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Smarter Electric Grid Could Save Power
Wired has a timely story about putting more of the automated and non-automated decisions behind the use of electrical power into and around households. From the summary: "If the electric grid stops being just a passive supplier of juice, consumers could make choices about how and when to consume power. Power providers and tech companies are working to redesign the grid so you can switch off your house when high demand strains the system, or program your house or appliances to make that move."
A similar story is featured right now on PhysOrg, highlighting a particular pilot project involving "smart meters" in Elizabethtown, Pennsylvania.
How idiotic is this? Yeah, I wanna go reset all my digital clocks every time I turn my house off. What a ridiculously stupid idea. But wait, there's more! It'd turn non-battery security alarm systems off when you're away. Not a good idea. If you turn your power off overnight and a fire starts, you can't turn on the lights to see how to get out. Just dumb.
Google's Super Secret Search Algorithm: SELECT @search_results FROM internet WHERE @search_results = 'good'
I guess the US electric companies always found they could get reimbursed for expensive peak load plants so they had no incentive to apply intelligence to load management.
I don't read your sig. Why are you reading mine?
Of course it is important to only control the right loads. Water heating is a good candidate, so might be charging electric vehicles overnight. Basically loads that need juice but not necessarily constantly.
Probably a good idea not to do this to TV sets or medical equipment.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
You wouldn't want to come home and find that all your Cherry Garcia has melted and your arugula has wilted because your "smart" house decided to take itself off the grid. You need to have some sort of backup power for quite a few appliances. A way to do this is to produce your own power with solar panels or wind turbines, and in fact a lot of people are already doing that (and pushing electricity back into the system as a net supplier!).
But really, the way to avoid the crunch is to make the systems we use more efficient. If we can't live without air conditioning, maybe we can take steps to make it cheaper and less energy-consuming than our current HVACs. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deep_lake_water_cooling
Of course efficiency improvements are only a temporary band-aid. At some point consumption will overtake the gains made in efficiency. However, if we can forestall the inevitable long enough to move more of our power consumption needs to a renewable energy solution, the better off we will be and the less dependent we will be on fossil fuels.
The primary benefit from a smart grid isn't so much saving energy as limiting peak demand - but it would help in making best use of intermittent generation (e.g. renewables such as solar and wind).
I live in Florida and FPL already has a system like this in place and has so for the better part of a decade. It's called FPL On Call. It let's FPL shut off certain appliances you wire to there smart boxes when the grid is under heavy load. My neighbors have them tied to there pool filtration system. For the discount they give on the bill, it's not a bad deal for non-essential appliances. I would never wire my whole house to one though. Or my A/C system. The other talk about letting the power system control your smart house seems ridiculous. If i'm going to build a smart house, i'm going to be the one who controls it, not the power company.
One of the biggest and EASIEST ways to change carbon footprints and reduce global warming contributions is to modify HOW we use electricity... period.
Yes, there are always drawbacks to any new technology, but having electronic and electrical systems that are smart enough to modify their behaviors at given times or in response to given inputs is a real DUH!
Everybody in the US (probably) has two or three such devices. Some alarm clocks behave differently according to day of week, some even allowing you to work sat/sun with two other days off during the week. There are thermostats to control heaters and air conditioning systems. There are regulatory systems in freezers, refrigerators, and stoves etc. You have DVR, VCR, and other electronics that reacts to inputs. Your computer probably uses a temperature reading device to know when to run the cooling fan and when not to do so.
If you could tell some of your devices to shut down for x minutes if they receive a certain signal, no big deal. Your freezer will not defrost for a long time. Water heaters don't need to be on ALL the time. A/C can go dormant on a signal but again start up to keep the temperature below a set level. All these things would allow each person to contribute to lowered electricity requirements and thus less greenhouse gases.
To me this is a no brainer that politicians should be asking manufacturers to comply with by 2010. All the electronics and protocols are in place or available right now. I also believe that manufacturers should be given incentives to retrofit such devices to appliances that are less than 5 years old.
This is a known tech solution to reducing carbon footprints and should be a win-win for all concerned. There is no reason that I can see that it should NOT be done.
Yes, as pointed out somethings should not be turned off... well, don't set those systems up for failure... DUH!
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In order to effectively balance sources from grid-tied power sources, such as wind and solar, the grid needs to be re-engineered. Load balancing is a part of this. Decentralized power has some enormous advantages.
"To those who are overly cautious, everything is impossible. "
This kind of thing sounds like something that normally would happen in a 3rd world country, not the US or Canada. Are we really to the point where we have to start shutting off hot water heaters because we don't want to re-invest in the electrical infra-structure?
I'm all for more energy efficient appliances. I've got all compact fluorescents, have an automatic thermostat, and my computers power off when not in use. But not having hot water, or raising the temperature by 4 degrees? Forget about it.
AccountKiller
is designed to bring Demand Response to the data center. It's called Demand Response Application for Power Event Scheduling.
Oh yea.. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demand_response
The first (horrible) PoC is available on launchpad.
Nothing new here.
First consumers can already "make choices about how and when to consume power".
Second, Utility company cut-offs to high-load things like water heaters already exist. Energy suppliers in some ares pay you a small amount to have the ability to drop your water heater elements during peak usage (cooking time and high air conditioning loads).
There is nothing suggested in TFA that does not already exist.
The most immediate single change that the average consumer can impliment is CFL lightbulbs. These are so effective that some Power companies PAY for the bulbs for you.
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
The price of power changes hourly/halfhourly (depending on where you are in the world). Currently residential users aren't exposed to that price variability, it's all absorbed by the retailers (of power). My understanding is that smart metering is primarily designed to move to a user pays scheme that's based on that halfhourly price. Yes, there will be the ability to automatically cut power to certain appliances, but this is a good thing because you'll be exposed to the higher cost of electricity. Power prices regularly double/triple or more through the course of a day, and smart metering will allow you to plan your cooking/washing/drying when the price is lowest. For smart users this should result in a lower power bill. Of course the actual cost might not be any lower due to the cost of the smart meters. However, in the long run this fewer peaking plants (plants that only run sporadically when demand is high) will need to be built, and this is why governments concerned with green issues push smart meters, even if they're not economical.
Insanity: voting in the same two parties over and over again and expecting different results
Shedding load during peak periods for large industrial users truly makes a difference, and economically pays off for both utilities and them.
... flat-rate for most people is a better deal, if they want comfort ... or as another poster lemented, perhaps the U.S. is well on its way to becoming a 3rd world country, but I digress.
... they shouldn't.
... in my view, to reiterate, the main drivers of demand-based pricing is greed - utilities will likely, long-term, earn much more with demand-based pricing, and also "feel good" environmentalism driven more by emotion than facts.
However, for individual consumers, long-term, a "smart" grid that controls people's appliances will probably cost residential users much more than what they're paying now.
Right now, I can turn on any device in my home and know it will cost me exactly the same price per KWH to run regardless of what the appliance or what time it is.
Contrast that with demand-based pricing in which utilities can place appliances into various rate classifications, as well as of course charge dramatically different rates depending on the time, or even the duration of use.
Ie. a really greedy utility, say for running an air conditioner, could charge a higher rate per KWH for simply running the unit regardless of the time of day due to its high energy draw, plus then bulk the rate up even more depending on the time of day it's run, plus then up top of all of that, bulk the rate up even further for running the unit for too long of duration at a time.
In short, one could find themself being nickled and dimed and ultimately paying much more
The way the power grid is structured now makes such demand based pricing for *residential* users unnecessary, since industrial loads tend to run somewhat opposite times of residential loads. And during peak periods, many large industrial users have already agreed to shed load automatically, so why should residential users be burdened
Rambling on
Ron
With a tank system you can spread the heating over the night (eg. turning on each tank for an hour means that you can service perhaps 6 times as many customers with the same peak load).
Most retail suppliers get charged some multiplier of their peak load so are very keen to keep peak loads down.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
Do you want to save power - here's an easy solution, make devices that actually TURN OFF. Most TVs, DVD players and other electrical devices use almost as much power when they are "off" as they do when they are on. While some devices always need to be on (e.g. tivos, routers, etc...) most would work just as well if there was a way to turn them fully off.
Do you really want someone else deciding that you can only run your A/C at night when it's cool, but not during the day when it's hot? I don't see the point of that.
Nor am I thrilled with the idea that I might not be able to have hot water when I want it.
Do you really want someone else to control the appliances in your house?
Of course not, but that is the goal. In california, they are trying to pass legislation to do just that, in the name of saving power.
I personally want to be able to decide that I need this shirt clean for a presentation in an hour, and not having someone else, or some impassive technology say "well it's nice you want to wash that, but it's peak hour, sorry, you can't"
It's a good idea, it might be workable, as long as the freedom of choice of the end user is left in the loop. As long as it's not a step in the direction of giving the power of your comfort to some faceless bureaucrat. I just don't believe the technology and ability is so limited that people have to suffer.
It is not my fault that the government officials don't plan for the future, but only make plans that get them past the next election. Make their life miserable, not mine.
However, in order to avoid congestion, it would probably be wise to introduce a random delay between the availability of a lower cost and the moment to use it, just like devices do with Ethernet, in ordre to avoid storms.
Also, a phone with a LED telling me : Â Hey, why not call now ? The prices are suddenly cheap ! Â would be an excellent way to introduce some sense of opportunity in a world having too many things decided just by clock considerations.
Signature omitted in order to save space. Thanks for your understanding.
Frankenstien: It lives! It liiiiives!
*blackout*
Frigingstain: Who the frack turned down the lights!
Igor: It'sh ze shmart electric grid, shir.
Frinkenstoin: Ok hunchie, turn down the smoke machine and let's try again.
One problem is that the peak and average demand on the power grid are quite different. Obviously we have to build the grid to handle the peak, or we'll get blackouts/brownouts. Now what something like this could do is help reduce peak demand. Try to balance things out so that there isn't as much usage during peak times. This in turn means we don't have to spend so much money building out more electrical distribution and production.
This is already done on a large scale in the US. For example grid controllers will talk to a company about shutting down part or all of their usage at a certain time. A good candidate might be something like a food processing/storage facility. The controllers ask them to shut down their coolers at the time when homes are kicking up their usage (like around 4-7 PM). This isn't a problem for the company, they just cool it down a bit more before hand, and the temperature stays low enough.
Well a similar thing could be applied to houses as well, in theory. Shut down or reduce certain things during peak times, or zone the usage so only part of the homes in a given area are using it at once.
I'm not saying it is a cure-all or that we want it doing things like shutting down air conditioners for 3 hours in the desert or something, but there is potential to balance things out better and thus save money.
The word for a piece of glass is "pane", not "pain". That is all.
This smells like over engineering. The real problem is that there isn't enough power generation capacity and transmissions lines in place. Even if you make the network 'smarter', you don't fix these things. Actually I really can't understand why this is even a problem that should be addressed this way. You have 300 million people in US and you can statistically calculate when and where you need power, all you need after that is enough production and transmission capacity, balanced with a billing that has simple, but powerful enough schema to shape energy consuming. In example here in Finland many homes use seasonal pricing where there is one price for winter weekdays in 07-22, and one price for rest of the time. This scheme allows homes to warm water and houses at night, and power companies to lower load at business hours and keep the load higher at night.
The real question that should be asked, what does this tell about electricity companies and the environment they are working where they can't or want to use the simplest and efficient way to solve the energy problem? And no, this is not about carbon emissions, as new power generation capacity in form of nuclear, hydro and renewable energy solve that problem together very neatly.
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By that logic, the USA should have also lagged behind in computers, cars, TVs, services, housing, etc. No brainer, huh? Building cars for 300 million people has got to take 40 times longer than building cars for 7.5 million, right? I guess it would explain the Amish buggies. Heck, you're probably even starving because harvesting enough grain for 300 million people must take longer than for 7.5 million
The short answer is that it doesn't scale that way. If you have 40 times more population, here's the important part, you also can produce 40 times more with them, at the same technology level and access to resources. So it evens out.
Basically it's no harder to build smart meters for 300 million people than for 7.5 million or, indeed, for the 35,365 people in Liechtenstein. If the demand is there, having more people just gives you more people to produce them with.
Now there are other considerations which are valid, for special cases, e.g., distances for infrastructure. But the "well, it's ok to be behind because there's more of us" argument that keep popping up again and again, is almost invariably bunk.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
1st Step :
~75% of power is nuclear generated
2nd Step :
At around 11.30 pm and until 7 am (or so), you pay less for your electricity.
That means every one sets their tank based water heater to automatically use only night hours power.
(you can still switch to manual if you run out of hot water).
That way, all those heaters are off from peak hours usage.
conservation has to play a part in a new model of energy use - what's the incentive for an electricity retailer to develop a system - or even participate in a team leading the the development of a system that eventually reduces their revenue? we have to get off the megawatts metric, and think about the end services provided, using efficiency, using conservation as components of that solution. start selling the services people need, with the valuable absence of CO2 emissions, and high technology - not parsimonious fear-mongering doomsday predictions, it just won't sell.
IMHO, to prevent instabilities and peaking, system can not be left blind and non-cooperative. We should have an integrated intelligent system for power delivery:
...) on low price/priority settings and our immediate need appliances (hair dryers, computers, lights, microwave ovens, ...) on high price/priority settings.
There should be an asynchronous handshaking protocol for appliances to request exact amount of additional power from the grid and to postpone activation before the grid acknowledges that it is ready to supply it.
Furthermore, when load intensifies, in order to prevent "starvation" of new appliances waiting to be switched on, all appliances would have to be able to gradually scale down their consumption on demand from the grid.
Alternatively (/additionally), there should be "power bid" system: consumer should set the limit for the price of a watt consumer is willing to pay for given appliance (according to consumers' own priorities and preferences) and then the grid could clear the overload by raising the price (thus pushing of-grid appliances with lower priority set by their respective owners) in real time.
Obviously, we could set our low priority "batch job" appliances (dishwashers, clothes washer/dryer,
Interestingly, this system could also allow small/micro/local rapid response energy producers and merchants (buying low, selling high, provided they have efficient energy storage/retrieval systems) to compete on the "watt market" and offload the system, thus creating new opportunities, better energy supply and more accurate cost management.
For instance, we could also express the timing in monetary equivalents: you can buy immediate power from small producer or merchant now, for higher cost, or you can book lower cost watts delivered from huge power station at some later time, when they are ready to deliver some extra power. In short, if you can tell exactly how many watts you need, for how long and you can afford to wait some time to get it, you could get yourself significantly lower cost.
While this ins't a completely bad idea, the cited articles suggest savings to consumers will be fairly modest, in the 5~7% range at best, and quite the opposite in a significant number of cases. I'm not really sure how much demand shifting "we" consumers can do that we're not already doing. In the interests of brevety suffice ti to say that for _me_, damnably little. And i suspect a lot of consumers are going to be pig-biting mad when they end up paying premium rates to run their air conditioning on hot days after leaving the AC off all day whiile they were working anyway. My prediction: this stuff _will_ on average, save most consumers a litle money untill it's widely deployed, at which point power utilities will start gaming the system to jack their effective rates up. Ultimately, consumers will pay more for less, utilities will sell less for more than if the system weren't installed at all and overall consumption will not change from current trends at all. "Kinda" like how that whole cable TV thang has worked out. Or your POTS wire. etc.... imho.
This doesn't seem terribly new or revolutionary... Here in SE Michigan we've had a "little amber light" in the box out back connected to the electric supply for the A/C for at least 10 years. During the summer, during peak hours when all of SE Michigan runs their air at once, they shut off A/C units for a couple of hours randomly to avoid brown/black outs.
i.e. they can pay me more for kWh I shed during peak times than it would cost
me to continue using those same kWh at the flat rate.
Think of it this way: the utility is buying generating capacity from me;
I should get something similar to what they would pay to purchase peak power from
any another supplier.
[Gene]
Mission: To provide products that consume time and energy as entertainingly as permitted by the laws of thermodynamics.
I've gotten a letter from my electric company every month for quite a while. They explain how the smart meters work. They want me to put in a meter that will let THEM turn off the power during peak demand (or whenever else they'd like). Maybe I'll learn how to hack the meters and start turning off my neighbors power for fun.
-- Programming with boost is like building a house with lego. It's a cool but I wouldn't want to live in it
That all of the power companies in this country have a government enforced monopoly. Since there isn't any competition, they have no need to innovate. What incentive do they have to do the work required if they can just pass costs on to the customer and the customer has no way of leaving the power company?
Socialism is fundamentally inimical to innovation.
Only people in CA. have the luxury of their utility company turning off their AC for them. How nice it must be to come home to a hot house after a long day of work. Yeah, I'd make some separate wiring to a few key appliances...
Do that kind of thing in the South and you'd have a rebellion. Temperature swings in high humidity environments create mold that destroy health and belongings.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
Dude "WE?"
If you're all selling power for 7x what it's worth, then where's the problem?
It's called an incentive. It's to encourage you to 'do the right thing' by helping -y-o-u- (cough, I mean) early adopters with their payback period.
thx e
How was the parent a troll? All the dude said was that most of the water heaters he's seen were not powered by electricity so it wasn't the best example. Duh. mods on crack heh.
What the grid needs is a massive storage system. I'd venture to say that a large percentage of generated power just disappears because it isn't consumed. I remember reading a Popular Science article about these huge underground flywheels for doing just this.
"Most TVs, DVD players and other electrical devices use almost as much power when they are "off" as they do when they are on."
This isn't true for TVs, particularly high-draw TVs like CRTs.
You do have a point though, devices should have at least 4 power modes:
OFF - 0 watts
Deep sleep - just enough power to sense the "on" button and/or remote-control "on," plus run the internal clock.
Sleep - enough power to respond to other events such as a timer expiring or a wake-on-LAN or wake-on-mouse event.
Full power - normal
Plus 0 or more intermediate states between "sleep" and "full power."
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
Some CFL bulbs are encased in plastic, meaning you can drop them on the floor and they probably don't break. If they do break, the plastic will contain the mess. I don't think it's airtight but it is a big help.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
Good luck giving the utilities a.k.a gov't (whenever there is an emergency)the ability to shut down power to your house whenever they want. Lets see if this fits the pattern.
1)Gov't manufactures crisis (refuses to allow new power plants to be constructed)
2)Crisis occurs (not enough power)
3)Solution purposed giving gov't more power, the individual less power (above story)
Austin Energy has a Power Partner Program where they install a special thermostat to your A/C that cycles power less often during peak summer usage.
-l
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My water heater is gas, you insensitive clods!
The expensive peak load plants in the the US power air conditioning. So we get offers in our electric bill for some sort of automated gizmo that will let Big Brother control our *thermostat* from headquarters. When it gets hot and blackouts are imminent, Big Brother wants to be able to turn our thermostats up 3 degrees.
Coming soon, a fair number of people will have plug in hybrid cars, and that will give the electric utilities incentive to install smart meters that can charge the cars at offpeak rates instead of expensive peak rates, and even out the load, so even more power plants don't have to be built to power cars.
Give a man a fish and you have fed him for today. Teach a man to fish, and he'll say "WHERE'S MY FISH, YOU IDIOT?"
What I meant was that high-draw items like CRTs take up a lot more power when they are on than when they are in standby. This compares to a VCR where the difference between "on but not playing a tape" and "off/timer recording mode" is small or nonexistent.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
So until some bountiful and clean power source can be delivered cheaply, electric utilities are pressured to extend the generating capacity we already have.
Perhaps we should look into nuclear again?
(ducks)
Just because it CAN be done, doesn't mean it should!
I worked on load shedding projects 25 years ago that had tens of thousands of units installed and covered large fractions of some states. It used radio pager technology and temporarily shut down selected groups of units, each had an item, such as the air conditioner, hot water heater, irrigation pump, that would be shut down for about 15 minutes when commanded by the computer in the office. Different groups would be shut down each time to spread the inconvenience. Participation wasn't exactly optional.
Near as I can tell, the advent of the smart meter, an idea back then whose time had not yet come due to the cost and reliability of the technology involved, has brought about schemes to exploit the lack of reliability of people in order to extract more profits from them. Other than that, it would seem this whole thing is just another rehash of an idea already in successful operation over two decades ago and not limited by having people voluntarily doing something.
"Power providers and tech companies are working to redesign the grid so you can switch off your house when high demand strains the system, or program your house or appliances to make that move." Isn't this a typo? Shouldn't it says 'So THEY can switch off your house..'?
In Colorado, the power company gives you an option: they pay you $25 and they install a switch on your air-conditioner that lets them turn it off at peak times. I agreed to this several years ago and I haven't noticed a thing except for seeing the switch on my air-conditioner. I assume it works and that they have exercised their rights...
If its not marked with metadata, it's not ready yet.
In English, that's known as pumped storage, and it's used pretty widely as you explain.
FWIW, it costs around $100/kWh to build, based on recent projects like this one, and is IMHO the most likely candidate for allowing large-scale integration of intermittent sources like wind and solar.