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Can Arqiva provide the Smart Grid communications infrastructure for Britain?

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Communications Mast

Photo credit Lee Jordan

We had a really interesting Smart Grid related conversation with a company called Arqiva the other day.

I hadn’t heard of Arqiva before but they are quite a significant player in communications infrastructure. They own or have exclusive marketing rights for 16,000 communication masts in UK – what they call vertical real-estate! They also own, operate and maintain all of the UK’s terrestrial television network as a regulated monopoly. And they are responsible for rolling out the switch-over from analog to digital broadcasting for the country.

If that weren’t enough Arqiva are Europe’s largest provider of satellite linkage services!

All very well I hear you say, but what does this have to do with Smart Grids?

Well, Arqiva have a fascinating proposition. They are expecting Ofgem (the regulator for the electricity and gas markets in Great Britain) to announce some kind of central procurement for a Great Britain-wide network and if that occurs, Arqiva would be in a very strong position to bid for it.

They have dedicated UHF spectrum (412 MHz) and a nationwide mast footprint already capable of reaching 100% of the homes in the country. A significant advantage of the dedicated long range spectrum (apart from the lack of contention) is that it will have no problem reaching into houses where meters can be located under stairs or in basements, for example. Cellular networks don’t have the same luxury and are more plagued with health concerns around the transmissions from their masts.

Having a single provider of the communications infrastructure for smart grids is a very appealing proposition – especially if it has regulated returns and contestable pricing which you would expect in a system like this.

Arqiva announced [PDF] just the other day that nPower is joining Arqiva’s Smart Grid proof-of-concept network which covers 80 square kilometres around Reading. nPower are a significant utility with around 6.5 million residential gas and electricity accounts throughout the UK. This will allow Arqiva to test smart gas as well as smart electricity meters and they ultimately want to include smart water meters in their network as well.

Arqiva say they have thought about security as well (which is just as well seeing as a single communications network for electricity, gas and water makes for an extremely attractive strategic target). They are using encrypted communications over licensed spectrum, and are operating a closed system so that should help but security is a constant battle so it is one they will need to stay on top of.

If Arqiva manages to roll this out successfully in the UK, this will leave them in a very strong position to reproduce this model in other countries.

You should follow me on twitter here.

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GreenWave Reality’s new Energy Management Platform

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GreenWave Reality portal screen shot

GreenWave Reality are an energy management company who came out of stealth last week to announce they had just landed an $11m equity round and to announce its new Energy Management Platform (although EMP is an unfortunate acronym in this context!).

The company’s executive team is made up mostly of former execs of Cisco’s Consumer Business Group – so not only have they worked closely, successfully in the past, they also have experience producing consumer electronics and its advisory board reads like a who’s who of the CE industry.

So what does GreenWave Reality’s Energy Management Platform actually consist of?

GreenWave Reality Power Node

GreenWave Reality Power Node

Well, at its most simple, it is a home area network containing:

  • smart plugs (power nodes) which are accessible wirelessly
  • a gateway which communicates wirelessly with the power nodes (and in time with smart LEDs, EV’s, etc.), with your utility, and with GreenWave’s data center and
  • a highly configurable wireless display which not just reports on energy consumption, but can also control connected devices in the home

GreenWave see utility companies as the customers for their platform, with the utilities distributing the products to their residential consumers. With retail utility companies under increasing pressure to reduce their emissions, products like this are bound to pique their interest.

The fact that the data from GreenWave’s Gateway product is transmitted back to GreenWave’s data center enables GreenWave to provide access to a home energy portal for consumers via the Internet. In this way, connected appliances are controllable, not just from the in-home wireless display, but from anywhere with Internet access, even a smart phone. Perfect for those times when you are out and wondering if you remembered to turn off the lights/TV/whatever!

On the flipside, this raises obvious privacy issues I’d like to see addressed via a Privacy Policy page on the GreenWave site, at the very least.

This will also enable home-owners to compare their energy use with the average use for others in their area to see whether they are energy hogs, or Greener than their average neighbour.

GreenWave is going the standards only route (ZigBee, ZWave, etc) so if consumers have already invested in (or are thinking of buying) devices which use these protocols, they’ll be readily accessible on the platform.

Finally, Speaking to GreenMonk ahead of the company?s launch GreenWave told us that they are launching a Smart dimmable LED light later this year which as well as being extremely energy efficient, will have a built-in transceiver so that it can be fully controlled by the company’s Energy Management Platform.

I have to say, having spoken to the guys in GreenWave, it does seem like these guys have their ducks in a row. I’m looking forward to seeing how this one plays out.

You should follow me on twitter here.

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Friday Green Numbers round-up 06/18/2010

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Green numbers

Photo credit Unhindered by Talent

And here is this week’s Green numbers:

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

You should follow me on twitter here.

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Understanding the Smart Grid – my TreeHugger interview

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Interview

Photo credit Lee Jordan
Jaymi Heimbuch contacted me recently to ask if I’d agree to be interviewed for a TreeHugger article she was planning to write on Smart Grids. “Love to”, I said.

Jaymi sent on the questions, I replied and today she posted the interview on TreeHugger.

Here are the questions and my answers:

TH: What’s the biggest barrier with smart grids right now? Is it utilities not latching on? Is the technology too new? Is it that not enough people understand what it is?

There are multiple barriers to complete smart grid roll-outs at the moment. The biggest one, as far as I can see is money!

The smart meter roll-out alone costs in the order of $150 per household just for the device. Then there is the installation engineer on top of that. And the software to back it up. In terms of the software, remember that presently utilities take maybe one meter reading a month. When they start taking readings from smart meters they will be taking up to 2880 per 30-day month when they are taking 15 minute readings (or 720 for hourly readings). If they have 1 million customers they go from 1m meter readings a month to 720m per month (or 2,880m). That’s a massive jump in the amount of incoming data which needs to be stored, queried for billing, and held for however long.

A lot of the software to handle this is still being developed and utilities, being very conservative, don’t want to be guinea pigs. And newer technologies tend to have a price premium.

Circling back to the price for the utilities. If they have 1 million customers, they are looking at spending hundreds of millions on the smart grid roll-out (smart meters, communications infrastructure for smart meters, back-end database for data, back-office apps for using the data – customer care, billing, etc.).

One of the big deals about smart grids is that it will help us reduce our consumption – from the utilities perspective, they should invest these large sums of money so we can reduce the amount we purchase from them? You can start to see the difficulties.

TH: What’s the most apparent way a smart grid will change the average person’s daily life? What about the most important way?

You know, the best way a smart grid could change the average person’s life is ‘not a jot’ – apart from reduced utility bills.

Utilities are talking up demand response programs and how they will be able to come into your house or apartment and turn down your air conditioner (for example) at times when supply is short and demand is high. This is a top-down approach destined to piss off customers and will in no way get buy-in from a skeptical public.

Far preferable would be some kind of automated demand response, completely controlled by the consumer, so far example as a homeowner I’d set my dishwasher at 8 PM to come on at 5c per kWh or 5 AM, whichever comes first. As long as the dishes are done by 7 AM, I’m happy. Similarly with other devices. Plenty of loads in the home are movable. You don’t care when your hot water is heated, as long as it is hot when you need it hot. A well lagged (insulated) boiler would mean you could heat it when electricity is cheap, and then use it whenever.

By the way, totally counter-intuitive but cheaper electricity has a higher renewable percentage so actively selecting for cheaper electricity means you are actively selecting for electricity with a higher percentage of renewables in the mix. How does this work?

Well, electricity prices on the wholesale market are very volatile. Consumers are protected from this but electricity prices can fluctuate by orders of magnitude within a 24-hour period. Price is set by good old supply and demand. Demand fluctuates according to day of week, time of day and by season. As the price drops on the wholesale market, it becomes less attractive for more expensive generators (the ones with start-up costs for their generation – the fossil fuel burners, for example) to stay selling in so they drop out. The renewables, on the other hand, are price takers. They don’t have significant start-up costs for generation so they stay in the market no matter what price they get. So, as the price drops, more and more fossil fuel generators drop out and the percentage of renewables in the mix increases!

TH: Other than this change in demand and timing, how will the smart grid help us incorporate renewables into the grid?

Utilities are used to dealing with a situation where their generation (gas coal, oil) is steady and predictable in its output and their customers’ demand is unsteady but generally predictable (demand tomorrow = demand this day last year +1-2%, say).

For various reasons utilities are having to move to a situation where they need to incorporate more renewables into their mix. Renewables generation is not steady and is only slightly predictable (via weather forecasts, for example). Because electricity has to be used as it is generated (can’t be stored, generally), the more unstable the generation, the more unstable the grid.

How can you fix this? Well, one way would be to align the demand with the supply.

How do you do that? Well, as supply and demand shift, they affect price on the wholesale market. So, if you expose people to the real price, they will modify their behaviour to select for when price is lowest (when electricity is in lower demand (or when their is a higher percentage of renewables as I mentioned earlier)). This is demand response.

Now, however you do it, if you roll out a demand response program, you are aligning demand with supply. The more you do that, the more stable you make the grid. The more stable the grid, the more renewables that can be added to it.

TH: Many people in the US are concerned with information privacy – they want to own their energy usage data and don’t want utilities handing it over to governments and third parties. What are some of the steps both businesses and people can take to appease people’s concerns?

Let me tell you, people in the EU are far more sensitive to data privacy issues that in the US! Honestly, on this question, I’m not sure there is a good answer though.

Consider your mobile phone. It is a tracking device. As long as it is on, it knows where you are 24×7 (and tells your mobile provider). Mobile phone records have been used to both exonerate and help convict people in recent years.

Now consider people working in the call center of your mobile phone company. How much are they paid per annum? If I offer to slip one of them $2k do you think I could have access to your movements for the last 6 months? Similarly for your energy consumption data soon.

The best way to protect against this is legislation. Legislate to keep data private and have very heavy fines for the utilities (and mobile phone co.s) for breaches. This will incent them to put processes in place to track inappropriate accesses to people’s data (and disable export functions, etc.).

TH: What’s your favorite saying about the smart grid, or a quote or insight that you always remember?

I spoke to Dr Monika Sturm a couple of years back. Monika is director of Siemens Center of Competency for smart meters – their research and development facility. She told me that the output from smart meters is extremely granular. So much so, that it is possible to look at the output of smart meters and identify all the devices which make up the reading. So by looking at the output from my smart meter, it would be possible to see that I have a 2008 Philips 37″ LCD TV, and a 2006 Indesit BHZ model fridge and a …. You get the idea.

This plays back to the privacy question you asked earlier but it also offers an alternative revenue option for utilities who are looking at people reducing their consumption. It goes something like this:

I get an email from my utility saying

“Dear Tom,
we notice that you have an Indesit BHZ fridge. This is currently costing you ?25 per month to run. We have a newer, more energy efficient model on special this month for ?10 per month. It will cost you roughly ?10 per month to operate so overall you will save ?5 per month if you avail of this offer.

If you sign up, by simply replying to this email, we will have our partner install the fridge by the end of the week and we can take away your old fridge for you, for no extra charge.”

Or similar.

TH: Anything you want TH readers to be sure to know about?

The problems associated with smart meters in places like Bakersfield were entirely predictable. [Editor’s note: Bakersfield residents felt the new smart meters from Pacific Gas & Electric led to inflated energy bills. It resulted in a lawsuit.] Utilities are not used to communicating with their customers. They do so only when it is time to send the monthly bill. With the advent of smart grids, utilities will need to be in far closer communication with their customers. If people’s consumption is approaching a threshold which could push them into a higher band, send them a text/email/IM/Tweet/all of the above (or whatever the customers preferred method of communication is) to let them know. If the customer’s consumption is lowest in their block/zipcode/subdivision/whatever, let them know, etc.

Communications is not something utilities have not traditionally needed to invest any time in. However as Bakersfield has shown, it will be a vital skill for utilities in the future, especially as the markets open up and people have a choice of who to buy their electricity from.

You should follow me on twitter here.

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Friday Green Numbers round-up 06/11/2010

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Green numbers

Photo credit Unhindered by Talent

And here is this week’s Green numbers:

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

You should follow me on twitter here.

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Global telco’s sustainability reports reviewed

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Nature's fragility

Photo credit WTL photos

When I published my review of tech company sustainability reports a couple of weeks back, it was suggested that I should add in telco’s as well. Instead, for clarity, I decided to publish a separate review of telco sustainability reports here.

[table id=9 /]

Some points to note from the review:

  • BT & Telefonica both produced very good reports (though Telefonica’s was only in Spanish which limits how accessible it is outside of the Spanish-speaking world)
  • T-Mobile were let down by their chairman, Ren? Obermann, whose contribution was a cut & paste of an online interview he did a couple of months back as opposed to a report specific communication. Matters were made worse by the fact that the picture of the chairman in the report shows him with bottled water. In their Sustainability Report!
  • China Mobile produced an excellent report (in Chinese and English) which was let down only by the lack of external audit
  • Telecom Italia’s report was one of the best in terms of data transparency
  • AT&T’s 2008 report is very nicely laid out but it is dated, only to GRI level C and not externally assured
  • Telenor didn’t bother producing a report (that I could find) but they do have a Corporate Responsibility site while
  • 3 (owned by Hutchinson Whampoa) don’t have any Corporate Responsibility site or report that I could find on any of its sites. For shame.

If you have any updates or would like to suggest a company, please feel free to do so in the comments below and I’ll happily update the post.

You should follow me on twitter here.

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Software cheaper in physical form than in soft copy?

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Tower, this is bravo, echo, echo...

I enjoy photography. I’m not very good at it but I have lots of fun trying new things with my camera all the time (see above my shot of a bee flying between flowers, for example).

I use Adobe’s excellent Lightroom 3 Beta to manage my photos and to upload them to Flickr where I share them under a Creative Commons license.

Today when I went to purchase a copy of Lightroom I discovered that the cost to buy it for download was ?301.29 whereas to obtain the physical copy (including shipping) was only ?288.84!*

I asked on Twitter how was it possible that the physical copy was cheaper than the downloadable version and Adobe’s Robin Charney replied saying

it’s to do with the VAT rate in Ireland which is where our online store is based

I don’t get that – how is the VAT rate higher for goods which are downloaded, as opposed to physical ones (which have to be burned to disk, boxed and shipped)?

If this is the result of some strange Irish tax law discriminating against non-physical goods, then I doubt Adobe are the only e-tailer suffering from it. Has anyone else noticed purchasing goods online is cheaper for the physical then the soft copies?

*Note these prices were for the Spanish Adobe store. I checked the Irish and UK sites and the physical copies are cheaper there too. Frank Koehntopp informed me via Twitter that this also holds true for Germany, whereas Ann Petteroe said that

In Norway download is cheaper (Flex/LightRoom9 because the download version is without VAT apparently

I’d love to hear more stories like this so we can track down the reasons why and try to make sure that in all cases the downloadable copy is cheaper than the physical one.

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Microsoft System Center Configuration Manager R3 has Power Management functionality built-in

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Microsoft recently released in Beta the R3 version of its System Center Configuration Manager 2007.

Microsoft Corporate VP Brad Anderson, introduced it at the Microsoft Management Summit 2010 saying

The most significant change to the System Center Configuration Manager in R3 is the new power management set of strategies.

By way of background Brad talked about how an increasing number of RFP’s being received by Microsoft were requesting information on what Microsoft was doing to reduce its footprint. According to Brad, reducing your energy footprint is now an imperative to doing business, not just a way of saving the company money.

Microsoft System Center Configuration Manager 2007 R3

System Center Configuration Manager 2007 R3 config screen

Microsoft’s System Center Configuration Manager allows systems administrators to centrally control all kinds of policies on client servers and PCs on a network. Everything from what appears in the Start menu right through to security management policies can be deployed using this software (aside – as a sysadmin of a small co. back in the early 00’s I used the config manager to set people’s wallpaper on their PCs to a html version of the co. phone book!).

The ability to control the energy policies of client PC’s is hugely important because that’s where the maximum number of CPU’s is in most organisations. The Ford Motor company, for example, recently announced that by rolling out 1E’s Nightwatchman PC energy management application it was going to save

$1.2 million and reduce its carbon footprint by 16,000-25,000 metric tons annually

1E are a Microsoft partner and their NightWatchman product goes significantly further with PC power management according to Microsoft’s Rob Reynolds, Director of Product Planning for System Center, who briefed me on the new System Center Configuration Manager (config manager will only put PC’s into Sleep Mode, for example, whereas NightWatchman can shut them down completely and NightWatchman has significant power management controls for XP clients which config manager is missing).

The new software gives you

  • The ability to see and set how and where the power is being used
  • The ability to see what your user activity looks like
  • A set of recommendations on policy to show you how to reduce your power consumption and
  • Tracking and reporting on how much carbon you have prevented from being released as a result of your power management capabilities

On the server front, Rob outlined a scenario where based on reduced demand (overnight, say), virtual machines can be re-provisioned onto fewer hosts and then some of the servers could be put into a low power state. Then as demand picks up once more (following morning) the servers in low power mode can be woken back up and the virtual machines moved back onto them.

While many products such as NightWatchman already exist with this functionality, having it built into Configuration Manager will now put this within easy reach of all Microsoft customers and that can only be a good thing.

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Friday Green Numbers round-up 05/28/2010

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Green numbers

Photo credit Unhindered by Talent

And here is this week’s Green numbers:

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

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“The face of the Smart Grid will be paper!”

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Utility bill

Photo credit Tom Raftery

We had a briefing from a company called Opower the other day. We take lots of briefings but this one struck a different chord straight away when Ogi Kavazovic, Opower’s Sr. Director of Marketing and Strategy who was giving the briefing, said Opower is “one of the few new companies in the energy efficiency space, as distinct from the smart grid space”. A company claiming not to be in the smart grid space? How refreshing!

Opower set out, when set up three years ago to unlock the information in people’s electricity meters and came up with its first product, the Home Energy Report. This is a printed report sent to home-owners to motivate them to change their behaviour so that they reduce their energy consumption. The report is personalised, benchmarked against peers and contains targeted tips on how to reduce their consumption.

The Home Energy Report initially was rolled out to 35,000 homes but is now being delivered to over a million homes across the US (and later this year it is expected to go to up to 5 million homes). And the Home Energy Report is currently delivering savings of 2-3% per annum, year on year.

One of the interesting things about Opower is that they have been able to deliver on the notion of behaviour based energy efficiency.

Ogi made the point that people are just not interested in checking their energy information online (apart from a very few energy geeks). This leads us to an interesting point – in today’s Smart Grid ecosystem, the two primary mechanisms companies are hoping to rely on for customer engagement are the website and in-home devices. However, Ogi contends that this is flawed because people are not interested enough seek out this information.

One of Opower’s learnings from two years of doing this is that you have to push information to home owners which is why Opower went with the paper-based mail channel for delivery. This was completely counter-intuitive to me. I love digital information and shun paper-based communications. If I receive it in paper, I can’t click on it, I can’t drill down for more information but seemingly, I am in a minority!

Opower have done surveys on the recipients of their reports and found that close to 70% of the recipients have talked to their families about the reports i.e. not only have they read them and acted on them (the 2-3% reduction) but they have discussed them with their families!

Hence Ogi’s assertion that “the face of the Smart Grid will be paper” – it seems high tech meter’s primary communication interface with home-owners will be with the low tech medium that is paper, at least for the time being!