Imagine a future where the effective management and measurement of energy usage is in the hands of the masses, and not just under the control of energy service providers. Claire Saeki reports.
Even for those of us who live in an area where a smart grid is years away, it's time to get savvy on a concept that will change the way we view our homes, or offices and pretty much every space humans build, manage or occupy. If you are in real estate or building industry, the evolution of smart grid will soon be affecting your projects, buildings or clients.
What is a smart grid?
Very simply a smart grid is an energy transmission and distribution network that is set up to allow far greater communication between supplier and user. Once deployed the technologies allow suppliers and users to monitor, alter and measure energy usage. In Singapore, for example, the government plans to let 1.2 mil households choose the energy supplier that offers the package that best suits their needs through the installation of an Electricity Vending System (EVS) or what are generically referred to as 'smart meters'. A six-month trial of the prototype EVS will start with 1000 households this November. The Energy Market Authority (EMA) will then decide whether they will go ahead with the installation of the computer-like meter in all homes.
It is homes, or more specifically the residential market for energy, that has elevated the smart grid into everyday conversation. In the commercial sector, demand management and user supplier communication has been happening for years with examples of mini smart grids happening everywhere from Finland to Korea. "A huge, huge market has opened up", says Bob Heile, Chairman of Zigbee Alliance. Given that residential units account for up to half of a country's energy usage, principal benefactors of this are the utilities and suppliers of related equipment, such as the home automation and metering sectors. The environment will also benefit. Governments across the globe have recognised this, and are subsidising the installation of smart grids to help manage increased energy demand and meet commitments to reduce carbon emissions.
The importance of measurement
According to Farah Saeed, Senior Consultant for Frost & Sullivan's Energy & Power Systems group in the U.S., grid improvement is a top priority for the Obama administration's American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, which allocates US$4.5 bil towards smart grid and related programmes. This considerable sum is to be spent over the next two years. Initial programmes focus on reducing peak power consumption by deploying intelligent meters that can operate and relay data on a two-way network infrastructure, including home area networks, local area networks and wide area networks.
The metering industry has been developing AMI (advanced meter infrastructure) for some time, but now it has come into its own with new, smart meter devices. Saeed explains that pilot tests for smart meters began in 2006: "Europe, in particular, is a bit ahead of the game. This is driven by its goal to meet its 2020 emission reduction goal". Currently, Italy has 30 mil smart meters deployed, and the UK Energy Department recently announced legislation that requires every home in the UK to have a smart meter by 2020. By 2022, all buildings in Europe are expected to have a smart meter. Outside of Europe and North America, Australia is also following in these footsteps.
Different motivations
Heile of the Zigbee Alliance, a group of companies that promotes the use of the Zigbee wireless protocol, notes that different countries are employing smart grid for different reasons. China has demand issues as the country modernises and requires more energy from an already overworked grid. High-tech Korea also struggles with overwhelming demand. In Japan, he says, demand is slightly decreasing but smart grid will offer ability to better manage crisis in supply and recovery after an event such as an earthquake.
"Obviously, without the adequate network deployment of these meters it's pretty much useless," Saeed says. "Hence, heavy investment is occurring in upgrading networks to support the smart grid objective and to allow two-way IP communication." Improved ways of storing energy will not only benefit the earth and utilities companies, but also present economically minded consumers with the opportunity to make money by selling back to the grid at peak prices.
Saeed further explains how individuals or companies can control their energy use. "Computer intelligence is embedded at all key functions of the grid including generation, transmission and distribution," setting up the advanced structure where utilities can offer demand response programme to customers. Variable pricing programme based on peak and off-peak power periods will discourage heavy usage of electricity during peak periods and therefore reduce the burden on the grid. "Research indicates that residential customers who were provided with daily feedback on their electric usage via the Internet or in-home displays reduced their electric usage by 11 percent," she says.'
Got to have standards
Non-energy related companies are making a dash for the bandwagon due to the overlap of commercial applications and products for the smart grid purpose. The network requires deployment of routers, switches, servers, security, wireless and IP technologies, among other things. Take Zigbee, for example. Zigbee is a wireless mesh protocol that allows for two way communication between devices and provides a relatively inexpensive non-disruptive system to be set up on large or small scale. Information within any building unit can be passed from one unit to another as devices act as receivers and repeaters of information. The Chinese Ministry of Information and Industry has endorsed radio frequency technology as part of their five-year plan. Other countries like India, however, have regulations restricting the radio technology that make some systems work. Legislation and stimulus are two smart grid prerequisites, says Heile.
While the Zigbee protocol is gaining traction there are many other standards, protocols and devices that are fighting for attention either with global standards bodies or in countries where imminent large scale deployment opportunities make the financial case attractive, such as China the USA. Products are also crowding the market. For example, Sentilla Corporation, provider of demandside energy management solutions for data centres and commercial facilities, recently introduced a new energy management software. This company also saw a need to provide detailed analysis of the power profile of a datacentre, which they do through a series of tiny microprocessors embedded in intelligent power strips integrated into an existing data centre, measuring energy consumption at the server level allowing wireless measurement at the source.
Impact for building managers
For Saeed, the development of smart grid will impact building management globally in several ways. "Energy management and improving energy efficiency has really gained high importance over the past two-three years and has involved investments in energy efficient applications. Smart grid takes it a step further. Demand response programmes are designed for direct load control management. Customers can sign up for such programmes and allow the utility to cycle off devices during peak power periods in return for monthly credit. Devices include air conditioners, pool pumps etc." Companies such as EnerNOC already offer a similar service for commercial buildings.
Building operators will need to know about these changes but Heile says they may find it a nuisance in the first place; until they realise that these same technologies can be used to their advantage. And this is born out by the facts, says Dr Chris Luebkeman, a Director and leader of Arup's global Foresight and Innovation initiative. He notes that in Finland, some years ago a group of office buildings were networked and metering devices placed throughout. At first people grumbled about the extra work but then the human competitive spirit kicked in. Before long the building managers started comparing their performance with each other and suddenly the buildings were operating at a level of efficiency that none had thought possible.
Communicating change
Traditionally datacentre managers and facilities managers did not communicate, says Carl Cottuli, Vice President of Product Development & Services at Wright Line. But now the business owners are making this happen. Chris Ingle, consulting and research director at IDC adds: "research shows that 57 percent of organisations consider the electricity consumption of their datacentres to be key to their sustainable IT strategy. However, it has been difficult to measure this consumption accurately and manual approaches tend to be relatively costly. Technologies that automate this measurement allow companies to properly implement their vision for sustainable IT.
Companies that produce big users of IT infrastructure energy (like Sun Micro, or HVAC infrastructure producers) are now attempting to respond to that need. What applies for datacentres also applies for homes, the smart grid means that all owners and occupiers of property have control over their own fates. They can choose to be energy efficient or not. If governments and standards boards come to the table quickly, we will all have the opportunity to make a difference.
The big bucks
Facilities consistently in the spotlight for their excessive energy usage stand to benefit the most from a smart grid metering system. Wright Line's Vice President of Product Development & Services, Carl Cottuli, who has been working with datacentre power issues for more than 20 years, says "Much discussion about the features and capability of smart grid are yet to be fully settled. However, even the early discussion about its intended capability can yield benefits to the datacentre manager.
Imagine a datacentre manager who has a business process with large peaks in energy consumption. Today this circumstance sets a contractual demand level that will drive a new level of increased cost for that energy. What if smartgrid allows that same user to align the spike in consumption to a corresponding dip in demand for another user? This would allow an optimised base load on energy production and usage of spinning reserve dedicated to another user. Also, potentially, it would avoid the start-up of peak demand power plants entirely.
In the future offsetting will be a revenue opportunity for highly efficient datacentres that exceed the benchmarks to sell that savings in energy on the open demand market. Today the drive to be efficient is strong enough to compel action for many datacentre owners. That incentive is to not buy the energy they don't need. The smart grid could allow them to not consume it, but instead, to resell it to those datacentres whose energy consumption is well above the benchmark.
