Cyborg Beetles, Cyber-security, Smart Buildings, and the Smart Grid

Cyber beetles provide an interesting glimpse into agent based interactions. Smart grids and smart buildings are integrated today using deep, integration, and complete control of the underlying processes. As more and more nodes are added to any system, the overhead of maintaining all interactions at a central point becomes more significant. In grid-scale systems, system designers have managed complexity by limiting diversity; a system may be managing ten thousand substations, but at least they are identical systems. A current DARPA project dramatically demonstrates a better approach.

At a recent IEEE meeting in Italy, Michel Maharbiz of the University of California demonstrated his Cyborg Beetle. His team has implanted electrodes in a giant flower beetle and mounted a wireless receiver on its back. The team is able to cause the beetle to take off, to hover, to turn left and right, and to land. Someday, a system like this may be used for surveillance or to guide rescue operations.

The beauty of the system is its simplicity. It uses an off-the-shelf wireless receiver. The signals sent to the beetle are very simple. The beetle performs all complex acts without requiring direct control. The biggest challenge is placing the electrodes. The interface consists of six electrodes implanted in the basal nodes of the flight muscles and in its optic lobes.

The beetle is arrives able to maintain its equilibrium. It comes able to synchronize its muscles to maintain efficient flight. The system uses the minimum signals needed to make the beetle do so. Like scratching a dog on the side to get that hind leg going, the cyborg beetle gets an itch to fly and takes off. Because the messages are so insignificant, this approach saves battery life as well programming complexity.

The beetle has evolved for efficient flight and balance. A core principle of ecology is that the most intense competition is always intra-niche competition. Beetles compete with other beetles, and compete most intensely with beetles that seek the same food, and live in the same place. This is a good model for the smart grid and for smart building interactions.

We want the most rapid development we can get for each of the nodes of the smart grid, and for each of the technologies of smart energy. To get this rapid development, we must put these technologies in direct intra-niche competition, and not allow competition to be lessened by large product lines or entrenched systems.

We can do this by limiting the control and integration we use between each node on the grid. We must eschew deep integration and direct control of the processes of each substation. Just as the Cyborg Beetle operators leave flying to the evolved processes, we should leave substation operation to the substation, and home device operation to the home devices. We want a rich, diverse ecosystem of energy strategies, an ecosystem with intense competition.

Control of the Beetle is limited to deciding whether to hover or to land, to turn left or to turn right. The beetle knows how to fly, and how to land. A beetle that will not fly can be replaced. That’s how it should be in the smart grid and in the smart building and home. Let the node take care of security. Let the node take care of operations.

You can watch the flight of the Beetle at MIT Technology Review Multimedia (http://www.technologyreview.com/video/?vid=217)

Cyber Security for the Grid

SCADA security, often called cyber-security when talking of the smart grid, is one of the areas where not only the answers are difficult, but often selecting the right questions is difficult. Supervisory Control And Data Acquisition (SCADA) refers to the on-line, computer-based monitoring and control of process from a central site. SCADA, which puts little intelligence into the distributed points, is still the primary model used for utility distribution systems, including the telemetry and operation of today’s dumb grid.

The SCADA model of systems architecture was appropriate when we were building monolithic systems using the very expensive minicomputer and networking was in its infancy. This led to the then obvious decision that the system has exactly one controller. Two systems sharing data was an unacceptable hindrance and bottleneck on process control. Large monolithic systems are expensive to install, expensive to update, impossible to partially upgrade, and do not imagine a need for inter-component security, any more than I imagine security between my arm and my leg. Every integration between two systems was detail oriented and required exposure of every detail, no matter how unimportant.

Distributed inexpensive systems are the rule today. Systems with full security and mutual authentication between every node are still orders of magnitude faster and cheaper than the old systems. Communications are orders of magnitude faster. Almost all of the constraints about how things needed to be done are now no longer true.

For too many control systems, the old models still apply. I spend a lot of time in the somewhat less critical building systems space. Nearly every vendor in that area prices an enterprise controller so that we will buy only one, and that one talks to all. Integrations are excruciatingly slow. The vendor, knowing he will only sell a few of these, prices them accordingly.

Before we built our Enterprise Building Management System (EBMS), we had multiple conversations with BAS vendors about installing multiple enterprise controllers rather than one. The incremental cost of the bits would have cost them nothing. I understand their need to get, say, a quarter million dollars per site. I just wanted my site to consist of 20 peers rather than a single master. They believe that 20 peers should cost 20 times a single system for the site. This was a marketing decision, not a technical decision, and it was a bad one.

We went to a distributed approach for EBMS (just search the archives), something that looks nothing like the approaches of SCADA. I can now upgrade parts of the infrastructure by replacing a single autonomous system agent in a single location. The deep intimacy that old integrations required is gone, and the reliability and resilience of the system is improved. This means it is possible for me to roll out incremental security fixes, or even system agents from a different platform, without spending years and re-training all.

I’ve heard a lot of scary, scary things when discussing SCADA. "Our system is so large and complex you may not comment on it until you have studied it for years" (So your system would fail if key plant engineers got hit by a bus going to a birthday lunch. That is yet another security problem). "Our system is so exceptional that it cannot share account management with the corporate HR systems." (So the business process to turn off remote access to these systems is too convoluted to occur in a timely manner). Recently, I have listened as SCADA engineers have railed against security researchers who expose security holes. "Our system is so unwieldy that we cannot respond to identified security holes in a timely manner." This attitude is dangerous for smart buildings and for the smart grid.

Security is about being able to do the right thing at the right time when requested by the right person. Denying access is just the most trivial part of that. Security is knowing whether to trust inputs received from others. Security is self detection of configuration changes, i.e., awareness of system integrity. Until smart buildings and the smart grid come to this fuller awareness of security, they will be too immature to interact.

Energy Interoperability Standards: Smart Buildings, Smart Grid

Earlier this month, Bill Cox of Cox Software Architects proposed the formation of standard committee for Energy Interoperability at OASIS. The core of the proposed work is the definition of XML and Web services interactions for so-called Automated Demand Response, growing out of work at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory Demand Response Research Center. The proposal comes from the context of many discussions in and related to the OpenADR Technical Advisory Group, GridWise Architecture Council, Grid-Interop, the NIST Smart Grid project, and GridEcon (an upcoming conference on the economics of the Smart Grid - http://www.gridecon.com/ ).

The UCAIug, whose members are largely utilities and their suppliers, is an identified source of requirements, goals, data models and comments. Before chartering, the committee wishes to identify other stakeholders with other perspectives. Collaboration with other groups of stakeholders is actively being sought. Other stakeholders include energy market makers, Independent System Operators, and policy and regulatory groups.

Smart buildings are critical to the success of energy interoperability. Owners and integrators of smart buildings are invited to participate. The proposed committees work will be particularly important to those working on Net Zero Energy (NZE) buildings.

The proposed work offers a path to national and perhaps international markets for energy-responsive systems. Today, such communications are balkanized and suppliers must re-develop all core functionality for each state. A national standard is expected to speed innovation and adoption of new E-Tech products.

The original proposal can be found at http://lists.oasis-open.org/archives/smartgrid-discuss/200902/msg00007.html To join the smartgrid-discuss@lists.oasis-open.org list, send email to smartgrid-discuss-subscribe@lists.oasis-open.org. There is no commitment to join OASIS or participate in a technical committee.

The discussion is part of a broader effort within OASIS to apply applying the standards and methods of e-commerce to new energy. You can read about this effort, known as OASIS Blue, at http://www.oasis-open.org/resources/white-papers/blue/.

For information or inquiries about either the Energy Interoperability committee or about OASIS Blue, contact me.

Lord of the HAN: One Agent to Rule them All

The National Institute for Standards and Technology has divided the users of the power grid into workgroups for each different area. Industry to grid (I2G), Commercial Building to grid (B2G), Home 2 grid (H2G) and even Vehicle to grid (V2G). Clearly there is a lot of overlap. The large home may have more sophisticated responses than the small office. When we are all done, I hope we have one common set of interfaces for all of them.

Each have their strengths. I2G hosts the most advanced conversations relevant for distributed generation (DG), with its long experience of local steam plants and of cogeneration. B2G, sometime called Business to grid by its members, has the most advanced expectations of the arms-length negotiations with the power grid. V2G presents the clearest models for distributed identity and lifestyle interactions. But I think that H2G has the most advanced system architecture, driven by the diversity of technology and personal preference in the home market.

The model adopted by the H2G seems the closest to a service oriented architecture relying on loose choreography. Homes have appliances and entertainment systems as well as environmental controls. Homes are values driven, and so are early adopters of generation technology that may not yet make economic sense. Homes are personal, encompassing all the different life styles, sleeping patterns, and everything else that makes each household different.

This model relies on the autonomous agents plugged into the HAN, each defending its mission, each interacting with prices from the grid. When I say agent and mission, I’m thinking of Gail Horst’s (head of grid responsiveness for appliance maker Whirlpool) that a washing machine cannot respond to the grid unless it knows there is no bleach in the current load. There is also the concept of the home agent, coordinating the responses and programs of each.

This master agent (“Your personal Energy Day Trader Friend!”) might run on your PC or MAC, use WS-DD (Device Discovery) to feel what’s on the HAN, WS-DP (Device Profile) to understand their capabilities, and instruct them as to the homeowner’s wishes. This model maps well to the findings of the Olympic Peninsula Project as well on to developing visions for the NZE (Net Zero Energy) home.

Lynne Kiesling described the inside the building energy market as the most efficient clearing mechanism with the lowest technology bar to integration at the B2G summit sponsored by NIST in Chicago last week. This makes for some extremely interesting home generation distributed generation, agent-by-agent prioritization concepts. (What if the dishwasher can never outbid the grid for the solar panel energy?)

Is HAN leading the way for B2G with this vision? The master agent for the commercial building would have to be enterprise aware, or perhaps tenant aware, depending upon model. Is HAN leading the way for I2G in this model? The master agent for I2G would need to be aware of manufacturing schedules and other enterprise functions, perhaps even labor contracts.

Do these other entities need what is architecturally already part of the HAN?