Operational BIM Schedules and Pre-Design Programming

As Chair of WS-Calendar, I receive a number of inquiries about the incorporation of time and schedule into other specifications. In particular, the wider visibility of VAVAILABILITY is attracting some interest. Occasionally these include fragments of xml, and inquiries as to how to apply this information.

WS-Calendar recently completed its third public review and will soon be published as Committee Specification 1.0.

Facility Programming is an important early step in step in the Integrated Design Process. Programming is defined in the Whole Building Design Guidelines (WBDG) as “the research and decision-making process that identifies the scope of work to be designed.” Programming is the first part of the design cycle, during which systems and space requirements are identified by the activities they will support. If the design process is compliant with the formal BIM process (BuildingSmart, NBIMS, etc.), then these systems and spaces are identified as described in the IFCs.

BIM is a collection of information sets and models with identified interfaces / information exchanges between them. A model that is of growing interest is the building’s energy model, which is today derived from a combination of structural and purpose models and [normally] a side questionnaire about the building’s use.

I have recently received early sketches (XML Fragments) of programming documents from Dr. Chris Bogen (Engineering Research and Development Center) in which building services and systems, as expressed in open buildingSMART model format, are included in vavailability to express, for example, the operating schedules of systems supporting dining facilities (and their energy requirements). The ERDC project is aiming toward the development of a format that can be used to compare the expected resource use of a facility during design and express the actual resource use identified through analysis of building sensor systems. With the additional pattern detection algorithms under development at the lab, ERDC expects to have a tool that will compare building use to identify when the use of a building doesn’t match it’s design prediction. The ultimate goal of this work is to create building simulators directly from data provided during traditional design and construction processes.

Over time, many buildings are found to have different energy use profiles then their models predict. Often this is due to changes in operating schedules from that which was predicted. We are beginning to see mandates to update these energy models to match actual results, particularly in government owned or funded facilities.

Lifetime maintenance and updating of these programming documents, including changing the operations schedules, establishes a baseline to compare predicted vs. actual use, and to thereby sooner to detect anomalies due to system degradation or misconfiguration.

An advantage of potential automated modeling within incorporated vavailability, is that schedules can easily be understood and manipulated by building operators/occupants. Once an energy model is in-place, it would be straight-forward to iteratively try out different systems schedules and examine different energy profiles. As we move to dynamic markets, the capability to project different times of use and compare those to projected energy prices might become a new source of value to building operators.

Bootstrapping Smart Energy

What follows are personal musings as we enter public review 02 of OASIS Energy Interoperation. This part of the specification is not feature-complete nor approved by the technical committee.

Energy Interoperation is nearly complete. The OpenADR Alliance will build an industry around the event oriented profiles of Energy Interoperation. New business models and new interactions will spring from the transactive profile, TEMIX. We now have market interfaces for smart energy. The largest problem that remains is finding the market.

Energy Interoperation refines the Market Context, originating in EMIX, to name and define the agreements and interactions that end nodes of smart grids can participate in. We use a shallow definition for end nodes: an end node may front a micro-grid, a campus, or utility or co-op. The grid behind the end node may itself have its own internal markets of energy. The Virtual End Node (VEN), is one of the key participants, one of the essential roles of smart energy.

The top node is the VEN’s partner. Again, Energy Interoperation makes no assumptions about what is behind a Virtual Top Node (VTN). A VTN may be a market surface of an ISO, or of a utility. A VTN may represent the market gateway of a coop or of a commercial landlord. A VEN above may get its assets from a VTN below, and that VTN may have its own interactions with VENs not visible from the outside.

One could summarize the VTN as something that offers a variety of Market Contexts to a VEN. A Market Context may represent a particular tariff or DR program or even a 100 MW 10 hour power trading market. It may even happen that a VEN can find the same Market Context at more than one available VTN. Whether Market Contexts are tied to a single VTN or not is a market rule that is outside the scope of Energy Interoperation.

In the Energy Interoperation model, a Market is the sum of all Market Contexts available to a VEN. The first task of a newly booted, or newly installed VEN is to find the Market. In Energy Interoperation, this begins with Registration—and to register, a VEN must find a Registrar.

There will be many ways to find a Registrar. Because all markets are local, generic internet DNS services will be insufficient to find a registrar without additional information. The home or commercial system enter the URL of a local utility, or may sign up through a customer service page. The utility may confirm the VEN-related customer information as part of registration. They may borrow registration from OpenADE or they may need to know two of three facts: meter ID, customer number, and street address. In the English or Texas models, the meter provider or energy service provider may provide automatic registration.

In the micro-grid, or within a single building, we may need to use multi-cast DNS to use Service Discovery Protocol, as defined in ZeroConf (or as Apple calls it, Bonjour) to find the registrar. Equipment manufacturers and ESI developers may use up-to-date databases to provide a pointer to a registrar at the end of warranty registration. Perhaps a trade association, such as the OpenADR Alliance will maintain a list of registrars, or offer a registration service itself.

However it happens, finding a registrar it out of scope for Energy Interoperation. Different markets will make different choices.

The Energy Interoperation registrar provides the Registration Services. These are separate from the other services of Energy Interoperation, although they can coexist on a VTN. The registrar assigns the VEN a unique identifier for that market. A Registrar also can provide the VEN with a list of VTNs that it can enroll with. A Registrar may also be able to offer pre-enrollment services.

During enrollment, a VEN signs up with a VTN for one or more of the Market Contexts available through that VTN. Pre-enrollment services inform the VEN of what market contexts are available to it, and the VTNS that can provide them. A simple building-based environment may offer the building systems a single VTN and a single Market Context. A Utility-based Registrar may offer a suite of tariffs and programs, available from a single VTN. An open market may offer any number of VTNs. Those decisions are out of scope for the specification.

During enrolment, a VEN subscribes to one or more market contexts. For some markets, it may be necessary to enroll different resources, such as PEV, PV Generation, or a DR Asset inside the VENs account with that VTN. In others, those in which results are everything, the VEN may choose to only establish an Account with the VTN, but register no resources.

Each enrolment, whether Account or Resource, includes a schedule. It is possible to enroll in different programs for different times of day or days of the week. These schedules are described using Availability (vavailability) as defined in WS-Calendar.

There may be a substantial time in mid-enrollment between initiating enrollment and completing enrollment. Some markets may require that the VEN register a performance bond, or submit to a credit review. Some may even require physical inspection of assets. It may be impossible to exchange al enrollment information.

There may be a substantial time in mid-enrollment between initiating enrollment and completing enrollment. Some markets may require that the VEN register a performance bond, or submit to a credit review. Some may even require physical inspection of assets. It may be impossible to exchange al enrollment information.

However it happens, enrollment is complete when the information collected through on-line services and out-of-band practices is sufficient. When a VEN receives notification that enrollment is complete from the VTN, the VTN will begin to send Market signals, and the VEN can begin making tenders and accepting transactions.

Change adds some complexity to the service families above. My new Home EnergyMaster Plus™ may be recognized as a replacement registration for my old Home EnergyMaster™. The registrar must be able to direct the new system to the pre-existing enrollments. A VEN may choose to un-enroll from a Market Context.

But bootstrapping smart energy all begins with registration.

Smart Energy: Some references and guideposts for Implementers

Some References and Links

I know it is hard to keep up with the specifications and changes; I can barely keep up and I am putting the smart grids specifications out there. What follows is a brief summary of the road to OpenADR 2.0.

OpenADR 1.0 is out of date.

OpenADR 2.0 is almost here. It relies on the joint work of xcal/ws-calendar for its time/schedule communications. This work was done in joint effort by an IETF-centered group (CalConnect) and by OASIS

In the IETF:

• RFC5545 B. Desruisseaux Internet Calendaring and Scheduling Core Object Specification (iCalendar), http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc5545.txt, IETF RFC5545, proposed standard, September 2009
• CalendarResource C. Joy, C. Daboo, M Douglass, Schema for representing resources for calendaring and scheduling services, http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-cal-resource-schema-03, (Internet-Draft), November 2010.
• FreeBusy E York. Freebusy read URL, http://www.calconnect.org/pubdocs/CD0903%20Freebusy%20Read%20URL%20V1.0.pdf, April 2009
• RFC5546 C. Daboo iCalendar Transport-Independent Interoperability Protocol (iTIP), http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc5546.txt, IETF RFC5546, proposed standard, December 2009.
• Vavailability C. Daboo, B. Desruisseaux, Calendar Availability, http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-daboo-calendar-availability-02, IETF Internet Draft, April 2011
• xCal C. Daboo, M Douglass, S Lees xCal: The XML format for iCalendar, http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-daboo-et-al-icalendar-in-xml-08, IETF Internet-Draft, April 2011.

Standard schemas for the above can be found in the namespace document of the current Public Review of WS-Calendar (ends on the 14th)

• http://www.oasis-open.org/news/announcements/15-day-public-review-for-oasis-ws-calendar-version-1-0-0

There are open-source implementations using these specs. VAVAILABILITY is only a draft in the IETF, but we rely heavily on it in EMIX and Energy Interoperation. If you are using communications tied to smart energy or to facility use, I reccommend that you read that specification.

For describing product, price, and market terms, Energy Market Information Exchange is used. As so much of EMIX is communication of schedule, it relies heavily on WS-Calendar conformance. This specification is also out for public review, until the 26th.

• http://www.oasis-open.org/news/announcements/15-day-public-review-for-oasis-energy-market-information-exchange-emix-v1-0-0

OpenADR 2.0 is a profile of Energy Interoperation. That specification is soon out for Public Review. You can find “pre-review” versions at:

• http://www.oasis-open.org/committees/download.php/42869/energyinterop-1-0-spec-wd26.pdf
• http://www.oasis-open.org/committees/download.php/42870/energyinterop-1-0-schemas-wd26.zip

One thing that the work lacks is discovery. EnergyInterop is designed to be recursive, so a utility or aggregator might expose a VEN interface up to the wholesale market, while exposing a VTN surface down to the home, office, industrial site, or microgrid. Each of those exposes a VEN on the outside; each may, in turn, choose to use EI internally, with a VTN communicating with numerous VENs.

Some interesting work is attempting to extend the model of OpenADR/Energy interoperation down to appliances and devices. This will place a greater premium on Discovery.

http://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/draft-jennings-energy-pricing/?include_text=1

In Committee, we have talked some about WS-DD as a possible mode, but have not gone beyond the simplest discussion.

Efficiency, Resilience, and Smart Energy

Far too many of the presentations at Connectivity Week last month touted building efficiency. Efficiency is important to Smart Energy, but can also work to defeat Smart Energy. Resilience is ultimately more important than efficiency for meeting the goals of Smart Energy. What energy efficiency can do, is support energy resilience.

A Smart Grid is one that can work despite a growing volatility of supply. Today’s grid already has a reduced ability to support the ever-changing aggregate consumption by the end nodes. Buildings, houses, and industry, the end nodes of the grid, will be the basis for Smart Energy.

So far, today’s efficiency efforts have wrung the slack from the system. A system without slack becomes brittle because it has a smaller margin for error. The most efficient buildings are limited in how they can trim load when asked. The overall grid has reduced margins for error. An exclusive focus on efficiency drives the impulse to direct load control in the end nodes by the central systems of the energy supplier.

Resiliency is the capacity of a system to absorb disturbance and still retain essentially the same function, structure, identity, and feedbacks. At the local level, resilience is dependent on the ability to adapt and to use diverse resources to achieve the same ends. At the broader level, resilient systems are characterized by diverse participants with non-uniform responses. Homogenous collections of systems respond to a given stimulus in similar ways, resulting in “panics” or “stampedes”. Smart grids will provide many systems with a similar stimulus as power availability changes.

Smart Energy results when the end nodes are able to respond to situations announced by the Smart Grid. It is critical to note that the purposes of the end nodes are not those of the grid. The Smart Grid will present its problems with reliability and balance to the end nodes. The end nodes, whose goal is to deliver divers services to their owner / occupants will use this information to optimize their own service delivery.

Let me present two examples of systems whose proper goal is service resilience rather than energy efficiency.

Cloud computing data centers use immense amounts of power, converting it to business process and to heat. Cloud computing relies on virtual computing machines that can be started and stopped, created and destroyed as needed. Cloud data centers have a growing ability to move these virtual machines between data centers. They are using this capability to provide service resilience whether or not a given data center is operational.

Data center resilience used to be provided through physical security, redundant systems, and back-up generators. The new model provides resilience through an ability to run from the problem, moving a virtual machine from one center to the next. The cost of each data center is reduced as the redundant systems and unnecessary generators are eliminated; construction savings of more than 50% were reported. Each data center is less robust, but together the data centers gain resilience.

Resilient data centers can respond to Smart Grids by moving processes from one site to another. Cloud services are part of smart energy in ways that data centers never could be. This resilience is not built on energy efficiency; six data centers may replace one. They have achieved resilience by focusing on their own missions rather than on support of the grid.

Commercial buildings and homes can achieve resilience by focusing on the times of energy surplus. Many renewable sources on the grid are unable to find adequate markets when they are producing at their maximum. Times of energy surplus may occur every day, while energy shortages may occur a dozen times a year. When the wind is blowing, when the sun is shining, Smart Grids will let the end nodes know with low prices. It is these low prices more than peak price events that will provide the incentives for smart energy.

Periodic low prices will fund resilience in those end nodes that take advantage of them. Capturing and storing the surplus, particularly with in-process storage, makes each building better able to weather shortages. Through storage combined with efficiency, each end node will lessen the urgency to buy power now. A building that is planning around the temporary power surpluses is able to respond to shortages without loss of service. The net effect to the participant is more reliable service at a lower price than competing buildings and properties.

Over time, end-nodes that commit to on-site storage will find that their internal markets change. On-site generation will be the market for site-based energy, in preference to grid-based distribution. The better market is the internal one, wherein storage can enhance service to the building owner and occupant.

As their site-based storage grows, the technology costs will drop. With each progressive step, building resilience grows , and grid dependency is reduced. Because there are many buildings, with many owners, and many motivations, smart energy in buildings better supports the market dynamics of rapid innovation. Because the building owners are inherently diverse, and building systems naturally autonomous, building based smart energy gains resilience as a larger system of systems.

Efficiency supports this developing resilience by reducing the demands. A building that uses half as much energy need store only half as much energy. A building that uses less energy can better weather periods of limited support from grids. To the end node, the advantage of a smart grid is better situation awareness, and an improved ability to broker whatever services are needed locally for the occupants.

The largest Smart Energy opportunities are not in selling to the grid. The real opportunities are in building end-node resilience despite power whose price, quality, and availability will be more volatile. The purpose of this resilience is to better support the owner and the occupants of the end node, not to support smart grids. This focus, on the local decision maker and their needs will lead to faster adoption.