Search Results for: demand response

post

GreenMonk news roundup 05/04/2009

by

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

post

Get Rich Quick: a green roundup from IBM’s VP Energy and Utility – Show 1: Water

by

Rich Lechner is IBM’s VP Energy and Environment.

I first met Rich at the Pulse 09 event in Las Vegas earlier this year where he gave a great talk on Sustainability & the role of IT.

Rich has agreed to come on the GreenMonk show monthly to give us a state of the ‘sustainosphere’ from an IBM perspective!

This is month one and we are talking Water – among the many interesting water-related items, watch out near the end for Rich’s alluding to using Demand Response for water flow management!

post

Jonathan Gay, CTO Greenbox, talks home energy management

by

With Google’s announcement of their PowerMeter, home energy management solutions are really going mainstream.

With that in mind, I wanted to have a chat with Jonathan Gay, the founder and CTO of Greenbox (not CEO as I said in the intro – d’oh!). Greenbox have been one of the pioneering companies in this space and they sell their energy management solution to utilities for rollout to the utilities’ customers.

Smart home energy management solutions are going to pivotal to the rollout of successful demand response programs – if my home energy management solution can interface with my appliances and have them respond to dynamic energy pricing information according to rules I set, then demand response will play a significant part in reducing our energy footprint.

Related articles by Zemanta
post

Why Smart Grids are good!

by

I have made no secret of the fact that I am a big fan of Smart Grids and Demand Response programs (properly rolled out, of course!). I have also spoken at various international conferences propounding the benefits of Smart Grids and Demand Response for quite a while now.

You can imagine my disappointment then when I read an article entitled Outsmarting the Smart Grid which was strongly anti-Smart Grids, on The EnergyCollective site by William Tucker, a pro-nuclear writer.

William sets a facetious tone for the article in his opening paragraph:

The latest delusion about energy is the “smart grid.” This bright new technological miracle will once again help us overcome the realities of physics and allow us to live in a world run on wind and sunshine.

The genesis for Mr Tucker’s displeasure appears to be the above GE ad informing people of the benefits of Smart Grids.

He says

It’s fitting that the girl is standing in front of a clothes dryer because that and washing dishes are the only examples anyone has ever been able to come up with about how residential users are going to “redistribute” their energy consumption.

What else can they do? Are they going to wait until after midnight to watch prime-time television? Are they going to heat up dinner at 4 a.m.? Are they going to turn on lights at sunrise instead of sunset? And how about air conditioning, that most voracious consumer of electricity?

Again with the unhelpful sarcasm.

While it is true that not all loads in the home are movable – I use the example that I am highly unlikely to get up at 3am to cook my dinner just because energy is cheaper – there are more than just the dish washer and the dryer. Mr Tucker neglects to mention here air conditioning (though he does mention it elsewhere in his post so he is aware of it). Nor does he mention heating water in an immersion, refrigeration, PHEVs or storage heaters for example – all very movable residential loads. Of course, he neglects to mention industrial scale demand response altogether!

Mr Tucker then re-defines the Smart Grid to suit his argument

the underlying presumption of the smart grid is that it will somehow help us conserve significant amounts of energy

Uh, no it isn’t. The presumption of the Smart Grid is that it will more closely align demand with supply, thereby stabilising the grid and facilitating the further penetration of renewables onto it, thereby lowering our carbon footprint. The Smart 2020 report (7mb pdf) estimates that Smart Grids will reduce CO2 by 2.03 GtCO2e by 2020.

Mr Tucker seems hell-bent though on criticising Smart Grids for not reducing consumption quoting from the Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI) “The Green Grid,” study published last June

its most optimistic prediction was that by 2030 we could reduce electrical consumption by 7 to 11 percent below what is now being projected. That’s not an absolute reduction in consumption but only a slowing of its anticipated rise. Second, as the study concludes, “shift[ing] load from on-peak to off-peak periods may not necessarily save energy.” It will only save money. And when you make electricity cheaper, people may consumer more of it.

What Mr Tucker is again conveniently forgetting is that electrical consumption is not the problem, per se. The problem occurs when that energy is generated using coal, oil or some other non-renewable form.

In fact, there are times when we have too much electricity and you are increasingly seeing wind farms curtailed as a result of this phenomenon. Instead of curtailing wind energy when we have an excess, what we should be doing is demand stimulation – stimulating people to increase their demand at this time of excess supply. This can be achieved by dropping the price of electricity to 0 or even making it negatively priced and making that information available via Demand Response programs rolled out over Smart Grids.

Mr Tucker concludes by once more poking fun at the GE ad

In that light, it’s worth going back to that last little GE vignette where the girl says, “It’s sunny in Arizona.” She is standing at a window looking at a waxing half moon about three hours above the horizon. If she’s in the Midwest, that means the sun has already set in Arizona. If she’s on the East Coast, then it’s about to go down. She’d better get to bed because in another twenty minutes the lights, refrigerator, television, computers and everything else are going to turn off.

Meeting pointless pedantry with more pointless pedantry, the girl is looking at a street light, not a waxing moon.

Mr Tucker’s main argument is that Smart Grids won’t necessarily reduce consumption so we shouldn’t bother with them.

Energy is very abstract, no-one really cares how much they use. What they do care about is the utility bill at the end of the month and increasingly, the carbon footprint of that consumption. If I consume 10 TeraWatt hours in my home daily (not possibly obviously!), as long as it has a negligible carbon footprint, so what?

What Smart Grids and intelligent Demand Response programs will do is, massage the demand for electricity so that it lines up with the supply. This stabilises the grid for the ISO (the grid operator) allowing them to add even more variable generation sources (i.e. renewables) to the system lowering costs and carbon footprints. Win, win.

The discussion continues in the comments where Mr Tucker rails against Demand Response

Now that I think about it, here’s what’s going to happen if the utility can cut off 1/6th of its air conditioning load on a rotating basis. If people know this – which they will – they’re just going to run their air conditioning a little higher while it’s on in order to compensate for the 1/6th of the time it’s off. It’s like the low-flush toilets that you have to flush twice to do the job.

However, for once he has a valid point!

This is why when you roll out Demand Response programs, you put the control directly in the hands of the consumer. The top-down, command and control utility attitude of “we’ll turn off your aircon when it suits us” will only turn people against Demand Response.

Instead, you roll out home area networks and home energy portals where people decide themselves how they want their devices to respond to pricing signals. You’d be able to program your dishwasher to wash the dishes when electricity at 6c/KWh or 6am, which ever came sooner, for example. If you put the washer on at 8pm, for the most part, as long as the dishes are washed by 7am the following morning, you don’t care when it happens.

Similarly with your immersion, if it selectively heats the water when electricity drops below either a set price or a set temperature, as long as you have enough hot water, you are happy.

Obviously any home energy portal like this would allow the home owner full control over all the devices in the house because they belong to the home owner, not the utility!

Long term, what I want to see happen is, I want utilities to publish their generation mix (% coal, % natural gas, % oil, % hydro, % chg, % wind, etc.), as well their prices, in realtime. That way I should be able not only to control my devices but also have the ability to select the Greenest utility supplier dynamically at any time – now that’s a Smart Grid well worth having.

Related articles by Zemanta
post

Grid 2.0 primer

by

I’m giving a talk at the O’Reilly ETech conference in San Jose next month (March 11th 2009). The title of my talk is “Electricity 2.0: Applying The Lessons Of The Web To Our Energy Networks“.

The talk will be about how to make the electrical distribution system more green and more resilient using demand response and smart grids in a consumer empowering way. I will also discuss my vision for an electricity system where you will be able to see the generation mix of all utilities and dynamically chose the Greenest supplier and other out there concepts!

In the video above, you can watch a primer to this talk I gave in a webinar for O’Reilly last night.

post

IBM hits the Green ball out of the park!

by

Al Zollar on Smart Grids

I attended Pulse 2009, the IBM service management conference, in Las Vegas during the week. To be perfectly frank, I didn’t know much about service management software before going to the event so my expectations of what to expect from the conference were low! However, IBM hit the Green ball out of the park at this conference. Almost every speaker who stood up to speak mentioned smart grids, energy or efficiency and Al Zollar, GM of Tivoli Software above, even had a slide on demand response!

The turnout for the event was around 5-6000 I’m told and I have no reason to doubt it as the general sessions were thronged.

It really is tremendous to see Oracle, SAP and IBM all heavily touting their Smart Grid software solutions – it looks like the dream of the intelligent energy network and the massive efficiencies which will accrue, is not far off.

I met a ton of interesting people there and video’d a couple of them so I’ll be posting more in upcoming posts.

[Disclosure: IBM paid my travel and expenses for this trip]

post

Cisco EnergyWise – turns networks into an Energy Efficiency platforms

by

As mentioned previously, buildings account for 38% of CO2 emissions in the United States, buildings consume 70% of the electricity load in the U.S and CO2 emissions from buildings are projected to grow faster than any other sector over the next 25 years.

Cisco has decided to tackle this problem, by turning its networking infrastructure kit into a platform for energy efficiency with its launch yesterday of Cisco EnergyWise!

Cisco EnergyWise is a technology for their Catalyst line of Switches which will be rolled out as a free software upgrade for existing switches and included in new Catalyst switches beginning in February 2009.

From the release:

Cisco EnergyWise will roll out in three phases to improve IT and building system energy utilization:

  • · In the first phase (February 2009), Network Control, Cisco EnergyWise will be supported on Catalyst switches and manage the energy consumption of IP devices such as phones, video surveillance cameras and wireless access points.
  • · In the next phase (Summer 2009), IT Control, there will be expanded industry support of EnergyWise on devices such as personal computers (PCs), laptops and printers.
  • · In the final phase (Early 2010), Building Control, Cisco EnergyWise will be extended to the management of building system assets such as heating, ventilation and air conditioning (HVAC), elevators, lights, employee badge access systems, fire alarm systems and security systems

EnergyWise will allow companies to create event-based policies for energy reduction (i.e. turn off all lights in data center or hotel room unless someone swipes in – and turn off when they swipe out). It will also allow for control of the energy utilisation of everything from wireless access points, right the way up to building’s aircon systems. Policies can be grouped by tags, so you can control entire buildings campuses or geographies.

Cisco also announced the acquisition of Richards-Zeta Building Intelligence Inc. to get access to the intelligent middleware to provide interoperability and integration between building infrastructure, IT applications and Cisco EnergyWise.

EnergyWise will also enable companies to report aggregated power consumption across an organisation, provide reports of current power conditions and suggests potential changes thereby reducing energy costs and greenhouse gas emissions.

Demand response programs will benefit hugely from systems like this being in place.

Superb to see RedMonk client company SolarWinds being signed up as the first network management partner for the program. SolarWinds told me they hope to have the integration with Cisco EnergyWise complete in 2009 and they told me that:

  • · EnergyWise policies and configurations will be managed by Orion Network Configuration Manager (NCM).
  • · Orion Network Performance Monitor (NPM) will show EnergyWise statistics and reports in its familiar web-based dashboard.
  • · We will also establish EnergyWise forums in thwack, to help support users as they roll out EnergyWise in their corporate environments.

Now, how long will it be before Juniper come out with a competitive offering, do you think? The more companies thinking this way and turning out products like this, the better for everyone.

post

GreenMonk news roundup 01/23/2009

by

  • City of Newark first in nation using cars to power grid

    This month, the City of Newark, Delaware became the first electric utility in the US to use a car to store and provide power for the local electric grid.

    The vehicle, which runs on electricity alone, is specifically designed to store energy and improve grid reliability. University of Delaware researchers helped develop the concept, called Vehicle-to-Grid (V2G). With the City of Newark’s approval, the UD team is now conducting V2G testing at two outlets within the City’s service territory.

    tags: demand response, v2g, vehicle to grid, grid 2.0, electricity 2.0, newark, delaware

  • Climate Scientists Released from Federal Gag Order

    Bush administration rules limiting what U.S. Department of Commerce employees can say to the media or in public do not apply to climate and weather scientists, according to an agency email released by Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, a service organization for state and federal employees.

    As a result, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration specialists represented by the National Weather Service Employees Organization do not have to obtain agency pre-approval to speak or write, whether on or off-duty, concerning any scientific topic deemed “of official interest.”

    tags: busg, federal gag

  • Alberta Tar Sands Development Deadly for Millions of Birds

    Exploitation of Canada’s tar sands, the world’s largest proven oil reserves outside Saudi Arabia, is damaging forest and wetland habitats in Canada’s northern boreal forest, new research shows. The oil sands development could claim more than 160 million boreal birds, the peer-reviewed study predicts.

    tags: canada, tar sands, oil sands, pollution, strip mining

  • Movers Find Eco-Friendly Options – NYTimes.com

    For years, Fortune 500 companies have rented reusable plastic crates to relocate from one office to another. Pharmacies and supermarkets regularly use them to ship merchandise.

    Now the crates are coming to the residential moving market, thanks to consumers’ desire for options they see as both convenient and environmentally responsible, and to the cost of cardboard boxes (which has remained high in many areas in spite of a recent collapse in the cost of the recycled cardboard from which most are partly made).

    tags: rentagreenbox.com, moving, recopack

  • California utility PG&E to open wallet for solar | Green Tech – CNET News

    Pacific Gas & Electric, one of the country’s largest and most progressive utilities, will invest directly in solar power plants and solar panels distributed in different California communities.

    CEO Peter Darbee said the move represents the first time that PG&E–already a large purchaser of solar and other renewable energy technologies–will build and own solar installations. Right now, the utility purchases clean energy from third parties.

    tags: solar power, pg&e, pacific gas & electric

  • Technology Review: Better Thermal Photovoltaics

    A new approach to converting heat into electricity using solar cells could make a technology called thermal photovoltaics (TPVs) more practical.

    tags: photovoltaic, thermal photovoltaic

  • EcoGeek – Clean Technology

    An Austrian engineer, Franz Zotlöterer, has developed a new method for small scale hydropower by creating a whirlpool that avoids many of the problems typically associated with hydroelectric generation.

    tags: hydroelectric, hydro power, vortex, whirlpool

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

post

GreenMonk news roundup 01/22/2009

by

  • Inhabitat » The Mini-E Hits the Streets of New York!

    New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg recently announced that BMW’s hotly anticipated Mini-E will soon be hitting the streets of NYC! This April BMW will loan the city ten fully-electric Mini Coopers to participate in New York’s “Street Condition Observation Unit” (SCOUT), which scours city streets for road damage, graffiti, and other instances where infrastructure repair is needed. The zippy zero-emission vehicles will lend the program their lightweight carbon footprint in exchange for an extensive round of road testing.

    tags: bmw, new york, mini-e, mini cooper, scout

  • City of Boston Joins EnerNOC’s Demand Response Network | Xconomy

    EnerNOC (NASDAQ: ENOC), the Boston-based company that pays factory operators, store owners, and local governments for the right to dial back their electricity usage during times of peak demand, announced today that the City of Boston is finally diving into the local “demand response” pool. Under a new agreement negotiated with the office of Mayor Thomas Menino, Boston City Hall, the Boston Public Library, and Boston Police Headquarters will be equipped with remote-controlled meters that allow EnerNOC to reduce non-essential electricity usage whenever local utilities need a buffer. In return, the city will get periodic payments—whether or not it’s ever called upon to cut usage—plus additional money for every actual demand response event.

    tags: enernoc, demand response, boston

  • ‘Silicon Energy’ Fuel Cell Could Revolutionize Solid Oxide Fuel Cell Technology

    SiEnergy Systems, LLC has developed a breakthrough solid oxide fuel cell (SOFC) by placing a micro fuel cell directly on a silicon chip, an advance that will revolutionize the way people use power.
    These “Silicon Energy” fuel cells address the problems that limit standard SOFCs: Leveraging the power of silicon, they operate at lower temperatures and use normal industrial materials. This key breakthrough brings real-world applications within reach. SiEnergy’s radical new approach promises to deliver SOFCs with small carbon footprints and unprecedented efficiency.

    tags: sofc, Solid oxide fuel cell, fuel cell

  • Survey: Scientists agree human-induced global warming is real

    While the harsh winter pounding many areas of North America and Europe seemingly contradicts the fact that global warming continues unabated, a new survey finds consensus among scientists about the reality of climate change and its likely cause.

    tags: global warming, anthropogenic, human induced, survey, consensus

  • Heavy rains alter Peru’s famed Nazca Lines

    Heavy rains in recent days in Peru have affected the famed Nazca Lines, the two-millennia-old giant outlines that are one of the country’s top tourist attractions, officials said Tuesday.

    tags: nazca lines, peru, rain

  • Environmental Capital: Green Ink: Waiting for Obama – WSJ.com

    February crude oil futures sunk below $33 Tuesday ahead of the contract’s expiration, and thanks to a strengthening dollar, Bloomberg reports. Economist-turned-prophet Nouriel Roubini calls oil between $30 and $40 for the rest of the year, also in Bloomberg.

    tags: obama, energy, oil, oil price

  • Chrysler-Fiat Deal Needs U.S. Loans – WSJ.com

    Chrysler LLC has found an international partner in Fiat SpA but the auto maker isn’t out of the woods, mainly because the deal is contingent on Chrysler getting $3 billion in additional government loans, said people familiar with the pact.

    tags: chrysler, fiat, loan

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

post

GreenMonk news roundup 01/03/2009

by

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