open for the installation of more generation that uses renewable energy
sources, like solar and wind. Since Glasgow’s new Infotricity Rates will free
Glasgow EPB from the need to sell more energy to produce the revenue necessary
to support the maintenance of our infrastructure, Glasgow EPB will become a
resource for helping all of its customers explore these new technologies and
how they might be used for Glasgow homes and businesses.
Glasgow
EPB’s mission statement provided the basis for our ongoing interest in our
infotricity theories. This SETS project will provide us the funding necessary
to prove those theories and, in doing so, provide that improved standard of
living that our team is committed to accomplish. The SETS will not be the end
of our efforts in that regard, it is only our latest initiative. More of these
projects will surely follow, and we will continue to search for all
opportunities to make our community a better place to live.
Labels:
Friday, March 6, 2015
A Very Cold Day in Glasgow
.jpeg)
We have spent the last couple of decades pursuing an idea that we call "Infotricity". We think that electric
power, combined with broadband communications and an IP address such that all
major electric loads can addressed, combine to form a new energy product -- infotricity, and that
infotricity will have a much lighter impact on our environment and our
wallets than the 100 year old product, electricity.
At the core of infotricity theory is the belief that loads can be managed such that peak demands can be reduced, in turn, reducing the amount of fuel needed to supply our lifestyle. Further, we will all be paying for fewer generation plants in an infotricity world. Of course, nearly all of our peers are quite certain that the idea is wacko. Some days they nearly have us convinced of that. Today is not one of those days.
Above see my home, our office, and our community. Note what is possible when we are brave enough to challenge the status quo!
At the core of infotricity theory is the belief that loads can be managed such that peak demands can be reduced, in turn, reducing the amount of fuel needed to supply our lifestyle. Further, we will all be paying for fewer generation plants in an infotricity world. Of course, nearly all of our peers are quite certain that the idea is wacko. Some days they nearly have us convinced of that. Today is not one of those days.
Above see my home, our office, and our community. Note what is possible when we are brave enough to challenge the status quo!
Friday, June 3, 2011
More Time Of Use Rate Information
Since June 1 you have likely seen or heard some of our discussion about Time Of Use (TOU) electric rates and how all EPB electric customers can help save the community a lot of money by shifting power usage on weekdays away from the hours of noon until 8:00 p.m. This information has caused us to get some questions and this post is intended to answer them.
First and foremost, the new rate is not being directly applied to anyone at their home or business in Glasgow. The new rate is applicable only to Glasgow EPB for the power we buy from TVA for our customers to use in Glasgow. Of course, if we have to pay it, that means we have to collect the money from our customers. The plea we are making is for you to cut back your afternoon usage of energy so that we can minimize rate adjustments which are necessary to cover the wholesale rates TVA charges us. Our plea for community action is to save the community money.
The idea of TOU rates did not originate with TVA. This rate concept is a long held response to real world events relative to electric power supply versus the demand for electric power. In a very real sense, we have all created the need for TOU rates. We celebrate growth. We are gleeful at the opening of a new big box store in our community even though it consumes gobs of energy. The same goes for the expansion of an industry or the construction of a new school, but we don’t feel the same about the construction of a new nuclear or coal fired generation plant in our town (or anyone else’s for that matter). Therein lies the problem. We celebrate the growth of electric demand but if anyone is paying attention to the news, all of the announcements from the electric utility industry seem to be about decisions to shut down existing generation plants and defer the construction of new ones. This is an inconvenient truth, but a truth nonetheless. We all face a future in which electric power is in shorter supply than it was in the past.
This short supply of energy might not be as ominous as it sounds. In reality, we still have plenty of supply most of the time. In the summer, the exception happens to be on weekdays, from about noon until about 8:00 p.m. During those hours TVA presently depends on its neighbors as TVA does not have adequate generation capacity to make all of the electric power we are demanding. When they go to the neighbors, the neighbors can demand whatever the market will bear for the power TVA purchases from them. As a result, the power is very expensive. This situation will only get worse in the coming years as TVA recently announced plans to shut down several more of their coal fired generation plants.
Now, different utilities have chosen different ways to pay the added expense of this “on-peak” energy. The most popular and simplest habit is to simply move these extra expenses into an account and charge for the purchased power through a monthly “fuel cost adjustment.” No matter whether you get your power from EPB, FRECC, or KU, you have been paying this fuel cost adjustment so, in effect, you have already been paying sort of a TOU rate for years – it just was not called that. The problem with this method is that it socializes the cost of electric power. It provides no incentive for folks to operate more efficiently and move load away from the on-peak time. Instead, all costs are evenly spread across all customers in the form of rate increases. This disguises the truth and penalizes all for inefficiency that could be corrected if folks were given enough information and incentives. After all, if energy is the same cost no matter what time of day it is used, why would anyone take action to move away from the hot afternoon hours with their consumption?
TVA and Glasgow EPB are moving in the direction of providing information and incentives as an opportunity for folks interested in saving money and living more efficiently. This move is not meant to be punishing nor are we forcing folks to swelter on hot summer afternoons. We do not plan to ever force anyone to move to a TOU retail rate, but we do plan on giving those who are interested in modifying their consumption patterns a reward for that change. Those who are not interested in this will likely always have the option of ignoring TOU, but they should be prepared to continue the upward spiral of energy cost. Living in a world of cheap and abundant energy as we have for the last fifty years, is simply no longer going to be an option.
So, all of this discussion about TOU rates is about Glasgow getting prepared for a future that we feel is coming just as predictably as the changing of the seasons. We have invested in a broadband network and advanced electric meters capable of exchanging information between us and your home around the clock. We believe we can work together to change the way energy is used in Glasgow and exploit the coming changes in the rates we pay. We are working to make our community sustainable in whatever fashion that the coming changes in energy supply and weather present themselves. We feel that we are ahead of other communities in preparing for the future. If any of this still leaves you confused, just let us hear from you.
First and foremost, the new rate is not being directly applied to anyone at their home or business in Glasgow. The new rate is applicable only to Glasgow EPB for the power we buy from TVA for our customers to use in Glasgow. Of course, if we have to pay it, that means we have to collect the money from our customers. The plea we are making is for you to cut back your afternoon usage of energy so that we can minimize rate adjustments which are necessary to cover the wholesale rates TVA charges us. Our plea for community action is to save the community money.
The idea of TOU rates did not originate with TVA. This rate concept is a long held response to real world events relative to electric power supply versus the demand for electric power. In a very real sense, we have all created the need for TOU rates. We celebrate growth. We are gleeful at the opening of a new big box store in our community even though it consumes gobs of energy. The same goes for the expansion of an industry or the construction of a new school, but we don’t feel the same about the construction of a new nuclear or coal fired generation plant in our town (or anyone else’s for that matter). Therein lies the problem. We celebrate the growth of electric demand but if anyone is paying attention to the news, all of the announcements from the electric utility industry seem to be about decisions to shut down existing generation plants and defer the construction of new ones. This is an inconvenient truth, but a truth nonetheless. We all face a future in which electric power is in shorter supply than it was in the past.
This short supply of energy might not be as ominous as it sounds. In reality, we still have plenty of supply most of the time. In the summer, the exception happens to be on weekdays, from about noon until about 8:00 p.m. During those hours TVA presently depends on its neighbors as TVA does not have adequate generation capacity to make all of the electric power we are demanding. When they go to the neighbors, the neighbors can demand whatever the market will bear for the power TVA purchases from them. As a result, the power is very expensive. This situation will only get worse in the coming years as TVA recently announced plans to shut down several more of their coal fired generation plants.
Now, different utilities have chosen different ways to pay the added expense of this “on-peak” energy. The most popular and simplest habit is to simply move these extra expenses into an account and charge for the purchased power through a monthly “fuel cost adjustment.” No matter whether you get your power from EPB, FRECC, or KU, you have been paying this fuel cost adjustment so, in effect, you have already been paying sort of a TOU rate for years – it just was not called that. The problem with this method is that it socializes the cost of electric power. It provides no incentive for folks to operate more efficiently and move load away from the on-peak time. Instead, all costs are evenly spread across all customers in the form of rate increases. This disguises the truth and penalizes all for inefficiency that could be corrected if folks were given enough information and incentives. After all, if energy is the same cost no matter what time of day it is used, why would anyone take action to move away from the hot afternoon hours with their consumption?
TVA and Glasgow EPB are moving in the direction of providing information and incentives as an opportunity for folks interested in saving money and living more efficiently. This move is not meant to be punishing nor are we forcing folks to swelter on hot summer afternoons. We do not plan to ever force anyone to move to a TOU retail rate, but we do plan on giving those who are interested in modifying their consumption patterns a reward for that change. Those who are not interested in this will likely always have the option of ignoring TOU, but they should be prepared to continue the upward spiral of energy cost. Living in a world of cheap and abundant energy as we have for the last fifty years, is simply no longer going to be an option.
So, all of this discussion about TOU rates is about Glasgow getting prepared for a future that we feel is coming just as predictably as the changing of the seasons. We have invested in a broadband network and advanced electric meters capable of exchanging information between us and your home around the clock. We believe we can work together to change the way energy is used in Glasgow and exploit the coming changes in the rates we pay. We are working to make our community sustainable in whatever fashion that the coming changes in energy supply and weather present themselves. We feel that we are ahead of other communities in preparing for the future. If any of this still leaves you confused, just let us hear from you.
Monday, March 2, 2009
Electric Power Version 2.0
This post is a bit technical and likely of little interest to most of our customers, but we thought some of you might like to understand a bit more about smart grids and how they might work. Most local folks would be surprised to learn just how deeply involved the team at Glasgow EPB is in the work to change everything about how electricity is generated, distributed, and consumed. So, here goes...
CONCEPT
We owe much of our prosperity over the last century to our discovery of electricity and the ways to generate, transmit, and use it to perform work. However, it turns out that nearly every method we devised to generate electricity has also generated problems with our environment and our weather. Perhaps it is time to upgrade electricity to release 2.0 and give it a new name, infotricity.
Infotricity is a product we have been experimenting with in Glasgow, Kentucky for many years. It is derived by combining the regular flow of electricity (think of it as the inorganic chemistry) with a flow of information which we know as the internet (think of it as sunlight), which results in a new product, infotricity (think of it as organic life). This is a virtual solution, not one where the actual wires are twisted together. Rather, it is a philosophy that all electric power delivery should be accompanied by a robust broadband connection which provides the intelligence for the workhorse. Once electric current is combined with, and controlled by, the river of bits, our theory is that the sum is much greater than the individual parts. If we are correct, then infotricity is to electricity as blood is to water, as a symphony is to a metronome, or as a summer breeze is to an air compressor. Infotricity is nearly organic.
THE TROUBLE WITH ELECTRICITY
Electricity is infinitely strong, but the resources we use to generate it are clearly finite and diminishing. Electricity is also infinitely mindless and clearly inorganic. If you come up with a way to generate an electromotive force, give that force a conductor, and connect that conductor to a load, and electric current will flow into that load and work will be accomplished until one of those elements is removed.
So, since electricity is unable to restrain itself from doing work until its fuel source is exhausted or the conductor is cut, we have turned the job of controlling it over to a number of equally dumb devices, mainly thermostats and timers. These guys are not in the mensa club either, yet we have entrusted them with making all the decisions about how we use billions of dollars worth of electricity each day. Further, they get to decide how much coal we burn, how much enriched uranium we need, how much water is released from hundreds of hydroelectric plants, and how much natural gas we burn to make electric power. Even though the electric bill comes to you and me, the decisions on how much energy bought were made by a $30 thermostat on your wall and a whole bunch of its $9 cousins in all of your other home appliances. And here is the real problem with that; these guys never talk to each other.
IT’S A CYCLICAL THING.
Since these thermostats and timers never talk to each other, one might then assume that they would then command the flow of electric power in a totally random and chaotic fashion which, in turn, would produce a demand for electric power in such a diverse pattern that the summation of all electric loads in a home, plotted against time, would produce a relatively flat horizontal line. But that is not the case. Instead, left on their own, these devices conspire to produce a demand for electric power which is rhythmic and tuned. In fact, an average day of electric power consumption for your home likely looks a lot like a simple sine wave. Surprisingly, there is a geometry to this chaos.
Does that mean that electricity is alive? Hardly. Does that mean it has intelligence? Absolutely not. However it does mean that our circadian rhythm has a great deal to do with our home’s use of electric power also having a circadian rhythm of its own. It means that those thermostats in your home are responding to the residents, the temperature and to the time of day by acting totally on their own. The result is a demand shape that is shaped like a sine wave, and that is very problematic. And it gets worse.
IT’S ALSO A FRACTAL THING.
It turns out that, much like in nature where a microscopic examination of a leaf reveals tree and branch structures that are a miniature copy of the totality of the tree, the sine wave shape of energy usage at your home is similar to the shape of total daily energy usage on your street. This energy usage is nearly identical to the usage for your community, and that shape is the same as that of the total energy demand on the utility that serves your home. Hundreds of millions of dumb thermostats somehow, without talking to each other, conspire to produce a sine wave shape for the total daily energy consumption of North America. For example, the largest public utility in our country, TVA, has a daily load shape that looks exactly like the simple sine wave previously described for a single house.
Fractal geometry is at work here, and the result is that we have a very high demand for energy, which results in large amounts of coal being thrown in the fire to produce the energy needed to meet that peak, which only lasts a few hours per day. This is another huge issue, because it is far more efficient to operate generation in the sweet spot of each generator’s efficiency curve twenty four hours a day, instead of trying to force them to follow this sine wave rhythm. So, what we really need here is some chaos. We need to de-tune this circadian rhythm and flatten out the load shape.
THE THEORY OF INFOTRICITY
In each of our bodies, fifty trillion cells live in harmony sharing energy, information, and purpose. They are united by a robust communications network and they are organized by a spectacular piece of software running on a powerful processor carried between our ears. In 2009 is it not possible to use a broadband network and some slightly less complicated software to convince twelve million motors and appliances within a region like the one served by TVA to live in similar harmony? If we replace the electricity, which powers those appliances today, with infotricity; if we replace water with blood, then we should be able to enjoy a symphony instead of the rhythmic ticking of the metronome.
BUILDING A BETTER SINE WAVE.
Each time slice of the daily demand curve for TVA is made up of two hundred eighteen blocks representing the energy demand from each of TVA’s distributor utilities and the other directly served industrial customers. Those blocks are made up of the nine million smaller blocks, which represent the individual homes and businesses that connect to the distributors. Finally, each of those nine million blocks is made up of the discreet loads; the appliances, motors, heaters, and lighting loads, which live in each of our homes and businesses. It is the chance stacking of each of those blocks that adds up to create each point along the sine wave shape of our daily demand curve.
The daily infotricity demand curve could be shaped differently, with much lower peaks and more shallow valleys, resulting in dramatic reduction in the amount of generation necessary at the hottest and coldest parts of the day and the virtual elimination of the most expensive and least efficient generation sources. A broadband network and some very good software would make this possible.
While today’s electric power demand curve is established by the cadre of deaf and dumb thermostats and timers, the infotricity demand curve would be sculpted by fully conversant software and telecommunications. Each of the discreet loads could be assigned an IP address. Each IP address could, in turn, be assigned a geometric form, a polygon. Then, all the software would have to do is organize the polygons like the pieces of a puzzle, into a daily demand curve that has a lower amplitude than the wave we experience today wherein none of the loads are controlled.
Of course, this would be far from simple. The music for this symphony could not be written overnight, but today’s high speed telecommunications and processors seem to have plenty of capacity to make the calculations and deliver the messages. Surely we can also assume that the same folks who write software and applications like iGoogle and Google Earth can also pull off Electricity 2.0.
HERE IS HOW IT MIGHT WORK.
Using historic energy consumption information for each meter combined with historic weather and calendar data, an algorithm could be developed for predicting the anticipated load shape on a day-ahead basis for each meter. Once robust broadband and IP based thermostats, appliance controls, and water heaters are installed to the home or business, and an inventory of the individual loads and the associated predictable usage information and other thermodynamic data about the location are collected, the software could start ascribing a two-dimensional model of each discreet load.
As mentioned above, the two dimensional models could be described as polygons, with the height equal to the projected load in watts and the base equal to the anticipated run time. Of course, the run-time would also have a certain amount of flexibility depending on the thermodynamics of the home, the habits of the residents, and the efficiency of the appliance. For example, the polygon ascribed to a water heater would not be simply the wattage of the heating elements and the length of time necessary to fully heat the volume of water in the tank. The polygon would be described by the wattage and time necessary to warm the water from its present temperature to the target temperature at the time predicted by the resident’s next likely need for the hot water. Obviously the same would be true for the HVAC needs of the location. It is assumed that the residents would offer a certain bandwidth of acceptable temperature for the air in the location, and that this acceptable bandwidth would also need to be recognized by the operating software. This would allow flexibility in the dimensions of the polygon ascribed to the HVAC load for the location. Thus, the software assembling the puzzle pieces would also have the option of re-sizing the polygons to make them fit.
It is the complicated nature of the variables and the need for IP based temperature sensors, and other IP based controls necessary to predict the need for energy, that makes it reasonable to assume that very high capacity broadband networks will be required for an organic smart grid. Further, it is clear that an exceedingly complex piece of software to operate over that network and connect generation plant and end user devices will be required for the creation of infotricity. The transactions described here are far from simple command and control conversations, rather, infotricity delivery and the endless number of calculations necessary to make it perform organically will approach the complexity of a living organism.
Once data and algorithms are developed that result in the definition of a polygon for all of these discreet loads, the software would be tasked with assembling those polygon puzzle pieces into a daily load shape. This shape would likely still be a sine wave, but one which is dramatically dampened, as the individual fractals that support it are each detuned and scattered.
Each load would communicate its status and its need to operate via an IP address through the broadband network to the control software. At the same time, the software would be studying the weather and the predicted load shape for the address. Then, its job would be to organize the loads into a shape which is flatter than the one predicted. As this is done for individual addresses, the software would also predict the new controlled load shape for the individual home and all of the homes at the various fractal levels; the street, the town, the region, and the utility universe, attempting to arrange the new sine wave peaks to occur at different times so that the load shape for each fractal area is as flat as possible. This is how an organically modeled infotricity network might function. Obviously, this is a daunting task, but impossible? Not likely.
LIVING BETTER WITH INFOTRICITY
For the first one hundred years of our utilization of electric power, the work done by electricity had no understanding of the source or limitations of the energy. To a large extent, neither did we, the consumers of the work and the designers of the electric power networks. Electricity 1.0 was inorganic and we allowed unsophisticated devices to decide how high our peak demands were. We looked at those peaks as impossible to change. In fact, we established rates and growth policies that added to their height, and we simply burned more coal and natural gas to meet them.
Infotricity (Electricity 2.0) could forever change this unwieldy and inefficient way of accomplishing our work. The robust broadband networks are available. The IP addressable thermostats, controllers, sensors, and appliances are within our reach. The software can be written. Sophisticated interfaces that will help us all visualize our infotricity usage are being written, and we will be able to get them on our computer screens, television screens, and wall displays.
Where the electricity network has been built in huge rectangular blocks that are ill-fitted to provide power for sine wave shaped demand, the infotricity network will assemble demand to closely match the output of our cleanest and most efficient generation units. When more wind power is available, the infotricity network will maximize demand when the wind output is available. When electric vehicle production grows, the infotricity network will recognize these new loads and assign them polygons of capacity which will fit within the targeted daily load shape.
Clearly, some of this discussion is theoretical. Telecommunications and technology can no doubt reduce peak demand, but just how much is not known. We can visualize discreet loads as polygons, but can software be designed to assign those polygons to run times in anything like the way our circulatory system distributes oxygen to vital organs? If not, how close can we get?
It seems plausible that we can make dramatic improvements. Such improvements might mean that nearly all of our least efficient generation sources, combustion turbines that burn large amounts of precious natural gas, might be moth balled. If the software is just a little bit better than that, then we can start retiring some of the oldest and dirtiest coal fired plants. By the time we get to Electricity 3.0, maybe we will be smart enough to actually start fueling our total needs with nuclear power, and the remainder with totally renewable resources like hydroelectric power, wind power, geothermal power, and biomass power. Perhaps infotricity will power a totally sustainable way of life for us all.
Is anyone ready to write that software? If so, let’s call it Sunshine, because inorganic chemistry plus sunlight equals organic chemistry, and we certainly need some new life around here.
CONCEPT
We owe much of our prosperity over the last century to our discovery of electricity and the ways to generate, transmit, and use it to perform work. However, it turns out that nearly every method we devised to generate electricity has also generated problems with our environment and our weather. Perhaps it is time to upgrade electricity to release 2.0 and give it a new name, infotricity.
Infotricity is a product we have been experimenting with in Glasgow, Kentucky for many years. It is derived by combining the regular flow of electricity (think of it as the inorganic chemistry) with a flow of information which we know as the internet (think of it as sunlight), which results in a new product, infotricity (think of it as organic life). This is a virtual solution, not one where the actual wires are twisted together. Rather, it is a philosophy that all electric power delivery should be accompanied by a robust broadband connection which provides the intelligence for the workhorse. Once electric current is combined with, and controlled by, the river of bits, our theory is that the sum is much greater than the individual parts. If we are correct, then infotricity is to electricity as blood is to water, as a symphony is to a metronome, or as a summer breeze is to an air compressor. Infotricity is nearly organic.
THE TROUBLE WITH ELECTRICITY
Electricity is infinitely strong, but the resources we use to generate it are clearly finite and diminishing. Electricity is also infinitely mindless and clearly inorganic. If you come up with a way to generate an electromotive force, give that force a conductor, and connect that conductor to a load, and electric current will flow into that load and work will be accomplished until one of those elements is removed.
So, since electricity is unable to restrain itself from doing work until its fuel source is exhausted or the conductor is cut, we have turned the job of controlling it over to a number of equally dumb devices, mainly thermostats and timers. These guys are not in the mensa club either, yet we have entrusted them with making all the decisions about how we use billions of dollars worth of electricity each day. Further, they get to decide how much coal we burn, how much enriched uranium we need, how much water is released from hundreds of hydroelectric plants, and how much natural gas we burn to make electric power. Even though the electric bill comes to you and me, the decisions on how much energy bought were made by a $30 thermostat on your wall and a whole bunch of its $9 cousins in all of your other home appliances. And here is the real problem with that; these guys never talk to each other.
IT’S A CYCLICAL THING.
Since these thermostats and timers never talk to each other, one might then assume that they would then command the flow of electric power in a totally random and chaotic fashion which, in turn, would produce a demand for electric power in such a diverse pattern that the summation of all electric loads in a home, plotted against time, would produce a relatively flat horizontal line. But that is not the case. Instead, left on their own, these devices conspire to produce a demand for electric power which is rhythmic and tuned. In fact, an average day of electric power consumption for your home likely looks a lot like a simple sine wave. Surprisingly, there is a geometry to this chaos.
Does that mean that electricity is alive? Hardly. Does that mean it has intelligence? Absolutely not. However it does mean that our circadian rhythm has a great deal to do with our home’s use of electric power also having a circadian rhythm of its own. It means that those thermostats in your home are responding to the residents, the temperature and to the time of day by acting totally on their own. The result is a demand shape that is shaped like a sine wave, and that is very problematic. And it gets worse.
IT’S ALSO A FRACTAL THING.
It turns out that, much like in nature where a microscopic examination of a leaf reveals tree and branch structures that are a miniature copy of the totality of the tree, the sine wave shape of energy usage at your home is similar to the shape of total daily energy usage on your street. This energy usage is nearly identical to the usage for your community, and that shape is the same as that of the total energy demand on the utility that serves your home. Hundreds of millions of dumb thermostats somehow, without talking to each other, conspire to produce a sine wave shape for the total daily energy consumption of North America. For example, the largest public utility in our country, TVA, has a daily load shape that looks exactly like the simple sine wave previously described for a single house.
Fractal geometry is at work here, and the result is that we have a very high demand for energy, which results in large amounts of coal being thrown in the fire to produce the energy needed to meet that peak, which only lasts a few hours per day. This is another huge issue, because it is far more efficient to operate generation in the sweet spot of each generator’s efficiency curve twenty four hours a day, instead of trying to force them to follow this sine wave rhythm. So, what we really need here is some chaos. We need to de-tune this circadian rhythm and flatten out the load shape.
THE THEORY OF INFOTRICITY
In each of our bodies, fifty trillion cells live in harmony sharing energy, information, and purpose. They are united by a robust communications network and they are organized by a spectacular piece of software running on a powerful processor carried between our ears. In 2009 is it not possible to use a broadband network and some slightly less complicated software to convince twelve million motors and appliances within a region like the one served by TVA to live in similar harmony? If we replace the electricity, which powers those appliances today, with infotricity; if we replace water with blood, then we should be able to enjoy a symphony instead of the rhythmic ticking of the metronome.
BUILDING A BETTER SINE WAVE.
Each time slice of the daily demand curve for TVA is made up of two hundred eighteen blocks representing the energy demand from each of TVA’s distributor utilities and the other directly served industrial customers. Those blocks are made up of the nine million smaller blocks, which represent the individual homes and businesses that connect to the distributors. Finally, each of those nine million blocks is made up of the discreet loads; the appliances, motors, heaters, and lighting loads, which live in each of our homes and businesses. It is the chance stacking of each of those blocks that adds up to create each point along the sine wave shape of our daily demand curve.
The daily infotricity demand curve could be shaped differently, with much lower peaks and more shallow valleys, resulting in dramatic reduction in the amount of generation necessary at the hottest and coldest parts of the day and the virtual elimination of the most expensive and least efficient generation sources. A broadband network and some very good software would make this possible.
While today’s electric power demand curve is established by the cadre of deaf and dumb thermostats and timers, the infotricity demand curve would be sculpted by fully conversant software and telecommunications. Each of the discreet loads could be assigned an IP address. Each IP address could, in turn, be assigned a geometric form, a polygon. Then, all the software would have to do is organize the polygons like the pieces of a puzzle, into a daily demand curve that has a lower amplitude than the wave we experience today wherein none of the loads are controlled.
Of course, this would be far from simple. The music for this symphony could not be written overnight, but today’s high speed telecommunications and processors seem to have plenty of capacity to make the calculations and deliver the messages. Surely we can also assume that the same folks who write software and applications like iGoogle and Google Earth can also pull off Electricity 2.0.
HERE IS HOW IT MIGHT WORK.
Using historic energy consumption information for each meter combined with historic weather and calendar data, an algorithm could be developed for predicting the anticipated load shape on a day-ahead basis for each meter. Once robust broadband and IP based thermostats, appliance controls, and water heaters are installed to the home or business, and an inventory of the individual loads and the associated predictable usage information and other thermodynamic data about the location are collected, the software could start ascribing a two-dimensional model of each discreet load.
As mentioned above, the two dimensional models could be described as polygons, with the height equal to the projected load in watts and the base equal to the anticipated run time. Of course, the run-time would also have a certain amount of flexibility depending on the thermodynamics of the home, the habits of the residents, and the efficiency of the appliance. For example, the polygon ascribed to a water heater would not be simply the wattage of the heating elements and the length of time necessary to fully heat the volume of water in the tank. The polygon would be described by the wattage and time necessary to warm the water from its present temperature to the target temperature at the time predicted by the resident’s next likely need for the hot water. Obviously the same would be true for the HVAC needs of the location. It is assumed that the residents would offer a certain bandwidth of acceptable temperature for the air in the location, and that this acceptable bandwidth would also need to be recognized by the operating software. This would allow flexibility in the dimensions of the polygon ascribed to the HVAC load for the location. Thus, the software assembling the puzzle pieces would also have the option of re-sizing the polygons to make them fit.
It is the complicated nature of the variables and the need for IP based temperature sensors, and other IP based controls necessary to predict the need for energy, that makes it reasonable to assume that very high capacity broadband networks will be required for an organic smart grid. Further, it is clear that an exceedingly complex piece of software to operate over that network and connect generation plant and end user devices will be required for the creation of infotricity. The transactions described here are far from simple command and control conversations, rather, infotricity delivery and the endless number of calculations necessary to make it perform organically will approach the complexity of a living organism.
Once data and algorithms are developed that result in the definition of a polygon for all of these discreet loads, the software would be tasked with assembling those polygon puzzle pieces into a daily load shape. This shape would likely still be a sine wave, but one which is dramatically dampened, as the individual fractals that support it are each detuned and scattered.
Each load would communicate its status and its need to operate via an IP address through the broadband network to the control software. At the same time, the software would be studying the weather and the predicted load shape for the address. Then, its job would be to organize the loads into a shape which is flatter than the one predicted. As this is done for individual addresses, the software would also predict the new controlled load shape for the individual home and all of the homes at the various fractal levels; the street, the town, the region, and the utility universe, attempting to arrange the new sine wave peaks to occur at different times so that the load shape for each fractal area is as flat as possible. This is how an organically modeled infotricity network might function. Obviously, this is a daunting task, but impossible? Not likely.
LIVING BETTER WITH INFOTRICITY
For the first one hundred years of our utilization of electric power, the work done by electricity had no understanding of the source or limitations of the energy. To a large extent, neither did we, the consumers of the work and the designers of the electric power networks. Electricity 1.0 was inorganic and we allowed unsophisticated devices to decide how high our peak demands were. We looked at those peaks as impossible to change. In fact, we established rates and growth policies that added to their height, and we simply burned more coal and natural gas to meet them.
Infotricity (Electricity 2.0) could forever change this unwieldy and inefficient way of accomplishing our work. The robust broadband networks are available. The IP addressable thermostats, controllers, sensors, and appliances are within our reach. The software can be written. Sophisticated interfaces that will help us all visualize our infotricity usage are being written, and we will be able to get them on our computer screens, television screens, and wall displays.
Where the electricity network has been built in huge rectangular blocks that are ill-fitted to provide power for sine wave shaped demand, the infotricity network will assemble demand to closely match the output of our cleanest and most efficient generation units. When more wind power is available, the infotricity network will maximize demand when the wind output is available. When electric vehicle production grows, the infotricity network will recognize these new loads and assign them polygons of capacity which will fit within the targeted daily load shape.
Clearly, some of this discussion is theoretical. Telecommunications and technology can no doubt reduce peak demand, but just how much is not known. We can visualize discreet loads as polygons, but can software be designed to assign those polygons to run times in anything like the way our circulatory system distributes oxygen to vital organs? If not, how close can we get?
It seems plausible that we can make dramatic improvements. Such improvements might mean that nearly all of our least efficient generation sources, combustion turbines that burn large amounts of precious natural gas, might be moth balled. If the software is just a little bit better than that, then we can start retiring some of the oldest and dirtiest coal fired plants. By the time we get to Electricity 3.0, maybe we will be smart enough to actually start fueling our total needs with nuclear power, and the remainder with totally renewable resources like hydroelectric power, wind power, geothermal power, and biomass power. Perhaps infotricity will power a totally sustainable way of life for us all.
Is anyone ready to write that software? If so, let’s call it Sunshine, because inorganic chemistry plus sunlight equals organic chemistry, and we certainly need some new life around here.
Tuesday, July 22, 2008
This is Our Home . . . How are we going to power it?
Over the last few years the cost of electric power from TVA (via the Glasgow EPB) increased about 35%. Now it appears that, over the next six months, that cost will go up again by staggering amounts (as this is written TVA has not given us the final bad news, but it is likely that we will see an increase of something like 15% on October 1 and something very similar again on January 1, 2009) over the next six months. Add this to the stress we are already experiencing at the gas pumps and the crisis many of you will feel this winter as you see the unbelievable natural gas bills and the result is a gut-wrenching fear unlike anything we have ever seen before. In fact, it would not be going too far to say that it is now okay to go ahead and panic!
We have talked about the reasons for these dramatic increases several times before in this very blog. Drought in east Tennessee is drastically reducing the amount of cheap hydroelectric power TVA can produce. Increases in the cost of diesel fuel makes transporting coal from the mines to the coal-fired generation units much more expensive and that is driving up the cost of coal. China and India are using staggering amounts of coal and diesel fuel in their zeal to make cheap consumer goods for us to purchase at Wal Mart, and that is driving up the cost of both of those fuel sources. We hate to have this fact shoved in our faces, but the real culprit in these increases in the cost of all forms of energy is the way we live our lives. We use too much energy each and every day. In other words, we have found the enemy, and he is us.
As a Glasgow resident and a customer of the EPB you have something going for you that folks who buy their electric power elsewhere do not have . . . yet. For the last twenty years we have been developing a broadband network that touches each and every home and business in our community. For just as many years we have been planning to use that network to help our population use electricity in a totally different manner than the way we have taken for granted over the last eighty years. Even though our efforts have been discounted and ignored by TVA and the other elements of the electric power business in our country for most of those twenty years, it seems that the dawn is beginning to break over our landscape of ideas about infotricity.
Infotricity is a term we coined many years ago and it is meant to identify electric power, combined with a robust broadband network, as a totally different product. Electricity is something your home and business has been running on forever, but the decisions about how much and when it is used have been handed off to major appliances for the last several decades. Those appliances; air conditioners, water heaters, freezers, refrigerators, dishwashers, washing machines, clothes dryers, etc., have developed a very disturbing habit. They tend to wind up all running at the same time on hot afternoons like the ones outside right now. When they all get together and run at the same time it creates a demand for electricity that has a sharp spike (we call it a peak demand) that lasts from about 1:00 p.m. to about 7:00 p.m. on summer days. It is that peak demand that all power generation systems struggle to meet. Those peaks cause the most coal and natural gas to be burned. Those peak demands are the root cause for most of the large cost increases we are seeing for electricity.
By comparison, our plans for infotricity will chop the top off of those peak electricity power demands by using our broadband network to break up the habits of the appliances to work at the same time. Instead of the cheap thermostat that today controls your water heater, air conditioner, freezer, and refrigerator, we can use IP (Internet Protocol) commands to tame these appliances and turn their cacophony into a symphony!
Here is how it might work. Once our high speed network is connected to your home and when the home is retrofitted with new IP-based controls for the air conditioning, heating, water heating, etc., we could work with you to establish your temperature limits and living style and put all of that information into a server that is assigned the task of orchestrating the delivery of infotricity to your home. Then, every day as TVA determines what their mix of available generation is and what the likely temperature extremes for their service areas is going to be, their generation folks would transmit information to these “infotricity servers” which would, in turn, organize the temperature targets for your home and your appliances such that they do not contribute to TVA’s peak demand. The result might be that your home is “precooled” to a temperature cooler than normal in the morning while power demand is low so that your home can coast through the afternoon longer, and get a little warmer than you would normally like, in the pursuit of a flatter demand for power. As far as your other appliances go, well, so long as you have hot water when you want it and cold milk in your refrigerator, you really don’t care when the heating and cooling occurred, and infotricity would exploit that reality. In addition you would likely have additional reminders that you need to try to reduce your energy demand during peak periods. There will likely be a reminder in your email, information scrolling across your television screen, a red/green indicator near your washer and dryer, etc. All of this will be focused at reminding you that infotricity is far less expensive than electricity and that you need to participate by cutting back your consumption during the peak times.
Technology like this will allow TVA to offset the construction of new power plants made of concrete and steel and fueled with coal, natural gas, or enriched uranium with virtual power plants made of fiber optic cables and IP addressable appliances and fueled with a flow of bits, bytes, and intelligence. In effect, even though your home will not look any different, if you participate in this new world of infotricity, you will have a piece of a massive infotricity generator in your home. The technology, coupled with your willingness to respond to signals, will form the basis for the cleanest and most sustainable method ever devised for the generation of electric power. This is an earthshaking (maybe an earth-saving) idea and, the really cool thing is, it has been developed right here in Glasgow. We are optimistic that TVA is about to start working closely with us to further our development of this idea such that it begins to provide real power to their generation fleet within a couple of years.
These same ideas will work for businesses and industrial customers just as well as they will work at our homes. The secret to better living through infotricity is in learning how to use energy during the hours when it is abundant and less during the hours when it is in short supply. It is really just that simple. This is also the only way that electric cars will ever really fit into our total energy solution. Electric cars are a great idea so long as we can make sure that folks are not trying to charge them during the hours of peak demand. If plug-in cars arrive and if we are not prepared to charge them with infotricity, they will only compound our energy problem instead of improving it. But, once again, Glasgow is in a perfect position to take advantage of this technology when it is available.
In summary, things are bad, but not as bad here. We have ignored the simple fact that all energy resources are finite and we have been doing that for many years. While we have been ignoring facts, the population of the world has doubled and a lot of the new residents have decided they want to use their share of our energy resources as well. Now we have to pay more to keep them from using the energy we Americans had come to see as exclusively ours. Most communities find themselves virtually helpless to do anything about this situation, but Glasgow has been planning for this problem for twenty years. While we cannot tell you to relax and not worry about it, we can tell you that we have ideas and plans, and you are going to have options. These options will not be painless and they will not allow us to continue to be oblivious to reality, but they do give us hope for a sustainable energy future that is better than many of our neighbors can expect, at least for a while.
We have talked about the reasons for these dramatic increases several times before in this very blog. Drought in east Tennessee is drastically reducing the amount of cheap hydroelectric power TVA can produce. Increases in the cost of diesel fuel makes transporting coal from the mines to the coal-fired generation units much more expensive and that is driving up the cost of coal. China and India are using staggering amounts of coal and diesel fuel in their zeal to make cheap consumer goods for us to purchase at Wal Mart, and that is driving up the cost of both of those fuel sources. We hate to have this fact shoved in our faces, but the real culprit in these increases in the cost of all forms of energy is the way we live our lives. We use too much energy each and every day. In other words, we have found the enemy, and he is us.
As a Glasgow resident and a customer of the EPB you have something going for you that folks who buy their electric power elsewhere do not have . . . yet. For the last twenty years we have been developing a broadband network that touches each and every home and business in our community. For just as many years we have been planning to use that network to help our population use electricity in a totally different manner than the way we have taken for granted over the last eighty years. Even though our efforts have been discounted and ignored by TVA and the other elements of the electric power business in our country for most of those twenty years, it seems that the dawn is beginning to break over our landscape of ideas about infotricity.
Infotricity is a term we coined many years ago and it is meant to identify electric power, combined with a robust broadband network, as a totally different product. Electricity is something your home and business has been running on forever, but the decisions about how much and when it is used have been handed off to major appliances for the last several decades. Those appliances; air conditioners, water heaters, freezers, refrigerators, dishwashers, washing machines, clothes dryers, etc., have developed a very disturbing habit. They tend to wind up all running at the same time on hot afternoons like the ones outside right now. When they all get together and run at the same time it creates a demand for electricity that has a sharp spike (we call it a peak demand) that lasts from about 1:00 p.m. to about 7:00 p.m. on summer days. It is that peak demand that all power generation systems struggle to meet. Those peaks cause the most coal and natural gas to be burned. Those peak demands are the root cause for most of the large cost increases we are seeing for electricity.
By comparison, our plans for infotricity will chop the top off of those peak electricity power demands by using our broadband network to break up the habits of the appliances to work at the same time. Instead of the cheap thermostat that today controls your water heater, air conditioner, freezer, and refrigerator, we can use IP (Internet Protocol) commands to tame these appliances and turn their cacophony into a symphony!
Here is how it might work. Once our high speed network is connected to your home and when the home is retrofitted with new IP-based controls for the air conditioning, heating, water heating, etc., we could work with you to establish your temperature limits and living style and put all of that information into a server that is assigned the task of orchestrating the delivery of infotricity to your home. Then, every day as TVA determines what their mix of available generation is and what the likely temperature extremes for their service areas is going to be, their generation folks would transmit information to these “infotricity servers” which would, in turn, organize the temperature targets for your home and your appliances such that they do not contribute to TVA’s peak demand. The result might be that your home is “precooled” to a temperature cooler than normal in the morning while power demand is low so that your home can coast through the afternoon longer, and get a little warmer than you would normally like, in the pursuit of a flatter demand for power. As far as your other appliances go, well, so long as you have hot water when you want it and cold milk in your refrigerator, you really don’t care when the heating and cooling occurred, and infotricity would exploit that reality. In addition you would likely have additional reminders that you need to try to reduce your energy demand during peak periods. There will likely be a reminder in your email, information scrolling across your television screen, a red/green indicator near your washer and dryer, etc. All of this will be focused at reminding you that infotricity is far less expensive than electricity and that you need to participate by cutting back your consumption during the peak times.
Technology like this will allow TVA to offset the construction of new power plants made of concrete and steel and fueled with coal, natural gas, or enriched uranium with virtual power plants made of fiber optic cables and IP addressable appliances and fueled with a flow of bits, bytes, and intelligence. In effect, even though your home will not look any different, if you participate in this new world of infotricity, you will have a piece of a massive infotricity generator in your home. The technology, coupled with your willingness to respond to signals, will form the basis for the cleanest and most sustainable method ever devised for the generation of electric power. This is an earthshaking (maybe an earth-saving) idea and, the really cool thing is, it has been developed right here in Glasgow. We are optimistic that TVA is about to start working closely with us to further our development of this idea such that it begins to provide real power to their generation fleet within a couple of years.
These same ideas will work for businesses and industrial customers just as well as they will work at our homes. The secret to better living through infotricity is in learning how to use energy during the hours when it is abundant and less during the hours when it is in short supply. It is really just that simple. This is also the only way that electric cars will ever really fit into our total energy solution. Electric cars are a great idea so long as we can make sure that folks are not trying to charge them during the hours of peak demand. If plug-in cars arrive and if we are not prepared to charge them with infotricity, they will only compound our energy problem instead of improving it. But, once again, Glasgow is in a perfect position to take advantage of this technology when it is available.
In summary, things are bad, but not as bad here. We have ignored the simple fact that all energy resources are finite and we have been doing that for many years. While we have been ignoring facts, the population of the world has doubled and a lot of the new residents have decided they want to use their share of our energy resources as well. Now we have to pay more to keep them from using the energy we Americans had come to see as exclusively ours. Most communities find themselves virtually helpless to do anything about this situation, but Glasgow has been planning for this problem for twenty years. While we cannot tell you to relax and not worry about it, we can tell you that we have ideas and plans, and you are going to have options. These options will not be painless and they will not allow us to continue to be oblivious to reality, but they do give us hope for a sustainable energy future that is better than many of our neighbors can expect, at least for a while.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)