DC, Service, and Bacteria

Regular readers know I am intrigued by DC (Direct Current) power systems in buildings. This fascination was born while examining a data center UPS system several years ago. The potential efficiencies shouted out to me. This week, I found something new that fueled my interest.

Most consumer devices are DC powered. That brick outside your laptop is to convert AC (Alternating Current) power to DC. Your television has a similar brick built inside it. That annoyingly large plug on your cell phone charger is another AC/DC converter. The digital world is a DC world. The exceptions in your homes are the incandescent lights, and the motors in your appliances: refrigerator, dishwasher, and washing machine.

In commercial buildings, the designers and maintenance staff often refer to building systems and their controls collectively as the low voltage systems. The low voltage systems are powered by DC The controls that manage the air conditioning system and all their sensors are powered by an isolated low voltage DC system. The security system with its window sensors is DC. The video cameras and their network are powered by DC. We live in a DC world.

Several years ago, an APC salesman generated an epiphany as he proudly demonstrated his new data center racks. The racks has built in power conditioning and batteries, and seemed sturdy and well designed. The servers were fed from the batteries at all times, protected from power dips, sags, and spikes by the constant power source. All power coming into the racks was converted into DC and fed into these batteries, keeping them fully charged. The power coming out of the batteries was converted in AC power, and routed into plugs for the servers. Each server, as they usually do, had a plug in the back into a little removable brick, just as in your laptop, converting that power back to DC.

It was the proximity, I guess. I have the same set up supporting the server room at work, but the refrigerator-sized battery is down the hall, invisible during normal operations. Seeing the batteries and the servers so close, I could no longer ignore their absurdity. I was converting power to AC to go a yard to convert it back, losing 10-30% of the power each way, only because it was the way things always were.

Since then, I have paid more attention to DC systems. Since then, I have often wondered how many "almost there" technologies are held back by infrastructure assumptions. How many solar projects, for example, that don't quite make economic sense, are held back by the double tax of DC to AC and back again....

So why this week? Why do I bring this up again?

For the last two mornings I have had the pleasure of breakfast at the B&B with a quiet electrical engineer, unassumingly working on a project I am calling bacteria-powered low-voltage distribution. Much of metabolism can be envisioned as getting rid of electrons to the most available receptor; his company is offering bacteria wires as the as the most available receptor.

He sees his system being used as a third world power source He only needs enough power to light LEDs at night. In many areas wood is burned for light in the evening, contributing to deforestation and reducing the fuel available for other purposes. His company has recently received stage one funding, and is looking for short term revenue in other areas. One potential project is yard lights that are powered by the soil they are pushed into, and that work better than solar for northern latitudes in moist climates.

I got a call from the folks at FreeLight yesterday, to discuss their progress with in-place hybrid installation of DC in existing buildings, and the availability of low power DC lighting. Such lights are programmable to display any color, or even pictures and text. Such lights are very light, with high efficiency, and no local power conversion.

Can such systems work together, moving the power for emergency lighting off the grid and away from batteries? Would labor cost avoidance (maintenance for batteries) be the factor that drives adoption?

Future buildings and local generation are coming. There is no need for future building systems to be powered like those of today. Challenging our power distribution assumptions will be as important as changing our power generation assumptions.

At FIATECH, I spoke on specifying buildings by services, not by technology or process. The engineers at FIATECH agreed that service and performance specifications would free up their creativity and innovation. Energy distribution strategies might be part of that innovation.

How to Enable the Energy Revolution

This weekend, I read what may be the most important book yet for those transforming today's grid into the Intelligent Grid, and transforming today's buildings and the systems inside them into Smart Buildings. No, it is not Thomas Friedman's "Hot Flat and Crowded", although that work has set the table nicely for discussions of the importance and opportunity of this effort. It is not and of the chap books from the Department of Energy, or the IEEE, or EPRI. It is not one of the many books on environmental eschatology. Nor is it any of George Gilder's visionary history books that bring perspective to technology.

I recommend that anyone involved in these efforts read "The Future of the Internet--And How to Stop It" (TFOTI) by Jonathan Zittrain. TFOTI is at first glance a sober history of technology and culture and regulation. TFOTI tells how the internet grew from its roots in telephone systems and closed garden communities into the amazing engine for transformation, innovation, and new wealth creation we know today. This happened because of a series of legal decisions and technological choices that let people place any device on the communication on-ramps, and create or install any program on their devices. Zittrain calls the capability of the internet to generate and support new technologies and new capabilities "generative".

Zittrain warns that we may be losing this generative aspect of the internet. The internet is being neutered by the growing deployment of locked-down devices, systems that do only what their manufacturers allow. The glamour and ease of use of the iPhone is afforded by locking down the system to approved programs. Xboxes and PlayStations offer connectivity on locked down computers. The social networks are becoming walled gardens; once again business users are establishing accounts on FaceBook, MySpace, LinkedIn, and Plexus as they once established multiple email accounts on COMPUSERVE, AOL, Prodigy and others.

Zittrain is concerned that we are losing the future opportunity of the Internet. We are recreating the dynamic of the time share system, and loosing the generative features of the internet. The siren song of ease of use can lock in today's internet and forestall future advances. Even the multimedia free-for-all risks turning into one large Cable TV system, with predicable results and one-way communication. Zittrain shares his vision of how to develop new technologies and social structures that allow users to work creatively and collaboratively, participate in solutions, and to thus preserve generativity of the Internet.

When we look at the power grid today, we see ATT way before the breakup, perhaps even before the Carterphone ruling. Today's power grid is essentially closed to the wall outlet, and with walled garden communications to the meter, at best. You can use power with any technology you want, but no technology that generates, or stores, or converts energy is allowed to participate in the wider grid. All access to the energy networks is jealously guarded by the utilities and the utility commissions. The Carterphone lawsuit opened up the old phone network to new technologies such as answering machines and fax machines. We need a similar opening up of energy networks.

The challenge of interoperability, and standards, as we move into the era of energy technology, is if we can create a system for energy creation, distribution, and use that is generative. Solving the most pressing problems of our time, those of energy and its effluents, requires engaging the creative talents of as many as possible. No one knows what the innovations of tomorrow might be. We must learn from the lessons of other large networks and build something that is generative.

Get TFOTI and read it. Send a copy to your utility commissioner as well.

(Full Disclosure: In the mid eighties, I was coding for CitiNet, briefly the largest walled garden BBS in the Northeast. Last spring, I ran into fellow CitiNet alum and star salesman Myron Kassaraba; he was talking up his smart energy venture Outsmart Power Systems. I see former CEO/CTO Tom Considine at Christmas each year. I would love to hear from any of the rest of the gang ...)

SCADA Security, Building Systems, and First Response

The security of the "internet of Things" and the security of the wider internet are about to collide. The Systems that have been hidden or off line will be on-line. Embedded systems, building systems, power supply and distribution must all change their security model. Eggshell security, the hard shell on the outside and no internal security, will be torn apart not only by the Smart Grid, and all its participants and influencers, but by new models for energy interaction as microgrids, pocket generation, and on-site storage increase the number of participants.

It is hard enough to define security for systems that are always on, always connected, always in a web of trust. Federated Identity Management is difficult, but relatively well understood. Outsourcing of system operation, cannot outsource the location of these systems; cloud computing is still grounded in the physical locations of the systems in the building, and as part of the grid . Crises in power and building systems are often interrelated, and failure of one may cut off access to the federation of security providers.

In a system of systems, in which the systems are expected to respond best when the challenges are greatest and the actors are least known. The ventilation system for space holding hazardous materials must communicate its import and explain its mission precisely when the unknown fire fighter logs in and connections to other systems are lost. The microgrid generating enough power for net outflow must accept commands from a stranger precisely when and because the ice storm has ended outside network connectivity.

Take a theoretical mixed use neighborhood and its substation, filled with zero-net energy buildings (internal storage, generation, conversion of energy), its microgrid generation on the parking deck, its demand/response ready buildings, and its electric cars. Consider the linesman, properly, as yet another class of first responder. Is the power line up or down. Is the downstream connection hot or not? If my office is powering my house, who has the authority to interrupt the flow, and what is the liability for damage upstream? What does the firemen know about whether the self generating, power-storing building is on the grid or not?

We will need new architectures for building system security, ones that share information freely with emergency responders, but know which information is pertinent the enough SCADA, ones performant enough for power, but with federated security at each junction. We will need new definitions for security, ones that understand external identities and roles, but that also understand how to interact when the same event that compromised power integrity has cut off access to external identity and role providers.

We will need now architectures for SCADA, ones performant enough for power, but with federated security at each junction. We will need new definitions for security, ones that understand external identities and roles, but that also understand how to interact when the same event that compromised power integrity has cut off access to external identity and role providers.

We need ways to express the variety of security decisions that these interactions will require, ways that degrade gracefully with communications, and ways that can be pre-cached for almost-as-good decisions.

These security must be able to interact with local business systems. For the first responder, they must provide access to the right information and to the right control systems. They must have access to the local business agreements for the provision of power, and for the liabilities for non-performance. They must be able to distinguish between what is show by necessity, what can be shown for curiosity, and what will be shared only with a warrant.

Security is fundamentally a problem of situation awareness. The situation involve multiple systems and multiple contexts. It requires federated identity management across the multiple organizational participants that will fail gracefully to temporary local "good enough" security. It requires business policy aware forward-caching of decision making frameworks on a building by building basis.

Interfaces for the Power Grid

This week has been crazy busy, but I managed to submit the following to the B2G interoperability group at NIST

Each interface around each process of the grid should allow bi-directional buying and selling. The interface should support discoverable diversity, allowing the standard to grow over time. Ideally, the interface would be the same for different forms of energy, allowing the same economic interface to be used for buying standard power from the grid, solar energy from the neighbor, or thermal energy from the data center in the basement. I should be able to set my heat pump with gas pack to switch not only on peak efficiency, but on the price for each fuel.

The interfaces should be non-hierarchical and composite. Remote power generation, the local sub-station, and the campus micro-grid should have full peer interfaces; my decision to buy from a remote plant or a local storage facility should be through the same interface.

So, what are the characteristics of this interface?

E-Business Interfaces
Offer and Acceptance

Price is clearly the first component; price is how we indicate value and scarcity. Short of a surprise malfunction, every brown-out is a failure of pricing. As pricing may occur in the context of an auction or negotiation, prices must go two ways, as an offer, as a bid, as a request for quotation.

Price Scenarios

Note: in the scenarios, day (or tomorrow) can be replaced by week, month, year or any other period one wants to contract

• Your current power costs is this much
• Power costs this much tomorrow.
• The price curve for tomorrow is…
• The price for up to so much power (perhaps as a per cent of yesterday) is x, for over that amount y, for an arbitrary number of levels,
• One-time urgent offer with no bid.
• One-time offer to be bid until market clears
• Demand Response is either a new auction or it is a RFQ for power buy-back already negotiated.

Transaction Scenarios

• Your instantaneous use is…
• I want to purchase this amount of energy tomorrow.
• If the price curve for tomorrow looks like this, my purchase will look like…
• We accept your offer as above and wish to enforce it.
• Short term request to relinquish previously agreed to power.
• Short term request for additional power bids
• Long term request for significant give-back, say a summer furlough
• Failure to perform will result in power costs of…
• Other Transaction Details
• Penalty for underperformance [as producer] is…
• Penalty for underperformance [as consumer] is…
• Contract is enforceable, and consumer use will be throttled to meet agreement.
• Contract was authorized by …
• The following power qualities are critical to this contract….
• This security token / ID / account overrides normal billing process (especially for electric cars)
• Qualities of Power Delivered

Other qualities of power must be transmitted along with price. In some circumstances, these other characteristics might trump all other considerations, as projected reliability might concern a data center as much as price. It may be a condition of contract that the supplier notify the buyer of changes (or predicted changes) in a “critical quality” (see Other Transaction Details) as quickly as they would of a DR or other rapid response scenario.

More may be discovered in the future, but an initial list might include:

Quality of Power

• Predicted Reliability of Power during time of contract (perhaps derived from EERP).
• Additional capacity in critical bottlenecks. This attribute may be a quality of a substation, or it may, stripped of price and transaction, be a quality of an internal UPS or electrical panel.
• Remaining power at current or predicted burn rate. This may describe diesel generator, or fuel cell, or …
• Remaining Time / capacity to fully recharge storage.
• AC or DC
• Carbon accounting of supply
• Environmental accounting (wildlife, habitat, renewable, etc) of supply
• Geo-location of supply (allowing Buy Local and NIMBY to each affect markets with their dollars)

Should power stored in a battery report its effectively higher carbon load when it is sold or consumed?

Other Market Issues

All interfaces should support many-to-many interactions. A customer should be able to select from any of several aggregators if available. A customer should be able to buy from specific generators beyond the local T&D if desired. There must be a way for the buyer to discover power sources that meet the characteristics he desires and to negotiate with them. There may be times when local transmission conditions want to find emergency load use rather than emergency shedding.

Market Fables

These are use cases, but they have been selected to push away from traditional scenarios. Traditional use cases have already been well handles by others. What follows are edge cases, designed to test the limits. If we do our work well, what Fred Krupp calls the “winners of the race to re-invent energy” will be able to innovate in ways I cannot anticipate.

The Electric Car

In the evening, the electric cars come home, drained from a day of driving. Perhaps they were doubly drained, used to carry their office buildings during the afternoon brown-out. What will people want from their cars next….

• To sit in the garage overnight, slowly charging.
• To be ready to drive 15 miles in twenty minutes when I go get one last kid from athletic practice.
• To be at least half charged and ready for anything in two hours when the baby sitter arrives and mom and dad head out for an evening on the town.
• To quickly get to at least a 40 mile range in case I get an emergency call from the nursing home, and thereafter just be sure to be ready for the morning commute.
• To get a charge for 15 miles by 8:15 when I head to choir practice at church. Better make that 25 lest we stop for coffee afterward.
• It's two hundred miles to the beach and we plan to take full advantage of the expensive week-long rental by getting there tonight! Kids, grab your bags, we are leaving in 20 minutes. Oh, and the car needs a full quick-charge, no matter the expense.

The above require a wealth of power signals. Some of them (capacity of current storage) can be transmitted back using the same interfaces as we have for capacity of a house battery. Not all interactions will be with the home base of the car.

When parking downtown, I want to plug in my car. I may want to choose between a quick visit, for a cup of coffee, and an all-day back-to-school shopping event.

The Green Garage™ offers locally generated wind power for re-charging at its own special rates that vary with the wind. Having been burned once, I want to check prices before I leave the car.

When I go over to your house for dinner, I want to plug in. Being a polite guest, I of course want the charges to go onto my own bill.

The whole family gathers in the next town for Thanksgiving dinner. All cars are drained, and need to recharge over the next five hours except for the college kid, who arrives at the last moment, and leaves as soon as he can. Grandpa decides to overrule all normal agreements and cover all the charges for cars plugged in at his house.

The Transacted Household

Zero Net Energy Buildings will be built around local energy generation, storage, conversion, and recycling. These diverse systems will be too complex to manage as control systems, and will have to be interact as agents exposing services. In this model, we will leave them to negotiate power usage among themselves. These devices should use the same economic interfaces rather than detailed control interfaces.

I could ask my dishwasher to run itself, and manage its own budget for the month. I could also set service standards that the dishes always be clean before dinner the next day. This leads to a relatively simple and consistent user interface.

I could tell my solar panel to sell to the grid whenever the price is above a certain amount, and to store any excess energy. The grid might consistently outbid the dishwasher—and that’s OK. If so, the dishwasher would still run only at night.

I could tell my whole-house storage system to buy power at any price until it has four hours on hand. Thereafter it might buy whenever energy is below a target price. I could even let it take bids from the household systems and devices, or from the neighbor. This system would need to charge an appropriate mark-up based upon its inefficiency of storage.

The right sort of abstract business interface between the power grid and our buildings can also be used between buildings, or within buildings.

Third Parties

There must be ways to delegate authority and rights cleanly between parties. Intelligent buildings will move toward knowledge-based maintenance based upon building system analytics. This service will be supplied by remote specialists. These specialists will need access to live use rates and pricing to supply business-ready information (Change the filters on the 3^rd floor; at your energy prices, it will costs you $146 per month until you do). Today, it is difficult to assign rights to such “privacy” sensitive information.

Conclusion

My chief concern is that we do not over-integrate and thereby stifle future innovation. The Grid’s interfaces needs to be lightweight, composable, extensible, and able easily to interoperate with the service, security, and e-commerce standards of business and the internet.