Weekend Reading on Smart Homes
The Sunday New York Times has some nice introductory material on smart homes. They skate quickly by prices to devices and the smart grid. They write about putting the homeowner in control. They even show several home panels.
With only one screenshot, I cannot comment on the systems described. One looks more like a home theater console with a dishwasher added. Another allows scheduling of building systems, but gives no sign of interaction with and feedback from the power grid. Admitting that it might be based upon selection bias, the Echelon screen is the most interesting to me.
The Echelon product, shown above, is the only one that clearly indicates the economic aspect of each device. What it does not show is the effect of variable pricing on costs. What we need is Echelon (or someone else) sharing information like that in a standard format that consumer programmers can interact with. By consumer programmers, I mean that I want to see consumer oriented interfaces developed for the PC, for the Mac, for the iPhone, and for the Android.
Schedules, electrical use, and services are the important abstractions. Abstractions are the basis for standards, and interoperability. More importantly, abstract standards with prices are then at the level of business interactions. Such a standard is ready for third party management. Such a standard is ready for driving maintenance by value.
Check out the article, in the references below…
Service enabling Telecommunications – lessons for Buildings and Grid
Infrastructure convergence was the enabling and driving change for telecommunications. Provisioning telecommunications was long the most difficult task. Over the last decade, the diverse communication infrastructure converged to a single packet-based infrastructure with resulting dramatic simplification of security and reliability. The questions move from “What low level communications do you need” to “What interactive services do you need?”
This evolution changed how Nortel had to think about and market their services. Before the change, Nortel sold vertically integrated applications that were inflexible. As the core technologies converged, Nortel was forced to decompose advanced services into core functions and then plug them back into the new architecture.
Fortunately, decomposing integrated services into core functions looks a lot like defining a service for service oriented architecture. Fundamental telecommunications functions can now be built into enterprise applications without requiring exotic skills are deep domain knowledge.
Skills-based routing and deployment was one example. Peter discussed a SAP integration with critical system causing expensive downtime, emergency part ordering, and synchronizing communication with an outside expert so that the repair personnel, the piece of equipment, and, via telecommunications and real-time identification of the expert on call, the expert’s telepresence were synchronized.
In a similar vein, he discussed abstracting the GPS function from the cell phone to block access in the security system when the phone was in a forbidden zone. Peter gave many more examples and you can find his slides on the OASIS conference site.
So what can building systems and the power grid learn from this?
Well, the owners expect the systems to just run, and are annoyed when they are expected to learn terms like BACnet or LON (or any other control protocol). We need to decompose advanced services to discover the core functions, from the owner’s and the tenant’s perspective, and present them as interfaces that can be plugged back into the enterprise.
As Peter summed up the C-Level response: “I just spent $100 Million fixing my processes, you had better be compatible.”
Building services that can present themselves as that can interact with SAP, or with PeopleSoft will have an advantage. The services that know how to display themselves on Google Earth will know how to request the nearest technician.
Likewise, Grid requests that present themselves to ERP services will find faster acceptance. Grid requests that describe grid pricing as shapes that can be pinned to Google Earth will enable the enterprise to come up with multi-site responses that may be different from any single site.
No one cares about the old vertical applications. Enterprise interactions are everything.
This is why the Building Service Performance Group at ONTOLOG (just goggle it) is meeting tomorrow.
Home Automation: Bad choices and poor experiences
My hydronic system failed this summer. Spare parts for the boiler, still more efficient than most on the market, are no longer available. It supported a hot water heater and two zones in my house. I am splitting out the water heater, moving to a tankless system. While the best boilers haven’t gotten any better, the price for an equivalent efficiency boiler has gone way down; the incentive to put everything on one boiler is gone.
I would like to add one or more zones to the house. The upstairs of this old house, with bedrooms and bathrooms, has never been conditioned. With the kids away, half of the bedrooms are only rarely occupied. I like keeping the rooms for a few more years, as long as kids show up for various holidays and vacations.
There are two frustrations with this process.
The first is the contractors. They arrive, already knowing which product they will install, based upon manufacturer incentives. The manufacturers seem to be responding to energy prices by offering dealers incentives on big systems, much as auto dealers are offering incentives on SUVs and Hummers. I tell them what I want over the phone, and warn them what the criteria will be; even so, they waste my time and their own. They decide the best fit based on incentives before they look at the space, they push the incentives, and they wonder why they leave without a contract. I cannot even imagine why they think I will accept fewer zones in twice as much space. Until the installers move beyond this attitude, home building system performance will remain abysmal. The worst part is that this must work, as these jokers stay in business.
The second issue is how little intelligence the control systems have. The home market appears to be dominated by systems that pretend to have taken the digital age into account. The thermostat is a nice flat screen. The time of day functions are easy to access. The actual control sequences are not as sophisticated as my last installation, which was constructed out of a complex nest of relays to squeeze extra energy out of each cycle. If this is what the American control companies are offering through their dealers, they deserve to lose to the Chinese.
The third issue is flexibility. I have been offered many controllers, but no flexibility in any of them. Single purpose systems are offered with different controllers than hybrid systems. Adding a third energy source is yet another decision. Each representative who comes by seems surprised when I ask for flexibility, and explain that it would be far too expensive. Based upon what their dealers, the home comfort system companies have not learned the essential lesson of the digital age, that simple product lines with large production runs are cheaper, and therefore multi-purpose re-programmable controllers will be cheaper. Every brand (and I have seen them all) is done a disservice by its local distribution.
So what do I think a standard, flexible controller would offer?
A home system should support hybrid systems, with enough abstraction so that multiple fuel sources are supported. A standard controller would balance the price and availability of each energy source installed to provide heating and cooling. It is common for systems to support an outside set-point to change from, for example, a heat pump to a gas pack. A proper system would tune itself, and be able to suggest what that outside set-point should be.
It should also be able to accept prices. For now, there is no live energy pricing in my area; I should be able to enter the price from my last electric bill, and the price from my last gas bill, and let it suggest another cutover point. If I add a thermal store, I should be able to include that in the same algorithm. It should not matter if the thermal store is driven by time of day prices and pre-heating (or cooling) or by a solar thermal unit. If I add photovoltaics, the system should be able to understand the availability and pricing of that as well. The system should be live pricing ready, ready to receive live price signals for any of the energy sources when they become available in my area. Clearly there should be a means to upgrade the system to support ADR (automated demand response signals) when they come to my area.
There is no reason for this to be more expensive. The controllers they are selling already have enough muscle power. The interface and system logic, while more extensive than today, would be less extensive than the multiple product lines I am being offered each evening.
Until the control vendors and home automation vendors offer products like this, than it is a sham they provide any sort of sustainability or energy control. If they are offering products like I want, than they should support hot lines to report the local dealers who besmirch their names with poor proposals. Like GM, sitting fat and happy on the no competitors assumption of generations ago, they will slow lose their customers and their companies.
And if you think the products are available, here in central Carolina, let me know. I will write that up later….
Abstract, yes, but which abstractions…
Building systems do not often produce useful information because they usually serve up concrete data, not abstract information.
Data is that annoying stream of consciousness woman who sat next to you on the bus. Now my arm itches. Look at that girls over there; didja ever see a dress like that. I have something in my shoe. That man is looking at me funny. My nose itches. I hope I don’t miss my stop. I wonder if the fish at the store will be fresh. The fish last week was not fresh. My bra is uncomfortable. You really can’t do much with data, unless you know a lot about its source.
Information conveys something that is actionable. This means that...
Building systems do not often produce useful information because they usually serve up concrete data, not abstract information.
Data is that annoying stream of consciousness woman who sat next to you on the bus. “Now my arm itches. Look at that girls over there; didja ever see a dress like that. I have something in my shoe. That man is looking at me funny. My nose itches. I hope I don’t miss my stop. I wonder if the fish at the store will be fresh. The fish last week was not fresh. My bra is uncomfortable.” You really can’t do much with data, unless you know a lot about its source.
Information conveys something that is actionable. This means that all of the background details have been stripped away and you are presented with something simple, something that offers a choice.
Right now, there is great concern about information and choice about energy as a matter of national policy. Many measures are being presented as the basis for policy and law. Social and editorial arguments are being made about metrics and information. One element I am thinking of is, is fleet mileage and miles per gallon (MPG).
Richard Larrick and Jack Soll have just published a study of decision making using the MPG standard on cars. They have concluded that when presented with multiple choices, people usually make the wrong one when presented with MPG, and indicate that people would make much better decisions if presented with GPM, (or perhaps Gallons per 100 Miles).
You see, if we can move 10% of our automobile fleet driving SUVs from 12 MPG to 14 MPG, we will have a much greater effect on total gas used than if we move a different 10% of our fleet from 38 MPG to 44 MPG, assuming both segments drive the same miles. My readers are a numerate bunch – do the math; it is bet to upgrade the least efficient vehicles. People presented the same information expressed in terms of Gallons per 100 miles, have a much greater tendency to make the correct choice.
Now if everyone switched to driving 44 MPG cars, it might be better still, but that is not likely to happen. The people who sneer at hybrid SUVs may be off the mark, because there may be a lot more value for society in hybrid SUVs than there is in hybrid coupes.
Even though it grieves me, as a Carolina boy citing work from economists at the Fuqua School of Business at Duke, I recommend checking out the article in the June 20 issue of Science.
Regular readers know that I am interested in developing simple numbers to represent building performance and service provision. This study provides a caution. Even if we get the variables correct, deciding which is the numerator, and which the denominator may be critical…
New Daedalus
Daedalus designed buildings, automated statues, and built wings for human flight. Daedalus worked by eye and hand, his designs scratched with a stylus on wax tablets. Until recently, we merely perfected his means of work, using better pens, and paper, and finally drawing on computers.
It is only recently that we have begun to leave the methods of Daedalus behind.
Simulations and digital twins guide each decision. Intelligence, or at least behaviors, imbue each system and device. Cyberphysical systems replace household servants and chauffeurs, operate factories, and manage energy logistics. The most pressing concerns are how intelligent systems and buildings will respond to us, and to each other.