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.

Duh...

[mspohr]

This is a no-brainer. Here in Switzerland, our houses are wired with meters that can shed load (water heaters, clothes dryers, dishwashers) during peak times. It's been this way for many years... even before these new technologies were available.

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.

Re:

[Desert Tripper]

How does the meter do that? Does it control the circuit breakers connected to these appliances, or does it communicate directly to the CPU of the appliance to tell it to turn off? Here, we have small VHF receivers that the utility attaches to central air-conditioning units. They send a signal, a relay interrupts the control circuit to the compressor contactor.

Re:

[mspohr]

This is really old technology. We have separate wiring to these appliances.

Re:

[Mike89]

This is really old technology. We have separate wiring to these appliances.

How does the wiring know whether to be live or not?

Re:Duh...

[mspohr]

It's turtles all the way down, sonny.

Re:

[jackb_guppy]

Florida has the same, it saves you ~$10 per month for the power company to turn off high current items like - Air Conditioners. I had that cut, because of at home mom w/ 2 little ones. The house temperature hit over hundred, then it took up to 3hr to bring it back down 78, every evening. Where once it was cut (yes, they come out a cut a wire) house stayed even all day long, and our power bill dropped because the A/C worked less. Also mom and kids were not roasting all day, or driving to mall to keep coo

Re:Duh...

[jd]

There ARE, interestingly enough, network protocols (such as BACNet) specified and approved for use in HVAC and other heavy-duty systems for intelligent controlling of devices by computer. Open Source implementations exist for these protocols. There are other embedded systems and remote devices control protocols: Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA, widely used by power generator companies), Controller Area Network (CAN, maybe in Linux, either now or soon) and Fieldbus are the two I know with open Source implementations. You could probably even use SCTP (already in Linux), SS7 or Active Messaging. Such systems aren't fast, so ACE's CORBA could do the trick. Grid Resoures for Industrial Applications also looks interesting. There's also the Open Robot Control Systems project. Domestic and street-level devices to control may not be widely available (or perhaps exist), but the low-level infrastructure certainly does.

My question is not, then, why it is not in wide use, but rather why it took me a long time to dig up the project information on these protocols, why information tends to be very sparse from the hobyist/garage community, why there are no Woznik Mk. II's providing homebrewed household systems, or Prof. Heinz Wolff II's running an X-Prize for such systems. All the foundation work has been done, the protocols are all available, the proofs of those systems exist in many of the more sophisticated facilities, everything that preceeded the hardware revolution in microcomputers has for many years also existed in the domestic appliance level and even the local substation level. What we have not seen is much of a garage revolution, the way we have for many other technologies. X10's aility to turn lights on and off seems to have been about the closest attempt.

Don't expect the Big Guys to do it. If there are trains that don't support regenerative braking yet, given the state of the rail network, then it is reasonable to assume nobody else in the upper echelons is going to care. This stage has invariably, for virtually all technologies out there today - including television and radio, been carried out by hobbyists, enthusiasts and homebrewers. My guess would be that if those hobbyists don't hobby along soon, this concept will simply never enter any market ouside of the real high-end. Mainframes will rule forever and the micro of the appliance world will never exist.

By that logic

[Moraelin]

Population of Switzerland: 7.5 million-ish
Population of United States: 300 million-ish

No brainer huh? Why don't you look at those numbers then go and think about it for a bit.

Any transition to any sort of smart power meter is going to take a long time in the U.S.

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

Re:

[Tickety-boo]

Actually, the scalability is the problem right now. If you are a muni, then sure, you can get the meters and the corresponding backhaul for one city from one vendor. The scalability issue comes in when a bigger utility like SCE or PG&E need 1M-5M of these meters to create a homogenous environment. None of the vendors, even the big ones like Itron, can produce that many yet. So we wait while the vendors ramp up production. Meanwhile all of the mid-sized US utilities are starting their AMI projects,

Ripple control ++

[EmbeddedJanitor]

Many places already use ripple control to control water heaters. So it's a matter of just extending this idea.

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.

Re:Ripple control ++

[peipas]

I think a better solution for saving the energy drain of having a vat of water constantly being heated would be to instead install a tankless water heater. They are more expensive, but they heat the water real-time through a series of small tubes.

Re:Ripple control ++

[sapphire wyvern]

[Tankless water heaters] are more expensive, but they heat the water real-time through a series of small tubes.

I didn't know you could use the Internet to heat water.

Re:

[Macgrrl]

I didn't know you could use the Internet to heat water.

And waste all that energy created through flame wars!

Re:

[Spy der Mann]

I didn't know you could use the Internet to heat water.

At first i thought "rofl!" but then I realized that this is precisely what watercooling does. Maybe one day someone will create a water heater for your coffee using your CPU's heat.

Re:

[jamesh]

The advantage of heating water overnight was that you would be using 'off peak' electricity.

On that subject... doesn't anyone know what the losses are on a well insulated water heater?

That does not spread the load

[EmbeddedJanitor]

With a tankless system, you need to provide power on demand or the customer gets a cold shower. All those folks showering at 6:30 am need their water heated at the same time.

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.

Re:

[Yetihehe]

In Poland we can order plan with "peak" and "off peak" prices for electricity. Then you can mount clocks which automatically turn your boiler on in "off peak" hours. Typically there are 2 hours "off peak" about 12PM, so you can still run boiler to have warm water in the evening.

Re:

[Eivind]

This makes it significantly -worse- if the problem is a large peak in electricity-consumption, and lots of people want to shower at the same time, for example in the morning.

My mother has a smart water-heater, because she has power-pricing that is such that the first 3KW she draws is very cheap, but usage above this costs much more.

So, it normally tries to heat the water to 75C, which is then automatically mixed with cold water to deliver 60C water. If, however current power-usage is above 3KW, it lets the

Re:

[ThreeGigs]

Want to know a strange, but true fact?

It would actually be even *more* efficient, and a total lower carbon footprint (if you're into the greenhouse gas thing) if most consumers with electric water heaters would switch to coal-fired water heaters.

Strange, eh? True though, because turning coal to electricity is only about 60% efficient. Plus transmission losses. Yet heating water with coal can be done easily with efficiencies of 90% and higher. Same deal with electric heat. We'd use less coal overall.

Had a ne

Re:

[JoeD]

I looked into this awhile back.

The big advantage of the tankless water heater is not the energy savings, it's the not running out of hot water. For large families, this can be a lifesaver.

And believe it or not, the energy savings may or may not exist. It takes a lot of energy to raise the water temperature from cold to hot in just a few feet of pipe. A well-insulated standard water heater can use less energy by slowly heating the water, and then intermittently applying heat to maintain the temperature.

An

Re:

[vlm]

And believe it or not, the energy savings may or may not exist. It takes a lot of energy to raise the water temperature from cold to hot in just a few feet of pipe. A well-insulated standard water heater can use less energy by slowly heating the water, and then intermittently applying heat to maintain the temperature.

And there may be other expenses involved in installing one. Since the tankless heater uses more gas when in operation, you'll probably have to replace the exhaust vents. Because of this, we were quoted $2,000 (two thousand dollars) for just the installation of a tankless heater. This is on top of the $750 for the heater itself.

I cry BS on this. After my old 90s era tank leaked (about 10 years old w/ 8 year warantee) we got a new tankless total cost of parts and installation about $2K. Would have been much cheaper if we hadn't relocated the heater and all its pipes across the basement to make space for future remodeling. The heater itself was in fact about $750 as he states.

Gas bill during the summer dropped more than half, and our only summertime gas appliance is the heater.

Fact is, we only used the old tank about an hour a d

Re:

[dreamchaser]

Every house or apartment I've ever lived in used natural gas to heat the water. I don't know the actual breakdown but I believe the vast majority of hot water heaters in the US use gas or oil to heat them, not electricity.

Some things need the juice

[BadAnalogyGuy]

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 m

Re:Some things need the juice

[hacker]

"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!)."

And you know what the net benefit is of that? Higher power bills for the remaining people who do not generate their own power.

I didn't believe it either, but NPR did a story on it a few days ago. Basically the power companies are REQUIRED to pay higher prices back for people who sell them back power... up to 7x in some cases. This means that the additional cost they pay OUT, comes right out of the pockets of everyone else. It's only $2-$3 per-month for most people, but that could still mean quite a bit if spread over a small town of subscribers.

It's funny... we start using corn to produce ethanol, and people in Haiti and Darfur end up starving. We go green by producing our own power, and we end up paying more for it anyway.

Seems like there's always someone looking to get ahead, by screwing over everyone else in the process.

Re:

[wellingj]

That's not how wind power works out here in the mid-west. My friend looked into it (he has an old windmill on his property and thought he might as well replace it with something functional) and he said he would only get paid about 1/3 of the rate that we pay the energy company.
<rant>Maybe NPR was taking an average of all states and since there are probably more blue states than there are red states, it would make sense. Although come to think of it the state I live in is a blue state at the moment...

Re:Some things need the juice

[sjames]

Figures don't lie, but liars figure. They are required to pay more than wholesale because they charge the customers more than wholesale. It's a simple matter of fairness and incentive. Why would I find it fair to sell power TO the grid (often during peak houre when it costs the MOST) at $0.02/KWh and buy it back at $0.14/KWh (at night when it's cheap)?

If the power company buys excess power at retail from home producers, they STILL gain because it helps them shave the peaks.

Re:

[ZorbaTHut]

Because the power companies are providing a service, namely, the transmission lines.

Why would you find it fair to sell used games to Gamestop for $1 per game, and buy games for $20 per game? Same reason - because Gamestop provides a service, and pays money for the right to provide it (in inventory space, real estate, and employee wages.)

Re:

[sjames]

And a home selling power back reduces the load on the transmission lines (or more to the point delays the need to build more). It's not as if there are homes turning a profit on their power generation. The meter may run backwards occasionally, but they still end up owing at the end of the month.

It's not the huge rip-off against the power company as it was represented to be.

And frankly, I would NOT sell a $20 game back for $1.00 unless used games were going for $1.50 or so. I'd rather trade with someone

Re:

[ZorbaTHut]

"Should" according to what? In the case of Gamestop, at least, it's pretty trivially clear that Gamestop shouldn't, largely because nobody has driven them out of business by doing that yet - it must be less profitable than what Gamestop is currently doing. (I suspect actually unprofitable, because those profit margins would suck.)

In the case of power lines, there are many trickier issues. There are losses, for example - if you put one watt of power in, you don't get one watt out. There's maintenance, which

Re:Some things need the juice

[blitziod]

well large apartment communities are a place to start. Here in texas we have hundreds of large multi-unit communities. They almost all have terrible windows, doors and insulation. Require them to all have double pained glass ( instead of the large single pain sliding glass doors on the balconey) and decent insulation. I used to rent one of those and my 800 sq ft apt had a higher per month bill than my parents 2500 sq ft house did. And frankly that house was not all that well insulated either and it had an ancient AC unit from the 70's.

Re:Some things need the juice

[Jesus_666]

Actually, as a German I'd say that America could save a lot of money by actually building houses. Seriously, the typical US American house would be called a very large garden shed in Germany - sometimes the only thing between the facade and the interior is a bit of drywall. In comparison, in German houses you can usually expect about thirty centimeters (about twelve inches) of aerated autoclaved concrete, which is a very good insulator; the roof is usually insulated with mineral wool.

In general, our houses have greatly superior insulation and, if you're smart about when to open your windows, are mostly independent from the temperature outside. Granted, our houses cost half a million bucks but they're something you build to live the rest of your life in.

Of course Germany isn't Florida with its hellish^Wtropical climate, but even in areas where aerated concrete, mineral wool and properly insulated windows can't keep your house cool they can reduce the need for air conditioning.

Of course this doesn't work in those rather large parts of the USA where you have a fair chance of having your house destroyed by a tornado/hurricane/massive flood/earthquke/other natural disaster; at least not if you can't stand dropping a few hundred grand on a house every few years.


A comparatively cheap and easy thing you can do is to apply mineral wool wherever possible. If you can find them, that it; when my brother installed the stuff in his house a few years ago he couldn't find a retailer who carried it in the Indianapolis area.

New for small customers, not large customers

[IvyKing]

The Milwaukee Road had a demand metering and limiting system installed on the eastern half of the Rocky Mountain electrified railroad in 1916 specifically to limit demand on the utility. OTOH, if they weren't Montana Power's largest customer, they were probably one their 2 or 3 largest customers.

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).

duh!!

[zappepcs]

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 wor

Re:

[zappepcs]

I wouldn't want them turning off mine either, but if they sent me a signal which I could program my devices to react to, that would be okay. It would be a voluntary action on my part to let some devices power down for a pre-determined time. If enough people do this, it would reduce peak loads significantly. Say you choose 15 minutes power down for your hot water, A/C, and freezer. I choose say 30 minutes of power down when the signal is given. The amount of energy requirement that is removed from the grid a

A lot more needs to be done to the grid

[stox]

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.

Re:

[icebike]

No the grid does not have to be re-engineered. All the inter-ties for micro-power already exist. All the laws are already on the books.

The technology already exists.

3rd world status?

[Vellmont]

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.

Re:3rd world status?

[belg4mit]

Would you set a kettle on to boil all day, in the off chance you might want a cup of tea too?
Frugality is a virtue, gluttony is not.

Re:3rd world status?

[jmv]

There's two issues here. One is reducing the total energy consumed (i.e. not using it at all) and the other is reducing the peak power (choosing when to use energy). The former is always useful. The latter mainly works around infrastructure problems. In terms of reducing emissions, the only reasons I can see for changing when to use energy is to balance the load for "green" energy like wind/solar that aren't available all the time.

Re:

[blitziod]

we should also mandate all new water heaters be tankless by 2015, or sooner. they save 8-27 % on energy for heating water. If the eco nuts would stop bothering SUV drivers and try to mandate changes that save consumers money WITHOUT drastic changes to lifestyle we could conserve a lot more.

Re:3rd world status?

[Vellmont]

we should also mandate all new water heaters be tankless by 2015, or sooner

Maybe on new construction, but it's not a simple plugin replacement for a tank. Anyway, why choose a particular technology over another? If you care about energy efficiency, just mandate that the efficiency of the water heaters be above a certain percent. We do it with refrigerators, why not water heaters?

No but it could be used to keep costs down

[Sycraft-fu]

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.

Re:

[Vellmont]

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 sure you can do such a thing. The question in my mind is.. why? Electricity usage isn't new. Why are we looking at this now? Are people using a lot more electricity per capita these days? If so, why? All my appliances are becoming more efficient, so I'm likely using less power. Find the root of t

Re:

[Sycraft-fu]

Yes, people are using more power. We also have more people, and they aren't spread out evenly. Transmitting greater amounts of power becomes a greater problem, especially when it is AC as ours is. You either need higher voltage, higher current, or both. If you have higher current, you need larger wires to lower resistance, however the skin effect starts screwing with that in AC.

All in all there is an increasing demand for electricity. That necessitates either upgrading the grid (some places are doing that,

My senior project

[gQuigs]

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 [wikipedia.org]

The first (horrible) PoC is available on launchpad.

All of this is possible now

[icebike]

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.

Re:

[shermo]

Firstly, Consumers can "make choices about how and when to consume power" but they currently have no incentive to do so. Smart meters give them that incentive. Secondly, Water heater control isn't as great as it was, (I'm unsure of the reason for this, presumably they make up an increasingly smaller proportion of electricity bills) and is being dropped from most security of supply legislation.

Re:

[blitziod]

it sounds like what we have in this country is a shortage of capital. Rich people all have the best insulation, etc because they can afford to spend the initial big bucks to save more down the road. But this hurts us all because most people can not. We need an orginazation to provide more capital for poor or working class americans to conserve. This would help the economy and the enviroment, plus ease financial burdens on lower income households.

Re:All of this is possible now

[icebike]

True.
It takes money to save money.

In Washington State, power companies (Puget Sound Energy for example) paid for all the CFL bulbs you could carry away as long as you paid the sales tax on the bulb.

These things are do-able today, without major changes to the grid, or the buildings, or anything else.

Of course, CFL bulbs are not without a down-side, namely the mercury in side. Power companies are also stepping up to recycle those, but I bet most end up in the trash.

Re:All of this is possible now

[statemachine]

Of course, CFL bulbs are not without a down-side, namely the mercury in side. Power companies are also stepping up to recycle those, but I bet most end up in the trash.

The mercury "downside" is usually overblown. When compared with the amount of mercury (or any other toxin) that would be released into the environment due to a standard incandescent's power requirements, the CFL actually comes out ahead. And for older folks, the mercury amount is magnitudes less than the amount in the old thermostats and thermometers. Did you call Hazmat when you broke a thermometer? I doubt it, even though we all knew about mercury poisoning.

Ask TreeHugger: Is Mercury from a Broken CFL Dangerous? [treehugger.com]
Urban Legends Reference Pages: CFL Mercury Light Bulbs [snopes.com]
Why Use CFLs? Environment [michigan.gov]

Do handle light bulbs with care. However, clean-up procedures are fairly simple if one breaks. And bring old bulbs to a recycle center.

Also, don't forget to recycle all your appliances, electronics, and batteries. The chemicals and elements contained in those are just as hazardous to your health and to the environment, if not more so. The places that take these items also take the CFL bulbs.

Re:

[antifoidulus]

I wonder if there would be a lot of interest both from lenders and potential borrowers to create a "green" microcredit program? A quick google search for green microcredit doesn't reveal anything interesting, but basically is there a program that lends people money at a low interest rate to invest in various energy saving technologies around the house? The borrowers could then take the savings and use them to pay back the lenders. It wouldn't be a charity, nor would it be a particularly great investmen

Re:

[AuMatar]

CFLs cause a lot of polution for minimum value. If you want to change tech, go straight for LED. Almost no waste, highly efficient power-wise and will last for years without replacement.

Re:

[icebike]

Not a solution till the are common on the shelves.

You still cant find them in the stores to any reliable degree.

Re:

[AuMatar]

True, but CFLs aren't a good answer either, due to the mercury. I'd stick with normal bulbs until LEDs come out. Its just a matter of productizing it, the tech has been there for a while.

Save Power Maybe, Cost More Longterm You Bet!

[Ron Bennett]

Shedding load during peak periods for large industrial users truly makes a difference, and economically pays off for both utilities and them.

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 pricin

Re:

[Ron Bennett]

I'm glad it works some places, but in the U.S. greed rules the day - demand-based pricing, long-term, will cost most Americans more.

In regards to my comment about it being unnecessary for residential users, that's very simple ... if industrial users shed load during peak periods, residential users don't have to...

And keep in mind that even just one large industrial user shedding some load is equivalent to all the electrical usage of hundreds, if not many thousands, of residential users combined.

Ron

Want to save power?

[jjh37997]

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.

Re:

[jackb_guppy]

TIVOs can truly turn off. An "alarm clock" circuit running on rechargeable batteries, can be use to bring the system back on line with time to spare to record a show. Use a WAKE-ON-LAN for network activation.

Home routers can be built the same way. With flash memory holding the last on-image a quick reload can happening as needed. Power down after say 5 minutes of not activity.

Remove wireless circuit to again be battery powered. With auto-activation for re-charge when they run low. This way, they are l

Re:

[subreality]

I think you're mixing your stories up. Most devices continue to use a small trickle of power even when they're soft-off, on the order of a watt or two. That's still a problem worth investigating, but it's only a small number of devices that use more than a few percent of their on power when they're soft-off.

Re:

[thogard]

If you keep repeating that, will it be true?
My TV takes 3 Watts when off and 65 Watts when on and it uses that 3 W to keep the tube elements warm so I don't have to go out and buy another TV. There is a PC here beside my desk that also takes about 3 W so its going to use about $3.56 per year with the new higher rates compared with about $.024 per hour when its on. It uses that 3 watts to run in a suspended state so wake-on-lan works and it boot quickly. My cheap power meter (only reads it 1/2 w or .01A)

Think of the mad scientists!

[Thanshin]

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.

Smells like over engineering

[Iloinen Lohikrme]

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 si

How it works in france

[Saffaya]

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.

Re:fine I'll say it

[DaveInAustin]

It's not a matter of turning off all the electricity to your house. It's a matter of running your dishwasher and drier during off-peak hours and cutting back on the A/C during the really peak times. Right not, there are no incentives consumers to time their electricity usage, even though the cost to the utility varies wildly, and the utility is expected to provide as much power as you want. This BTW, is one of the reasons for the blackouts in California. That and the fact the companies like Enron knew this fact and exploited it.

Re:fine I'll say it

[Anonymous Coward]

more like power plants are idiotically designed to not be scalable

You design a gas turbine that spins at infinite RPM. Let me know how that works out for ya.

The nature of power plants (turbines, etc) makes them plenty scalable, within a range of possibilities. Building more plants (or generators within plants) requires a massive new capital investment, as well as environmental compliance.

There is no type of currently-available power plant that is infinitely scalable without further capital investment--solar is limited by how much sunlight is shining, wind by how much wind is blowing, hydro by friction of water flowing through a finite pipe, nuclear by turbine and heat dissipation capacity, gas by turbine size, etc. You can't just dump more fuel into any of these systems and expect a positive response.

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Re:

[icebike]

I cry foul!!

The plants were designed to be scalable, and they did plan for growth.

Then a funny thing happened. Environmental-whackos stepped up and put a stop to all new electrical generation plants for a period of around 15 years. You couldn't even expand existing plants during this period.

Only when things started getting really bad, and California blacked out a couple times did the rules start to loosen.

Hell it was probably you marching up and down with your scruffy beard and cardboard sign in college th

Re:

[Anonymous Coward]

The environmental wackos had little to do with the blackouts in California. The problem was that the state took forever in deregulating the power sector, so that no one wanted to build a power plant for five years because they knew they would be forced to sell it due to deregulation (which required each utility to own plants corresponding to 50% of power it sold).

Re:fine I'll say it

[statemachine]

Environmental-whackos .... Only when things started getting really bad, and California blacked out a couple times did the rules start to loosen.

No. Enron, amongst other crooked energy traders, and the states that enabled them (Hello Texas!) stepped up. California wasn't counting on being screwed over by its fellow states (as in transmission lines deliberately scheduled to block power going *into* CA during peak times).

The California blackouts were caused solely by criminals doing criminal acts. There was plenty of power otherwise.

If anything, California has since realized that it needs more of its own power generation facilities to protect itself from its neighbors that would sell it down the river (more literal than you know) in no time flat.

Re:fine I'll say it

[icebike]

> California has since realized that it needs more
> of its own power generation facilities to protect
> itself from its neighbors

But this is exactly what I was saying.

California had long had the practice of dis-allowing new electrical generation plants anywhere in the state by tying them up in such a morass of regulation that it was effectively impossible to build new plants there.

This was done intentionally to push the generation plants (and the associated pollution) out of their back yard into someone elses.

Why should Texas, who built and owned their own plants and transmission lines (and who, for a long time saw no need to tie into the national grid) be forced to deliver electricity to California SIMPLY so that California could avoid pollution. Texas didn't escape the pollution. They had gas and coal fired plants belching 24/7 so California could flip the switch but never see the smoke stack.

California got exactly what it deserved. Washington, Oregon, and even Montana also faced increased rates due to California refusing to improve its infrastructure.

Re:fine I'll say it

[StormyWeather]

Exactly. I live in Texas, and if you don't want to pay through the teeth for polluting our land for your cheap electricity then eat blackouts.

Stop building power plants, then regulate how much suppliers in your state can charge the people. What could go wrong?

Did Enron screw California over? Yep, don't like it? Fix your goofy ass laws, and build some infrastructure. It's the same exact thing that's happening right now in the oil market. In the U.S. we stopped building any infrastructure in refining or producing, now idiots are crying that someone else controls the price of their fuel.

Re:fine I'll say it

[otter42]

I've got mod points, but it's better to reply in my capacity as a controls engineer working in sustainable energies, then just mod you down.

As debatable as it is whether CA utilities did or did not build for excess capacity, it is quite frankly irrelevant. The kind of excess capacity that they would have planned for would have not been what we needed then, and especially what we need now.

We need measures to reduce energy consumption and measures to better use what we've got. Thermodynamically, a big plant isn't anywhere near as efficient running a small load, than a small plant running a small load. Ideally, we'd be able to generate 95% (I made that number up out of thin air. 100% is of course ideal, but obviously not attainable) of our energy with base-load plants and only occasionally spin up small gas turbines for the peak loads. While smart grids do nothing for the former (unless people just become more aware of the cost and thus reduce usage) they certainly do help with the latter. A washing machine run at 3AM, for all intents and purposes, is ready in the same amount of time as one that was started just before bedtime.

A good place to look is island grids. Many islands literally do not have a second source of power, so they have to specify their one plant to handle both base and peak load. This is increases capital costs and reduces efficiency at base load, increasing recurring costs. And they can't even sell excess capacity, so the island utility is really pushed up against a wall. Unless... unless you do something to spread out the load. Because, let's face it, an island grid is actually pretty nice from a simplicity standpoint because there are a lot less unknowns. No trains, little industry, just a lot of washing machines and air conditioners.

So, in short, placing the blame on someone else is not the answer. Conservation is not a virtue, and global warming and energy shortages don't stop at our borders. Smart grids are coming and are in fact a very good solution to many of our capacity problems. While they don't help save power use, they do make the usage more efficient.

P.S. As an aside, it's unfortunate that the last, least important step-- time optimization--, is being done first. If people would just put that damned ADSL modem on a timer (mine uses as much energy in a day as my refrigerator), unplug chargers they're not using, and put the computer in hibernate mode at night, that would do far more than time-optimized smart energy.

Re:

[Mean Variance]

P.S. As an aside, it's unfortunate that the last, least important step-- time optimization--, is being done first. If people would just put that damned ADSL modem on a timer (mine uses as much energy in a day as my refrigerator), unplug chargers they're not using, and put the computer in hibernate mode at night, that would do far more than time-optimized smart energy.

Really? I find that very hard to believe. On average, the fridge is using about 1 kwh/day.

Energy Star [energystar.gov]

It's always on and always drawing some power even if the compressor isn't cooling. The DSL modem is drawing more power per day? How much? I just really find that hard to believe.

Re:fine I'll say it

[icebike]

Any technology that requires heating large quantities of water will not be instantly scalable yet can still be used for peaking (high load hours).

Gas fired electrical generation plants can respond faster than Coal fired ones, and Nuclear (contrary to your assertion) can also respond quite quickly to additional demand.

All of these require that their boilers be kept at or near steam temperature at times when peaking is likely to be necessary.

About the fastest responding technology is hydro power. Penstocks can be opened and turbines spun up in less than 5 minutes.

Current electrical generation capacity is "scaled" by replication. As a utility approaches 100% utilization during peak periods it starts planning another generation plant. These things 1 year to design, 2 years to build, and 15 years to get permission to build. By that time the design is obsolete.

The problem is one of NIMBY, pure and simple. It will take several California brownouts before the political hacks get out the the way and let the engineers do their job.

Real solution: communication and open market

[salec]

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:
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, ...) on low price/priority settings and our immediate need appliances (hair dryers, computers, lights, microwave ovens, ...) on high price/priority settings.

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.

Re:

[Locklin]

This could be done now, with current appliances. There are already two 110v lines coming into an average North American house. Set one line to be high priority/high cost, the other becomes a cheap, low priority line that gets switched off by the power company during peak hours. New houses could be wired so that the owner always has a choice of plugging an appliance into the cheap or expensive outlet.

Of course, appliances such as dryers and electric ovens use both lines to achieve 220v, so some retrofit woul

Re:

[moosesocks]

Modern Hydro (and Pumped-Storage [wikipedia.org]) plants can actually respond within a minute.

In areas where it's geographically practical, Pumped Storage is also a fantastic way of dealing with the peak/off-peak usage problem, and could also potentially be used to provide "solar power at night," albeit at great expense.

Re:

[Sandbags]

Actually, scientists have been looking at creating VAST underwater resivoirs, combined with surface resivoirs, in a cyclic pumping solution. The idea is that water exists in it's natural state underground. During the day, when solar is being generated faster than it can be used, we pump water to the surface, or simply a higher level resivoir. At night, we let it flow back to it's subteranian home, and generate power. Since the flow of water from surface to underground can be tightly controlled, we can p

Re:fine I'll say it

[saigon_from_europe]

About the fastest responding technology is hydro power. Penstocks can be opened and turbines spun up in less than 5 minutes.

And once running, 200MW turbine can change its production for 5MW (2.5%) in just 4 seconds! Probably even faster, but that was a limit that we had to obey when we were controlling power system frequency in Serbia.

Re:fine I'll say it

[sjames]

Capacity costs money. When it goes idle for 16 out of 24 hours, it's just a dead weight. Base load plants are generally more economical than plants that can easily adjust their output, so peaks genuinely cost more to cover in any event. If they want to offer customers a discount to help them shave the peaks and avoid the outlay, I fail to see the problem.

I don't think the plans that essentially have homeowners buying on a commodities market are likely worthwhile. People already have jobs, becoming ameteur commodities traders in the off hours is a bit much to ask.

Hoever, simple things like a different rate during set peak hours can work well. Most households can delay laundry and dishwashers until the evening or early morning. Many do anyway because people are at work.

Re:

[dunkelfalke]

but then again there is good investment return in peak load powerplants like pump storage powerplants, especially when coupled with a nuke powerplant.
they can be loaded using the cheapest electricity availiable and they can sell at the peak load (the most expensive electricity).

Re:fine I'll say it

[WaltBusterkeys]

A few idled generators costs nothing in ROI.

When something--like a generator--costs tens of millions to build, you measure the interest costs in thousands of dollars per day. The person writing interest checks to UBS or Citibank would very much beg to differ with your assertion that idle capital is free. The money it takes to build something like a generator isn't free. Even if the hydro generators cost nothing to maintain (doubtful), they're still expensive in interest costs if they sit idle.

Re:

[wizardforce]

It's completely amazing... my foes go out of their way to make themselves look ignorant... it's a gift. you sir seem to be hell bent on paying as much as possible for your electric bill every month... and you seem not to understand that power plants come in FINITE sizes and actually cost a shit load of money.

Re:

[lukas84]

I'm not a specialist in electric power, but here in Switzerland we have what we call are "Pumpkraftwerke".

They are basically water powered generators utilizing a large storage lake - when demand is high, the water runs from the upper to the lower lake, creating electricity. When demand is low, the water is pumped from the lower to the upper lake.

They require a large difference in height between the two seas (usually in the lower hundreds), but otherwise are pretty low maintenance.

There _is_ of course some e

Re:

[SecondHand]

I believe the Swiss buy cheap electricity from the French at night to pump the water back up the mountain so they can use it during the day when the electricity is more expensive.

Re:

[homer_ca]

Sure, there's plenty of ways to bank cheap off-peak electricity if you're clever about it. There's a system for commercial buildings to make ice at night in an insulated tank that's used for AC during the day.

Re:fine I'll say it

[Ron Bennett]

They do plan for it - and is the reason "grids" came about in the early days of electricity ... industrial loads tend to run somewhat opposite times of residential loads, and thus much of the time, base-plants, despite often not being that scaleable, can economically cover much of the load without problem.

So while people use more power at night, many industrial users tend to use less, so it evens out most of the time.

The tricky time is late afternoon / early evening where peak loads can occasionally spike significantly requiring the extended use of peaking power plants, such as gas fired units to cover the shortfall at much higher expense...

However, on many grids in the U.S., most days, such peaks are not a big issue ... it's typically only extreme cold or hot weather that leads to excessively high peak loads, though many transmission operators mitigate such extreme situations by directing industrial users to shed load and/or slight voltage reduction.

Ron

Re:

[Sandbags]

"many industrial users tend to use less"

Trust me on this. I am an IT provider to nearly 100 industrial sites as part of my commercial client base. NONE of them shut down their systems at night, NOT ONE. They may let a bunch of employees go home, and many don't run 3rd shifts, but most of the equipment stays on, even the lights in most cases.

It's a very rare industrial site that has not learned that the time and energy and logistics of stopping production and starting it again, with product left on the li

Re:fine I'll say it

[zippthorne]

Woah woah woah.. Who decided that 78 degrees is the target here and that less than that is "unacceptable?"

Humans are most comfortable at a "room temperature" of 72 degrees, on average. At 78, you're going to have nearly one standard deviation of people that are actually sweating (and not necessarily just the fatties, either). I think we can all agree that office stench is also important to keep down.

The problem is manifold, as like I often say, "You can always put on another sweater. You can't take off more clothes than all of 'em."

Re:

[Sandbags]

Actually, 74 "room tempurature" is considdered cool to most people, including my wife. 76 is a comfortable setting for most people. The standard settings that the EPA and your power company recomend it to keep the tempurature at 78 or higher in the summer and 68 or below in the Winter.

Actually, in the summer, you should wake at 78 degrees, it should rise to 85 when you're not home, return to 78 in the evening, and rise slightly to 82 at night. In the winter, you should wake at 70, it should drop to 62 wh

Re:

[Sandbags]

I forgot the EPA link:'

http://www.energystar.gov/ia/partners/product_specs/program_reqs/thermostats_prog_req.pdf [energystar.gov]

sorry

Re:

[Sandbags]

One of my personal pet peaves is those damed plug-in scent warmers.

I had a few, and when going through my previous home a few years back (it was INCREDIBLY poortly insulated, and I did everything I could to save power and avoid $350 bills), i took a serious look at what those things were costing me.

On average, they only burn about 4 watts each. I had 4 of those for 18 total watts (a few diferent types that used different power loads), and one candle plate (thing you set jar candles on to melt, used 17 watt

Re:

[LighterShadeOfBlack]

Nowhere does it say in the article that it'll actually cut power to a house outright. In fact power cuts are one of the primary reasons for the system. All of this is made abundantly clear in the article. You did read the article, right?

Re:fine I'll say it

[wizardforce]

congratulations, you've missed the point entirely; and why don't your clocks run on batteries?

But wait, there's more! It'd turn non-battery security alarm systems off when you're away. Not a good idea.

the idea is to reduce the power you use, it doesn't mean you need to shut off your power completely [why would you if you have perishables in the fridge?] it means you can program various sections/appliances in your house to do certain things, raise the temp in the fridge a degree [reasonable power saving measure] or high demand appliances like washers/dryers/dishwashers start at a time that is less straining on power etc. your choice. the bottom line is that you would have the ability to automate the use of power in your house so it 1) can save $$ and 2) put less of a strain on the grid during high demand. why? too high of a demand can cuase blackouts and wtf are you going to do when your power shuts off pretty much RANDOMLY in your house around that time?

Re:

[ZorbaTHut]

While high demand does cause blackouts, there's another way to phrase it:

Insufficient supply causes blackouts.

It's not the consumer's fault that they're asking for too much power, it's fundamentally more the producer's fault for not providing it. Or, at the very least, equally the producer's fault.

Re:

[cp.tar]

While high demand does cause blackouts, there's another way to phrase it: Insufficient supply causes blackouts. It's not the consumer's fault that they're asking for too much power, it's fundamentally more the producer's fault for not providing it. Or, at the very least, equally the producer's fault.

If supply is limited - which it is - then high demand comes at a high price.
Anyone want to pay double or quadruple for their electricity?

It has been well-known for ages that supply is limited, yet virtually no-one cares to save energy. This is because though limited, supply is sufficient for the most time. Only when it becomes insufficient will people start implementing such measures on a broader scale.

Re:

[ZorbaTHut]

On our current scale, supply is only limited because they haven't built more power plants. It's not like we're hurting for space to put nuclear reactors, and it's not like we're hurting for nuclear reactor fuel. They're just expensive, and some people think they're evil.

Eventually you might be able to say "we can't generate more power", but we're nowhere near there and won't be for decades even with the most pessimistic predictions.

Our supply is limited, not by physics or any sort of universal constant, but

Re:

[jackb_guppy]

I was in area they were changing everyone's meter out of a smart meter (that was 8 years ago). They were wiring them into the cable system.

Great Idea - wire the cable to power grid, so when the lighting hits power line (every high probability was shown for underground power) it jumps across the meter and then takes out your TV, Computers and rest. The $2k you spent on lighting arresting your power panels was for not.

I had them remove it the day they installed it. Had managers coming out to talking to tal

Re:

[AuMatar]

And the cost of the extra computer hardware, connectivity, and electricity to drive those things would probably cost more in both cash and resources than the way things are now.

Re:

[jackb_guppy]

There is better choice for peak demand plants:

Connect two lakes and pump up from lower to higher on off hours. Flow down generating electric power for demand periods. Already done in MO and CA.

This would also work well with large sun "fired" plants. They create power when sun in sky, create too much, and pump water during day. Generated electric power during the dark hours.

--

Is there truly a price difference?
Cost of oil is constant in oil fired plant. Yes, cost is rising but the morning oil is no more