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The 'Radio Network of Things' Can Cut Electric Bills (Video)
We all love 'The Internet of Things.' Now imagine appliances, such as your refrigerator and hot water heater, getting radio messages from the power grid telling them when they should turn on and off to get the best electricity prices. Now kick that up to the electric company level, and give them a radio network that tells them which electric provider to get electricity from at what time to get the best (wholesale) price. This is what e-Radio is doing. They make this claim: "Using pre-existing and near ubiquitous radio signals can save billions of dollars, reduce environmental impact, add remote addressability and reap additional significant societal benefits."
Timothy noticed these people at CES. They were one of the least flashy and least "consumer-y" exhibitors. But saving electricity by using it efficiently, while not glamorous, is at least as important as a $6000 Android phone. Note that the guy e-Radio had at CES speaking to Timothy was Scott Cuthbertson, their Chief Financial Officer. It's a technology-driven company, from Founder and CEO Jackson Wang on down, but in the end, saving money is what they sell. (Alternate Video Link)
Timothy noticed these people at CES. They were one of the least flashy and least "consumer-y" exhibitors. But saving electricity by using it efficiently, while not glamorous, is at least as important as a $6000 Android phone. Note that the guy e-Radio had at CES speaking to Timothy was Scott Cuthbertson, their Chief Financial Officer. It's a technology-driven company, from Founder and CEO Jackson Wang on down, but in the end, saving money is what they sell. (Alternate Video Link)
I recall an article a month or so ago about a town that had already done this, using high-bandwidth internet to determine energy use across the town. Unfortunately I can't remember the town or the company....
Ask me about repetitive DNA
I don't want my furnace to turn itself off at 2 am while I'm sleeping and it's 20 below outside. If everyone is using electricity at the same time, it's for a reason.
The government has shut off my frig because I do not agree with the president!
No, we don't.
My appliances all work just fine without being connected to the interwebs. Seriously this is a stupid idea.
Wat?
This actually makes sense; no big brother, one way transmission of pricing information. However, this does assume that you have a smart meter and an electricity provider who has dynamic pricing.
My refrigerator needs to maintain a consistent temperature to prevent spoilage. Turning it off to save electricity is a daft idea. Same goes for my furnace -- where I live, it can hit -35C in the winter and frozen pipes are a real risk if the furnace is shut off for a few hours in the middle of the night. Automatically dimming the living room lights and turning off computers and TVs wouldn't really work, either. ;)
Now imagine appliances, such as your refrigerator and hot water heater, getting radio messages from the power grid telling them when they should turn on and off to get the best electricity prices.
No, I think I'd rather maintain control over my own appliances and climate control. Even people in crappy motels get to choose when their own heating and cooling runs in their room.
My utility charges me the same rate day or night. The time of day that my equipment turns on has no bearing on my final bill.
If the water is already hot, then why heat it? How about just a water heater instead?
You will have to enter your PIN number at the ATM machine to withdraw enough cash to pay for the hot water heater.
...and now my beer is warm :(
Meanwhile in Germany we actually do things that matter and make a change, not "feel good and oh so techy stuff".
Also we do not waste energy by meticously insulating our houses and not driving every single meter by car.
First of all, the government has acted irresponsibly with the powers it already has. Giving them the ability to remotely control our appliances is a terrible idea. We have to fix the problem with the unaccountable government and lack of societal trust before we start even thinking about these sorts of pie-in-the-sky, cooperative efforts which require a VERY high amount of accountability by those in control.
Second of all, even if the government can be trusted, the companies that will build these things will not take security seriously. I won't say maybe; I won't say possibly. Definitely. These things will definitely not be secure. Most companies still think they can just take a half-hearted crack at security, let marketing make it sound impermeable to the masses and act surprised when it comes out that the security was crap in the first place. It's pretty much the industry model at this point.
Finally, and most importantly, it's not even clear that smart meters will have the intended effect, that people adjust usage. As another commenter pointed out, when everyone is using electricity at the same time, there is usually a reason for that.
My fear is that these devices will be forced upon the public (they already are forcing the "smart" meters on us), and when the evidence is gathered that consumers don't adjust usage voluntarily, it will be done by force. And, the government does absolutely nothing to make me think this won't happen. Why should we, the public, accept this?
The Summary says "Now kick that up to the electric company level, and give them a radio network that tells them which electric provider to get electricity from at what time to get the best (wholesale) price"
That's crazy. There are already organizations called Independent Systemm Operators (ISO) that run real time auctions to do thst function. They have been operating since the 1990s. No radios are needed. They have had high reliability communications methods for many decades.
But to be honest, 90% of the time, a simple mechanical clock works better than the crap they suggest.
Yes, you can save a small percentage by setting certain equipment, including your heater and refrigerator to switch to low power mode when power is expensive. Basically this expands the range by a couple of degrees. But the amount of money saved is not worth the HUGE invasion of privacy.
Especially not when simply improving your insulation will save your more money.
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
But saving electricity by using it efficiently, while not glamorous, is at least as important as a $6000 Android phone.
Especially if you're trying to pay off a $6000 Android phone.
Most people are commenting about Demand Response - appliances delaying to lowering usage at peak prices. That is not what this is about.
This is about having multiple power companies, and switching between them based on price. Interesting idea, but that assumes that a person even has the option of a second power utility. The vast, vast majority of places in the US have a single, monopoly power utility.State government controls such things, and they are not easily changed.
Now kick that up to the electric company level, and give them a radio network that tells them which electric provider to get electricity from at what time to get the best (wholesale) price.
Why would the electric company need a radio network to communicate with household appliances? They already have a hardwired connection!
1) There are respectable predictions that those who ignore peak-based savings will have bills 3x higher than necessary. We only recently got rid of peak-time phone charges 3x off-peak, so hardly impossible. And wholesale prices can certainly vary by more than 3:1.
2) There is no invasion of privacy necessary at all. Listening to mains frequency is a decent clue as to when to widen a temperature deadband for example.
3) Why wouldn't you do insulation AND other measures? I have taken several and have energy bills (even ignoring my solar PV) a fraction of what they used to be while adding two kids to my household. Insulation is part of the picture but not the whole story. I haven't even finished yet.
Why be so reactionary about something unobtrusive that probably implies a better engineered system that will work better all round?
Rgds
Damon
http://m.earth.org.uk/
Too bad Radio Shack is filing for bankruptcy. This could have been their killer app.
No, We do not all love it. I hate the concept of internet of things...
Who has power rates that change every 5 seconds?
Mine is simply one price or is based on total usage so this is useless to me.
Only place I know with rate changes based on time are simply based on time. Electricity is cheapest between x and y time. A $5 timer will accomplish the same thing in that case, and I would bet this is not a $5 gadget. Comes with your appliance eh?....so it is a $1000 gadget.
Does it know the future? Not run the furnace now because power costs .xy but will it cost less soon? What if it goes up instead and costs me more?!? Can only wait so long up here. Not like I want my temp to drop 20 degrees while it waits for cheaper power.
Nice idea if it applied and you had he vast majority of people using it but that is not going to happen.
2) There is no invasion of privacy necessary at all. Listening to mains frequency is a decent clue as to when to widen a temperature deadband for example.
Absolutely none? As in, it's 100% impossible for there to be a privacy invasion for an Internet-connected device?
It's the Internet. You can't assume any level of privacy online, period.
Everyone sing now
Let it go, Let it go, Can't control my own electricity use anymore.
Seriously let me do it! i will save you sooo much energy, just connect everything to the wifi with default setting and I will take care of the rest!
I GUARANTEE I WILL REDUCE YOUR ELECTRIC BILL!!!!
Been down this road. Used to live in MN, the power company there came up with this idea of the "Savor Switch" they'd discount your electric bill if they could shut off your AC for short periods.
It gets F'ing hot on prairie sometimes, if you let the inside temp rise the AC could never catch up because on hot days it would rarely cycle off (yes probably should have had a higher tonnage unit). Long story short the switch came off! It sucked, when the power company could it always shut the thing down when you needed it the most and it got miserably hot, even in the 15min before they cycled it back on.
I am all for the smart grid as long as *I* the consumer have veto power. If I *want* to use higher cost peak time power and can easily enable a "don't turn me off flag" that's cool, but I want the decision to be mine to make with my wallet.
Also why don't they encourage folks to install battery banks and inline inverters? Seems like the efficiency of these have gotten pretty good. Tank up the batteries off peak, time or whenever the grid signals surplus power is available and use the stored juice to run the high amperage appliances heat pump/washer/stove/dryer etc if those things need to be used during peak.
Repeal the 17th Amendment TODAY! Also Please Read http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html
A fundamental problem with this is that there is no "Off-Peak" cheap power in a lot of places. We just have one utility rate, which is higher than anywhere else in the country based on what I hear from other people. Many people don't have an off-peak rate so this becomes just one more costly gadgeting of the appliances that makes them more expensive and use just a little bit more power to run, multiplied by millions.
As I'm pointing out in the (real) situation that I am describing there is NO network connection nor data flow to or from the appliance. There's a multi-million mount market out there already working on that basis. Possibly multi-billion.
Rgds
Damon
http://m.earth.org.uk/
for even more advanced "smart metering" than we already have, which effectively takes power away from you again, and costs you privacy to boot, again.
I think he's talking about a device that listens in on the electric mains frequency - not an internet-connected device.
Also, anonymity is a tradeoff - you are posting here despite risks to your privacy - but the 'interaction' is worth it. :)
Refrigerator: You actually have a range of acceptable temperatures. Generally speaking 15 minutes is only going to make a degree or so difference in a quality unit.
Furnace: Again, your furnace should actually be off more than it's on, even at -35C, and 15 minutes to an hour shouldn't make much difference.
You don't mention your water heater, which I don't know if it's electric or gas, powered by your furnace or not. But many are electric, and it's not something that needs to be kept at the exact same temperature at all times.
As for pipes freezing and food spoiling - You have a range. Assuming your pipes are insulated like they should be so that they don't freeze immediately, (what if your furnace fails? Can you keep your pipes from freezing long enough to get a repair guy out there?), you actually have a range between comfort and 'pipes freezing'. It's simple enough: 2 stage thermostats. Many people with heat pump systems already have them, in order to control between using the heat pump and the 'emergency' direct resistive heat strips.
Same concept - When power is cheap, your fridge runs to put itself on the cold side of the acceptable temperature range, your house on the warm side(in the winter), cool side(summer), so on and so forth. It's also easy enough with smart appliances for them to keep track of your demands and regular trends in power cost in order to best optimize drawing power when it's cheapest. It's just as easy at that point to set a 'critical' level where, expensive power or not, it'll use it if it needs to in order to prevent pipes freezing and food spoiling.
My grandparents were on such a system for years. The agreement with the power company was that interruptions could only be for so long and in exchange they got a break on their bill.
If your house can't last through the typical spike, it probably needs more insulation or repairs.
I don't read AC A human right
... and the need for energy conservation is a hoax. Enron and a California power company colluded to create fake blackouts to create artificial scarcity and raise prices. In Ontario Canada, we have so much excess electricity that we have to ship it out of province. Back when we had coal power plants we could just shut down generators that were not needed, but since they have been shut down we mainly have only nuclear power and actually PAY the Americans to take our excess power.
RTFA! This is not a "the gubiment controls my thermostat" ... This is a free market arbitrage solution. The RDBS broadcasts are one way broadcasts of energy price, not a control signal. This system (unlike some others) is a free market solution being injected into a regulated industry. This is giving you *better* information, so you and your appliances can *choose* whether or not you want to buy higher than normal priced energy. This has nothing to do with your tin foil hattery about security. Sure, the broadcasts can be jammed; they ride on FM broadcast. But, they can't "break" anything. They'll just let you automatically change your thermostat or water heater by 2-3 degrees, so you can choose to pay less. This is a completely opt-in system.
Now we can get new patents for all those things "on the Internet" by using "over a radio"!
The utilities are used to a certain amount of revenue. If we start cutting into that revenue stream, they'll up the rates to keep the revenue constant.
Who's the loser?
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I want my fridge to remain at the temperature to which I set it, I want to be warm when I am active (or cooled in the summer), and I want my water to be hot when I need it, not when you think it's good for you.
The Christian Right is Neither (Christian nor right). See: Matthew 23, Matthew 25, Ezekiel 16:48-50
where the fuck do these idiot boosters get their moronic examples of how wonderful IoT would be? nobody would want their fridge to turn off if the electricity price went up.
my fridge needs to keep things cold even if the price of electricity goes up for a few hours.....ruining hundreds of dollars worth of food to save 10 cents on electricty is not a good idea. food poisoning's no fun, either.
Tons of paperwork, infrastructure and new appliances needed just to save maybe 10% on a couple of household uses (fridge and heating).
A much more future-proof idea is to use batteries to store the excess energy at the power grid level. This will become more and more feasible as the cost per watt-hour decreases over time (approx 8% per year).
The electric company will use the radio control to maximise it's profits.
Go well
The only downside of this Damon, is that radio by wire can be hacked with a signal sent to make appliances use max or min power. I understand that appliances themselves will operate within their own range but I am not 100% positive that a reciever can be made to completely shut down or placed in standby as a spoofed power blackout. So there must be safeguards to avoid this, either by the manufacturer or by an add-on device.
Don't be apathetic. Procrastinate!
How about a radio signal that tells me when there is something good on /.?
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
Even the junkiest Chinese made RTD, thermistor, or thermocouple will be within a 2 deg C tolerance. The wild swinging you think is the sensor's fault is partly the deadband Damon is mentioning but also there to keep from cycling the compressor on and off too quickly. They don't like fast cycling or surging. They design them to use the largest deadband that can safely keep the temp out of the food germ zone and make the compressor last until just after the warranty expires.
I don't want to belittle your work- I'm happy people are still trying to move society along. However, your website looks like Geocities threw up on it. Just a big old wall o text with fruity rainbow colors. Atrocious. Instead of Frontpage, consider using the Wikipedia code or even Slashcode *shudder*. I cannot find a whole lot of useful information the way it is presented.
EDIT: Your sourceforge wiki is MUCH better. You should just send people to it instead!
Yes. if they told me that t oconnect the fridge you build a new network, i would have declared them mad.
OTOH: I worked in a related topic and we figured that the biggest part of the potential savings could be implemented by a timed switch, and a little thought. It's not like the the time of the peak consumption in a country changes day by day, usually you should think about decades.
(The 80-20 rule also applied here: do the simple measures first, and get the biggest part of the saving)
First of all, devices in the private house don't suppose to be turned off and on at random. My refrigerator needs to be run 24/7, my heater needs to be run at day, my lamps need to be on by night, my computer, TV, radio, etc. needs to be on when I need it. There is no point in turning them on and off base on the price of the power. It would make sense if I could store the energy at a cheaper point in time and use it later.
Second, if everybody have that then the price will just average out and nobody will get to save any money. Or, worse, it will lead to price spikes because millions of people will turn on their electrical devices at the same time to catch the lowest power price.
The idea that a smart grid leads to lower prices is just phantasy. If you want lower prices then build nuclear power plants, invenst in new technologies, invenst in building new power plants.
http://www.mueller-public.de - My site http://www.anr-institute.com/ - Advanced Natural Research Institute
You can only adjust the frequency of the whole grid by adding or removing gigawatts of load (or generation)! Or have the same effect by cutting into someone's mains supply and mucking around with it directly, in which case they might as well blow up all the target's stuff outright!
So the point is is possible to do some stuff with *NO* additional comms or security hazards, and some with some highly secure comms and very constrained changes in behaviour with those comms across the Internet or not. All are useful.
Rgds
Damon
http://m.earth.org.uk/
we have the problem here in denmark, that all the excess electricity at higher prices, cant get sold.
so if it was automated that you only buy the cheap, theres an excess that will never be sold.
so now what ?
What's the wifi connection for? It seems like I now need to keep my router/modem on all the time now, instead of just when I'm at home and want to use it. I know I'm unusual in wanting to turn off things that I don't need to use, but this seems to be giving with one hand and taking away with another.
Now, put a SIM card in the thing, and it can use existing networks that are already on 24/7...
Max.
This is an idea brought to you by people that do not understand statistics.
Statistically, it is possible that every damn compressor will turn on at the same time resulting in such a peak current it will collapse every grid everywhere. But how likely is that? Statistics works and the power demand is about even. No spikes. Day in, day out same consumption. When there is an anomaly (generally weather vs. power lines) and power goes down for a large area, you'd notice that power restored progressively as it is known that lots of fridges will start running on every subgrid.
Now, change appliances to be "smart". And how likely will it be that someone sends a "signal" to allow them to turn on ALL at the same time and bring down the grid? And fr what? To try to even out the miniscule unevenness in the demand curve?
This is a dangerous "invention" that results in nothing positive. If you want to reduce the peak usage, that is already done by variable pricing for the large commercial sector. For consumers that can draw no more than 200A (at least around here!) from the grid, they balance the demand because of laws of large numbers - statistics.
It would be a better idea to put Nikola Tesla's plan to provide the whole planet with free unlimited wireless power into action.
I think at this point the electrical grid needs to expanded and hardened. Electricity prices keep going up and service keeps going down and no one is doing a thing about it.