At the recent SAP for Utilities event in San Antonio, I caught up with Martin Mysyk, Senior Architect for TransAlta and we discussed the implications for utilities of the massive data explosion that is occurring in their industry right now.

Here is a transcription of our conversation:

Tom Raftery: Hi everyone! Welcome to GreenMonk TV. I’m at the SAP for Utilities event in San Antonio, Texas, and with me I have Martin Mysyk, who is the Enterprise Architect for TransAlta.

Martin, we’ve been talking about the amount of data utility companies you’re going to be dealing with and the mountain… I heard a talk earlier this year in Orlando, where one of the utility companies was talking about the change in meter reads from 75 million a year to 120 billion.

Now, there is also the other side away from smart meters and into just the devices on the grid itself and the amount of information they will be sending back to utility companies, what are they going to do with all this information and how are they going to handle it?

Martin Mysyk: Well, I think we do have to look at new ways of handling that amount of data, how we’re going to store it, how we’re going to back it up. And we’re monitoring so many more data points as we move from an analog world to a digital world. There’s an acceleration of the amount of data points where some of our assets may have had a couple of thousand data points we’re monitoring, taking in.

Some of our newer instrumentation generates 20,000 data points that we can monitor. So, that’s a large amount of — big influx of data that we have to — you want to keep it real time and that takes new techniques, new technology that we have to look at to be able to keep that on track and to be able to extract the information out that we need.

Tom Raftery: Okay, but 20,000 data points, is that too much? I mean, how can utility companies make any sense of that amount of data?

Martin Mysyk: That’s where you need another level of intelligence to layer on top of what you’re retrieving out of there, because you really — you can’t read that from a human perspective, you need software that looks for exceptions or things that are out of range to deal with those because whenever things are operating properly you don’t care about it. It’s just when there are exceptions or something’s going to impact your production capability that you want to know about that.

Tom Raftery: At the backend you’re going to need bigger servers, you’re going to need bigger failover facilities and all that?

Martin Mysyk: Yes, and the network ties it all together. So, wherever that is stored only high-speed networks have a lot of band with to carry the data, whether its onsite or everyone talks about being in the cloud. If you put it in the cloud, you are going to need lots of pipes to get it there.

Tom Raftery: This sounds like a lot of investment for utility companies, is it worth it?

Martin Mysyk: I think so, because we have to be aggressive on how we manage our data and our decision making capability needs to accelerate, because when we move into a more comparative global marketplace you have to have that decision making power and to do that you need the — to make information out of your data and that is only going to accelerate as time goes on.

Tom Raftery: Cool. Great. Martin, thanks a million.

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This post, written by Tom Raftery originally appeared on GreenMonk: the blog GreenMonk: the blog - Green from the roots up, Sustainable from the top down

I recently had an opportunity to interview Dr Ann Cavoukian, the Information and Privacy Commissioner for Ontario, Canada about Smart Grid data privacy. Commissioner Cavoukian has written and presented extensively about Smart Grid privacy. She is also the author of a white paper on Smart Grid privacy called SmartPrivacy for the Smart Grid and Dr. Cavoukian partnered with two major utilities to develop a practical roadmap for utilities to achieve the gold standard in data protection (Privacy by Design: Achieving the Gold Standard in Data Protection for the Smart Grid).

Here is the full transcription of our chat:

Tom Raftery: Hi everyone, and welcome to the Smart Grid Heavy Hitter Series. My guest on the program, today, is Commissioner Ann Cavoukian, the Information and Privacy Commissioner for Ontario. Commissioner, I’m curious, why is the Information and Privacy Commissioner of Ontario concerned about Smart Grids?

Commissioner Cavoukian: Well, I always say that in order to protect the privacy of the citizens of Ontario, I have to protect the privacy of people anywhere in the world. Privacy knows no bounds and technology transcends jurisdiction. So, whatever new technologies arise that have privacy implications, we need to get right in there and ensure as much as we can that protections are built into, especially, new technologies and new developments like the smart grid. The ideal opportunity to protect privacy is at the outset and ideally embed privacy into the design of new technologies like the smart grid.

Tom Raftery: Why is there a concern at all about privacy and smart grids? What’s the danger?

Commissioner Cavoukian: Anytime that there’s the possibility of collecting personally identifiable information either directly or through some data linkage to it, privacy enters into the equation.

So, with the smart grid you start with smart meters. And I should tell you that here in Toronto, Ontario we are leading in the smart grid, smart meter applications. By the end of this year, all houses in Toronto will have smart grids and in Ontario by the end of 2012. So, it’s widespread application.

Now, what smart girds enable the utility to do is to on a real time basis go in to your home and give you a very clear indication of your electricity usage, which is very good because it will promote energy consumption reduction, and a number of other programs – this is all very positive. As long as the information is kept between the electrical utility and the consumer, there’s no issue. It’s no different than now so to speak.

However, with the possibility of third parties being interested in this information, the possibility of unauthorized data usage of this information there’s link to an identifiable individual and with the growth of smart appliances – your computer, your television, your refrigerator; everything is going to be telling you and telling the utility what you’re doing, when you’re doing at, at what times – this introduces a whole new element of potential profiling of a consumer’s activities within the household, which is after all your castle, right? Your home is sacrosanct.

No one has been able to peer into the activities within the home before now. They’ll be able to do that. So, we have to ensure that this information is protected like Fort Knox.

Tom Raftery: How widespread are the concerns? How many people are aware that this is an issue and how are people trying to deal with that issue?

Commissioner Cavoukian: And you are absolutely right. About a year, a year-and-a-half ago I did an article. And I call privacy the sleeper issue of the smart grid; because certainly last year not a lot of activity associated with this area, but I can tell you that in the past year the interest has grown dramatically.

In Canada, we have jurisdiction over electrical utilities. So, I’ve been working with Hydro One, here, in Ontario, Canada and Toronto Hydro and they not only understand the issues, of course, they’re regulated. I oversee complaints with these two utilities; however, I want to tell people – don’t rely on regulation.

I want to exceed regulation. I want appeal to electrical utilities that in order for the smart grid to work you need consumers to sign up and to become involved, you need to build trust and consumer confidence.

The way you do that is by ensuring that they know what you’re doing as an utility, they know what information you have from them, and most important, you are not going to disclose this information, you’re not going to share it with any third parties without their consent – this is big.

So, my appeal to utilities, and I’ve been working with utilities throughout North America and the US Smart Grid Alliance. I’m an active member there.

My pitch to them, is do this because it’s good for your utility, because you want to get the buy-in of consumers, you want to get their cooperation, you must have their trust, you must have their confidence.

So, by embedding privacy into the design of the smart grid you will be able to grow your smart grid in a way that attracts more consumers to it and that’s the win-win proposition of this.

Tom Raftery: It’s great that you’re telling utilities this. What are they actually doing? Are they taking what you say on board, are they saying, “Oh! Commissioner, Cavoukian is a nut case and we’ll just put her concerns to one side,” or are there a range of reactions?

Commissioner Cavoukian: Well, I am sure it is some of them think I am a nut case, I give you that, but I think the majority the ones who have reached out to us have been actually quite positive about our approach.

They’ve actually given me a complement and they’ve said, “You’re not like most regulators we know.” And I take that as a complement, because once there’s — my message to utilities and to everyone is do a positive-sum paradigm not a zero-sum paradigm.

By that, I mean, I definitely want you always to protect the privacy. I don’t care if you’re the private sector, the public sector. If you’re doing individual’s personally identifiable information you must protect that information.

However, I don’t say protected to the exclusion of your own interests, your business interests. You have a business model, it has to survive, and hopefully strive. In this case, with the smart gird electrical utilities want to grow this in an effort to promote conservation of energy, grow green programs, reduce reduction, consumption of energy, empowering your users your users. We are all for that; so we’re not doing this — we’re not saying protect the privacy to the exclusion of those interests, not at all.

We’re saying you can do both. We show you how to do both by embedding privacy into the design of the smart grid, and I should tell you it’s at the ideal time. This is the time to do it when you’re at the nascent stage. It’s at it’s infancy, the smart grid development, starting with the smart meters and I’m not giving you a pie in the sky. I’m telling you how to do it in a very defined way. We’ve worked with Hydro One, for example, and Toronto Hydro.

We have two papers that we’ve produced that are available on our website. This one, the latest one with Hydro One is called, “Achieving the Gold Standard in Data Protection for the Smart Grid”.

So, we’re trying to get people to reach for the sky on this in terms of doing it now, embed privacy, and we tell you how to do it. This is best practices on exactly how to do it and we do it in partnership with an electrical utility. So, we give you the road map on how to do this and also respect privacy and enhance your business interests, positive-sum win-win.

Tom Raftery: Commissioner, we’re running low on time, so one final question. Is there anything about privacy on smart grids that I haven’t asked you that you would like to address?

Commissioner Cavoukian: Just one final point for the people listening to this. I would like them to view the smart grid and how to protect information in a way that is not the usual ‘who owns the data’. The question of ownership often comes up and I’m going to suggest to you that’s the wrong language to frame this in.

When you talk about privacy and personally identifiable information, data protection you use the language sort of bundles of rights associated with that information. It’s the language of custody and control of the information as opposed to ownership; because it’ll be easy for the utility to say, “You know, it’s our data, we collect it, and then you get mired into this whole legalese about who owns the data. It’s not one of ownership.

Of course, the utility is collecting the data, they’re providing a service to consumers, and there’s an exchange of information. I think it’s better to talk about what obligations and duties are associated with that.

So, for a utility, who has custody and control over the data they also have a duty of care and obligations with respect to protecting that data, they have a duty of care, confidentiality, and ensuring that the consumer not only knows what you’re doing. So, you’re transparent with respect to your practices, but they have access to their own data and ideally they have full ability to say no, no third party use of its data unless I consent to it.

That’s the Gold Standard and that’s what I’m hoping that, that language will be embraced in this area.

Tom Raftery: Commissioner, thanks a million for coming on the show.

This post, written by Tom Raftery originally appeared on GreenMonk: the blog GreenMonk: the blog - Green from the roots up, Sustainable from the top down

Jon Wellinghoff is the Chairman of the United States Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) – the FERC is the agency that regulates the interstate transmission of electricity, natural gas, and oil.

I recorded an interview with Jon a few weeks back. The resulting video was too good to reduce to a single piece, so I split it into two. I published the first part of the interview a couple of weeks ago, this is part two.

In this second video we discussed:

• Why it is a good thing for utilities that customers consume less electricity – 0:36
• How smart grids help increase the penetration of renewables on the grid – 2:12
• How electric vehicle owners are being paid up to $3,600 per annum to provide regulation services for utilities while charging! – 2:54
• How renewable energy sources can be used as baseload power (no coal or nuclear baseload need ever be built) – 4:34

This post, written by Tom Raftery originally appeared on GreenMonk: the blog GreenMonk: the blog - Green from the roots up, Sustainable from the top down

Diversey invited me to attend their Climate Change Summit in Amsterdam earlier this week. I went along and was very pleasantly surprised by Diversey’s commitment to corporate sustainability.

Towards the end of the day I had a chat with Curt Johnson, the Chair of Diversey, about their sustainability initiatives. Some of the highlights of the conversation:

• Sustainability goes back to Curt’s grandfather leading an expedition into the Amazon in the 1930′s! – 1:00
• Curt’s father (Sam Johnson) banned CFC’s as propellants from all SC Johnson products before there was any legislative requirement – 1:20
• A cost/benefit analysis shows that being sustainable produces ROI – 2:40
• Diversey are tripling their target and now aim to reduce CO₂ emissions 25% by 2013 over their 2003 baseline – 3:56
• Diversey’s experience is that for every $1 invested in emissions reductions, they get $2 back – 4:30
• Diversey are tripling their target and now aim to reduce CO₂ emissions 25% by 2013 over their 2003 baseline – 3:56
• CO₂ is a waste by-product of our operations… if you can reduce CO₂ it is inevitable that you will create a more efficient system that is more cost effective – 4:40
• CO₂ is waste, so if you minimise CO₂, you minimise waste and you maximise efficiency and increase profits – 6:00
• Diversey’s sustainability initiatives have a huge influence on employee morale, engagement and retention – 6:31

Some other great tidbits which were left on the cutting room floor were:

• Diversey participate in the EPA’s SmartWay program to reduce the impact of shipping
• Diversey intend to be the first company to publish the carbon footprint of all of their products on the products
• Diversey have converted to a daylight office cleaning regime for a one-off cost of $100,000. This move is now saving Diversey 8% on their annual energy bill and
• Diversey actively works with their customers to help them to reduce their chemical usage!

This post, written by Tom Raftery originally appeared on GreenMonk: the blog GreenMonk: the blog - Green from the roots up, Sustainable from the top down

Jon Wellinghoff is the Chairman of the United States Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) – the FERC is the agency that regulates the interstate transmission of electricity, natural gas, and oil. As such, the FERC was the agency which Google Energy applied to for its licence to buy and sell electricity on the wholesale market, for example.

Shortly after his appointment as Chair of the FERC in 2009 by Barack Obama, Chairman Wellinghoff made headlines when he said

No new nuclear or coal plants may ever be needed in the United States… renewables like wind, solar and biomass will provide enough energy to meet baseload capacity and future energy demands

A chance came up recently to have him on this show, so I obviously jumped at it!

We had a great chat – so good, in fact that I turned it into two shows rather than edit any of it out.

In this first video we discussed:

• What a smart grid is and its benefits
• The backlash to early smart grid rollouts in Texas and California
• How long it will be before we see full smart grids deployments

I will publish the second part of the interview next week.

In part two Chairman Wellinghoff will once again state that the US does not need to build any more coal or nuclear power plants, that renewables can meet the energy requirements of the US and he will discuss how electric car owners in some trials are being paid over $3,000 per annum for use of their batteries for grid regulation services by their utilities!

This post, written by Tom Raftery originally appeared on GreenMonk: the blog GreenMonk: the blog - Green from the roots up, Sustainable from the top down

While at the Smart Grids Europe conference last week, I had a talk with Dr Hugo Niesling of Wattpic Energia.

Wattpic are based in Barcelona and while their main product is photovoltaic trackers, they do a lot of research into demand response technologies and have a microgrid near Girona which has been operating successfully off-grid for 15 years making extensive use of demand response and was the only place with power when recent snow storms left 250,000 people in the region without power!

This post, written by Tom Raftery originally appeared on GreenMonk: the blog GreenMonk: the blog - Green from the roots up, Sustainable from the top down

While at the Smart Grids Europe conference last week, I had a talk with Daniel Cumming of Schneider Electric. Schneider are one of the world’s oldest and largest companies in the energy space having been founded in 1836 (yes 18!) and with revenues of €15.79bn in 2009 [PDF].

We chatted about two of Schneider’s offerings in the Smart Grid space – their remote telecontrol product set and their power monitoring products.

This post, written by Tom Raftery originally appeared on GreenMonk: the blog GreenMonk: the blog - Green from the roots up, Sustainable from the top down

While at the Smart Grids Europe conference last week, I had a talk with Pascal Julienne, President & EMEA Director of BPL Global.

BPL Global, who have been making smart grid software since 2005 produce a smart grid platform for utilities and have rolled out their solution to First Energy (one of the largest utilities in the US) .

Despite the background noise we had a great chat about Smart Grids, smart buildings and energy resource management.

This post, written by Tom Raftery originally appeared on GreenMonk: the blog GreenMonk: the blog - Green from the roots up, Sustainable from the top down

While at the Smart Grids Europe conference last week, I had a talk with Joost Brinkman of the Amsterdam Smart City project.

We talked about the project, which is still very much in the planning stages yet, but has the lofty ambition to help Amsterdam reduce its CO₂ emissions 40% below its 1990 baseline by 2025!

This post, written by Tom Raftery originally appeared on GreenMonk: the blog GreenMonk: the blog - Green from the roots up, Sustainable from the top down

Ahmad Faruqui is a principal with the Brattle Group and one of the US’ foremost experts on Smart Grids. I asked him to come on the Heavy Hitters show and we had a fascinating chat.

We talked about:

• Ahmad’s definition of a Smart Grid
• People seeing higher utility bills as a result of the rollout of Smart Meters
• How much the Smart Grid will cost
• Who is going to pay for the Smart Grid
• How long before we see Smart Grids being rolled out

This post, written by Tom Raftery originally appeared on GreenMonk: the blog GreenMonk: the blog - Green from the roots up, Sustainable from the top down