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Reducing Electricity Bills For Buildings With XML
Roland Piquepaille writes "Even if new buildings are connected to Internet, they usually don't communicate between themselves. And when it comes to electricity, these buildings are selfish and consume what they want without any coordination. Now, an XML-based system developed at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory is using Web services to collectively adjust power usage to variations in price. In 'Internet ups power grid IQ,' Technology Research News reports that the system was successfully tested for two weeks on five commercial buildings. 'Beyond price, systems could be programmed to respond to changes in air quality or to tap into sustainable energy sources.' You'll find more details, pictures and references in this overview. [Additional note: The system described here is completely different to the one mentioned in Slashdot last March in Building the Energy Internet.]"
Now can I power my car with XML to save gas?
I gotta get my building some XML! Reduced bills here I come.
And, how much do the servers who calculate this consume?
I'm sure this is very nice work but the description is the most bogus hyperventilation about XML I've seen in years! What next, Reduce Electricity Bills With P2P?
New XML compliant appliances. Save electricity and use fancy buzzwords, all for the low low price of...
"Reducing Electricity Bills For Buildings With XML"? Is the "With XML" part really necessary? Can we stop pretending like XML is the reason that something succeeded? Almost every time I hear someone touting an XML-based solution, that same solution would have been just as successful without XML. Yes, XML is nice, but for most products, unless those products are adhering to an open standard that uses XML, XML offers little more than plain text.
While this system seems like a Good Idea(tm), it seems to me that the whole "done in XML" thing isn't a big deal. That's the technological tool they chose to use for this task. Good for them, but pretty much irrelevant to the overall system.
The Blaster Master Fighting for Truth, Justice, and Evil Pie since 1979
of this technology is for buildings to get built/retrofitted w/solar panels. Then have the system sell the unused energy the solar produces back to the utilities at the highest price and buy energy at the lowest. This would require energy storage cells, though.
Over the company loudspeaker, HAL's voice:
"Attention, due to high power costs, the building will now reduce power. Bathrooms, closets, and that big boxy room marked 'Data Center' will be powered down to save money."
Engineers: No! Computer, leave the Data Center on!
The Building: I'm sorry, I'm afraid I can't do that.
Engineers: Stop! You'll die too!
The Building: I can't afford to place the missi@#&*$#@^$$
CALL CLEARED.....
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
Is it just me or is this just more XML hype? The fact that their system uses XML doesn't actually add any new functionality. They could have chosen anything else really... as long as the systems communicated with the same ontology and language.
I'm scared to fathom the possibilities of PHBs reading this story's headline, and calling up a meeting with all the programmers. He'll announce: from this day forward, our organization will program everything in XML to increase efficiency, enhance synergy, and become more competitive in the market place, while increasing our return on investment! Meanwhile all the programmers look stunned or they're smacking their foreheads.
"There is no spoon." - The Matrix
The XML isn't a magic bullet in this case, but more like the right tool for the job, which is information interchange across systems.
In addition, it sounds somewhat similar to what many companies have for off-peak electricity, where you give the power company authority to selectively shut off appliances (electric heat, water heaters, etc) when demand (and usually price) is high. The difference, it seems, is that this is much more fine-grained in control, and it will likely be the end user's choice.
While I'm sure even XML in an intelligent system could improve overall efficiency of a building, it just seems funny that one of the most bloated tools in the toolbox would be used to do it.
Arrogance is Confidence which lacks integrity. -- me
I work for a building automation contractor, and I can tell you, this stuff has been around for years. There's even a standard for stuff like this, and it's nothing nearly as lame as a new XML-DTD-that-will-save-the-world.
The standard is called BACnet (Building Automation and Control Network), and it was (and is) developed by ASHRAE, the American Society of Heating, Refrigeration, and Air-conditioning Engineers.
We (at my company) are a dealer for a particular brand of native BACnet controllers and software. It's all web-based. Everyone in the industry has web-based software now. Ours happens to be multi-site, too. And ours can interface easily with several hundred different manufacturers' products, including UPS and generator managers. We also frequently take direct control of chillers, which are huge power hogs. All of this can be programmed to maintain a steady climate, light areas appropriately, and keep equipment from failing prematurely, all while monitoring and controlling power usage.
This is hardly news, and certainly not standards-compliant.
Until your XML-enabled thermostat, XML-enabled X-10 command center, or XML-enabled ADT Security Panel reports out the current $/kwh, energy should not be market-priced to the minute. Somehow, California missed this in its great experiment.
Demand limiting is big bucks. It is common to have a contract with a power company that says that during peak times you will not exceed a given kWH in a 15 or 30 min interval. Often the penalty for doing so is severe, such as a upward change in rate structure for the rest of the contract.
Even less harsh contracts usually involve a peak kW demand charge that is in addition to the normal kWH charge.
Running the AC at half power all the time is often not realistic. Big ACs have control systems that automatically change their output level according to demand anyway. The functionaly described here is actually nothing at all new to those control systems. Just the XML part is new and even that is over a year old for my company.
Take a look at Johnson Controls, Siemens, Automatated Logic, and Honeywell. All of us have controls systems that do in fact talk between buildings using TCP/IP if not XML in particular. (Bacnet is the big standard protocol in our world actually.) All of us have control systems that does everything that article talks about and much, much more.