Soft and Gooey won’t Hold Back the Night

A cyber attack has already caused a multi-city power outage, according to a report delivered by Tom Donahue, a CIA analyst speaking at an energy security conference in New Orleans last week. I just hope that people thinking about this are doing a better job thinking about real security than are those in building controls or those I have talked to at energy conferences.

Most control systems engineers seem drawn to what are called egg security strategies. An egg has a nice, crisp, esthetically pleasing security system called a shell securing a soft gooey inside with no barriers whatsoever. When this security system is subjected to the planned security stress, being sat upon in the nest, it holds up perfectly. When subjected to unexpected stresses, it fails completely and badly. Even the smallest breech of the shell will introduce infection that will fester and rot the internal systems.

Many banks used to think a hardened shell was fine to protect systems. Because all in-bank systems were inside their firewall, they performed few audits. They “knew” that all systems inside the perimeter were trustworthy. Secure in this knowledge, many ATM’s based on Windows NT 4 (or worse) were rolled out. No patches were ever needed.

One day some of these banks decided to issue lap-tops to loan officers. Perhaps they were styled as personal bankers, and expected to make sales calls on businesses in the evening. Perhaps they were supposed to take their work home. Inevitably, someone, sooner or later, went to some place they out not have on the internet. Or perhaps their son used it for an evening of gaming. In any case, an infected PC arriving on a completely unsecured, un-patched, un-defended homogenous network created many a memorable moment for bank IT staff. No money was stolen, but a lot of ATMs were off-line.

A better approach to security is situational awareness, not just a locked door. If what you want is a locked door, it will be far cheaper to not cut a door, but leave the wall intact. Of course, this may limit functionality. Far better, like the high-end hotel, to have a doorman always on duty, who recognizes who is staying in the hotel, and even holds the door open when they arrive. The doorman has an unpredictable variety of responses to a security incident. He may knock the intruder down, He may sound an alarm. He may merely bar the door.

Perhaps you are sure that no one will sniff your BACnet or LON off a network hub to get to your building systems. Perhaps you know of no way to use the open Zigbee you use for automated meter reading to get to your controls. Perhaps all your technicians always treat their diagnostic laptop in a secure manner, and so you can rely that everyone with physical access will always use a secured computer.

Building and grid operators may get away with this for a while. But when someone does get in with malice on their mind, the results will not be a minor annoyance. And it may well include a loss of light.

Water & Power

Water policy is a bit afield for me, but sometimes it is worthwhile to look at the spaces nearby to see better, what one works with every day.

Water is in always in the news here in the southeastern U.S. Winter rains have done little more than put the ongoing drought in a holding pattern, not getting any worse, but not yet getting any better.

The towns in the triangle are running low. Mandatory water restrictions are in effect across the Research Triangle. Mandatory restrictions do not seem to result in any actual reduction for most users. Neighborhoods in Durham are still arguing over whether their homeowner’s associations still legally require them to water their lawns.

The most recent restrictions do seem to be cutting into certain businesses. As they pay for their domestic water with unemployment checks, I am sure that the displaced workers appreciate that their domestic water is still priced for affordable lawn watering.

I am keeping an eye on Durham, which sank to less than a month of drinkable water, and suddenly discovered that it had a larger water supply, now designated a “Premium” and “Normal”. I guess it’s a lot like the quality electrical service I have at home, which is up all the time if you don’t count the flickers.

The water systems don’t appear to price their product high enough for capital renewal. There is more than one main break a day in Raleigh—one reported noted dismissively that in the last one “only 200,000 gallons” were lost. All spending is determined politically, and the mayor has declared that in 2008, more pipes will be replaced. Again, it sounds like to power grid, which has plenty of money for storm repair, but no money for storm proofing.

Price signals are even worse for water than they are for electricity. To save money, the water bills are sent out every two months. On a recent plane ride, my neighbor told me how her water heater leaked when she was out of town for a few days. The heater was in the attic, and the outflow saturated the walls and created a pool in her crawl space. Three pumper trucks were required to drain under her house. She moved out for six weeks while the walls were rebuilt. The water company did not notice and her bill was under $160.

Water pricing is kept artificially low, that is why there is no capital renewal. Since prices are how we communicate scarcity and value, end users treat water as an abundant valueless resource. Regulators occasionally step in with pretend solutions that are despised (like the flush-twice toilet). Real innovations, which would be driven by price signals, do not occur.

Water may soon be recognized as a more critical issue than energy, causing us more degradation of life style sooner than does global warming. Rarely do people have some sort of event that consumes an order of magnitude more electricity than usual, as did my flight-mate above. Perhaps we should plan now to add AMI (Automated Metering Infrastructure) to water as we are now doing to electricity. If so, we should commit now to an open interface that included the customers.

And while we are at it, why not collect customer email addresses and cell phones as well, and email/text them when their water use suddenly shoots up in a sustained way. They can always ignore it if they wish.

Let me see. Scarce resource creeping toward a crisis. Inadequate capital expenditures driven by misguided progressive populism. Too-low prices causing society to substitute regulation for innovation. Nothing in common here.

Safety Net for Zero Net Energy Buildings

When thinking about Zero Net Energy Commercial Buildings, the most important thing is how you get to net. Many have willfully (it seems to me) accepted the delusion that carbon credits will be a useful or perhaps even significant component of this net. Such people suffer from a failure of imagination. They do not imagine that there will be new technologies.

They have also fallen into the fallacy that tomorrow will be a straight line from today. Today you can buy carbon credits fairly easily. My favorite source is free carbon offsets. These will not be so easy to come by in time. For one thing, the FTC is already looking into their fraudulent issue, sure to reduce the supply. The more important reason is that if we move in any significant way toward the 2030 challenge (or should I call that, after EPACT 2007, the 2025 mandate?) there will be many, many more buyers. More buyers chasing less product will be, as always, a prescription for rapidly rising prices.

The more important net is the honest balance of consumption, generation, storage, and purchase. Most sites will need all four.

Consumption gets most of the attention today. Reducing consumption gets the press. We know how to reduce consumption. It will not get us to zero, though.

Generation is pretty well understood as well. We will need to keep a close eye on real life metrics to make sure we are not swapping relatively clean distant generators for dirty (and noisy) generation locally. This demand will provide a ready market for renewable of all types as soon as we learn to smooth demand. And that will require storage.

Storage is the wild card. Storage will need to be a mix of technologies, and even energy types. I have written of storage before (And the winner is…) and of how future markets will create more ways for people to store energy. Some of these, especially some forms of thermal, change the order, i.e., store first, generate (or transform to a more useful form) second. The inefficiencies may even drive the more rapid adoption of the DC Commercial Building.

Nanoptek has recently demonstrated its new store-first, generate later technology, a process that greatly enhances the generation of hydrogen in sunlight by doping nanostructures with titanium. Technology such as this will make it easier to store energy now, and generate later.

We should probably add a fifth item to the energy toolbox of each Zero Net Energy Building – load shaping. Peak shaping can only reduce amenity and performance, albeit in return for price concessions. Load shaping, in which the energy use is not curtailed, but shifted to a different time of day can greatly improve the operation of the power grid. Load shaping is an approach that is more amenable to profound shifts in energy consumption patterns. Load shaping is what makes the other strategies work.

If you own a commercial building, you may be load shaping already. Even without formal storage systems, you may be over air-conditioning in the early morning to save air conditioning during business hours. There are power companies out there that will not only give you discounts, but will pay you for load shifting. And if you build the infrastructure to account for load shaping, you will have the infrastructure you need to manage generation and storage.

Pity, you will probably not be able to get a carbon credit for it. I wonder of the ISO's might award them....

Beyond Efficiency, Beyond Sustainability

Regular readers know that sustainable buildings are not sustainable unless their inhabitants are willing to continue using their features. Nothing is less sustainable than the feature that is uncomfortable, or awkward to use. For the owner of commercial buildings, the desired amenities are ones that reduce costs, or extend asset life while reducing tenant inconvenience.

Building Systems that support agile integration open up realms of integration for everyday use. These functions have been available, at great expense, for those who absolutely required them. Others have been adopted by those are simply driven, like the energy strategies used by those who live off the grid. These functions, and the amenities they offer, will make the the operating efficiencies they also provide sustainable.

So what kinds of new abilities will real sustainable buildings offer? Access to information will allow all service providers to improve operating efficiencies and to offer new and enhanced services. Whether the service providers be life safety related or task (contract) related, operating efficiencies allows improved use of resources while reducing risk and liability. Below are some benefits that intelligent, agile integration will offer to building operators:

• Knowledge Systems for Autonomous Maintenance –Intelligent systems able to determine and communicate maintenance and repair needs based on defined requirements (e.g., reliability predictions/calculations) vs. measured performance and sensed and assessed condition.
• Automation Technologies for Life-Limiting Factors - Able to detect, assess, and repair materials, structures, equipment, and systems affected by corrosion, fatigue, breakage, stress, and other life-limiting factors.
• Automation Technologies for Critical Performance Factors - Able to detect, assess, and repair materials, structures, equipment, and systems with respect to safety, security, health, and environmental issues.
• Facility Condition Knowledge Base & Baseline - Real-time human and machine access, both locally and remotely, to as-built/installed configurations, maintenance/repair history, and material/equipment life predictions.
• Uniform Equipment/Process Information Standards - Digital documentation and sharing of data on material and equipment properties and characteristics (including simulation models) and O&M best practices.
• Sharable Standard Equipment/Process Models - Mathematically accurate 3-D simulation and performance models for all forms of material and equipment, such that vendor-provided models can be "plugged together" into the master facility simulation model.
• Facility O&M Advisory System - Intelligent advisory systems able to process status information from all facility sensors and systems in real time and make optimum recommendations for proactive and corrective actions (including emergency response) and which is able to implement the desired actions through automated command and control systems and through communication with O&M personnel.
• Integrated Safety/Security Systems - Continuous monitoring for safety/security hazards and threats from personnel, equipment, and materials and provide automated tracking and alerting capability when a hazard is detected or suspected.
• Facility O&M Systems Integration – Connection of the facility O&M system to higher-level enterprise management systems, enabling passing of status and activity information to enterprise functions such as business planning, labor allocation, resupply, and other site support functions.
• Enterprise O&M Systems Integration –Connection of the facility O&M system to customers, equipment/material suppliers/manufacturers, and automated design advisory systems, including the feedback of maintenance/repair results/data to the master facility simulation model.
• Enterprise Control Model Linkages - Feedback of maintenance and repair results and data to process-level, facility-level, and enterprise-level knowledge systems, enabling visibility of performance and issues, real-time updating of operational control models, and extension of the planning and design knowledge bases.
• Shared O&M Knowledge Bases - Accessible databases of maintenance and repair experience for different kinds of capital projects/facilities, enabling the sharing of expertise across the industry with appropriate provisions for anonymity, security, and intellectual property protection.

These higher order activities require common building semantics (naming of things) BuildingSmart looks to be the only game in town for capital asset semantics. These semantics will unify the information coming from the sensors below into objects intelligible to the building owner.