So many Grid Reforms, so little time...

A blogger on Power Encounter recently made me aware of an Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI) report on the different grid modernization efforts underway in the US, and a comparison of their efforts.

http://www.electricitydeliveryforum.org/pdfs/EPRI_Report_1-07.pdf

It makes a good read, comparing the initiatives on their technical meris.  I think it does not give enough credibility to the liberalizing and energizing effect of markets on innovation, and thereby underplays the benefits of GridWise AC.

A chance to do it right

Three weeks ago, I participated in a symposium sponsored by the Pacific Northwest National Labs (PNNL) for the GridWise Architectural Council. It is a fascinating conference, and one with more chance of meeting green and environmental and conservation goals than just many other initiatives hosted by folks who wear their hearts on their sleeves. It was also grounded in good economic theory and humble enough that it might just succeed.

The first principle of GridWise is that while the folks in the room are smart (and they were – this was no small part of the fun), they are not the only smart folks in the world. To actually address the needs of the future grid while moving to new models of energy production, we must create structures that encourage innovation. To encourage innovation, we must create means of realizing value propositions for new energy usage patterns and for non-traditional power sources.

Current market structures are a boat anchor on innovation. If you invent a gizmo that talks to the power grid and somehow saves energy in the house, today, you can only sell it to around 30 customers – all big power companies. Each of them will be required to run an extensive pilot before they can get anything through their local Utilities Commission. This means your initial sale will have to be, say, 50,000 units warranted for 10 years. Then after a year installing those units, the power company can propose a rate structure for them The Utilities Commission may nix the whole project, or ask for more research.

The other problem with current market structures and demand limiting approaches is that no one likes their power company. They spend half the year cursing them. They feel that the standards of reliability, built upon keeping an incandescent bulb lit, do not really describe the house that too regularly, they come home to find with the electronic devices 12:00 flashing. Each month the local power company includes with their bill statements about their quality, and an advertisement for a service that, for an added fee, will come with a guarantee that they will not destroy my home electronics again. Why would I, as a consumer, trust them to get further into my house?

GridWise, instead, imagines an intelligent home or office negotiating with the intelligent grid. The agent doing the negotiation may be in my home, or may be with a third party who negotiates for several homes. Those negotiations may be based upon price, or upon my personal interest in green power, be it renewable, or carbon-free, or habitat-safe. Whatever I want.

The other big part of GridWise is across the board Time-Of-Day billing. This will go beyond virtue, beyond social acquiescence, to let people find the real value in load shifting. Value means different things. In open source circles, they say “Free like in Speech, or Free like in Beer”. Well, finding value is similar. Thirty-day cost avoidance, generating a lower aggregate rate, is something less. Perhaps this is “Free as in Pepsi Free”. But GridWise finding value in immediate market decisions is readily visible cash. Live Dutch auctions to shed load are cash that is visible. *That* is finding real value.

Finding real value means people will spend real money to find it. Individuals spending real money bring the power of markets to bear on innovation. Markets free adoption and mean rapid innovation. And that is the real gem of GridWise AC.

GridWise and Smaller Dams

Today’s Wall Street Journal brought a report in the IEEE Spectrum to my attention, on the use of small dams for electricity generation in Africa. They are of particular use in a country with less than 10% of the populace “on the Grid. In their articles, they describe a small 60 KW generator driven by water power as sufficient for the needs of a small hospital with 100 nurses and doctors. Without the heavy load placed on the grid for the latest imaging technology, the hospital can get along with this amount. The entire generation system cost $15,000 to build.

The GridWise Architectural Council looks to re-cast North American power delivery into new market forms that enable innovation and change. One predictable side-effect of the principles of the GridWise might be faster migration to local generation and storage.

These moves would be potentiated by the combination of Time-Of-Day billing and open markets for power purchase. This will encourage load shifting to a greater extant than before. If I run my house on a battery, and charge the battery from the Grid, then I can easily shift load to times when the grid demand, and thereby the price, is less. Generation, whether by trendy new fuel cells or old fashioned generators also achieve similar benefits.

What changes with GridWise is the easy visibility of economic benefits to load shifting. You can find the economic benefits not a month from now, aggregated for 30 days, but today. One of the first principles of cybernetics is that a tighter feed back loop leads to better control.

One issue in not-quite-off-grid living, what I call near-grid living, is the base load, what I call the twelve o-clock flashing problem. If the supply slips below the base load, you come home to a house in which everything is flashing12:00. There is so much gear in the modern house or office that is on all the time, whether it is the clock on the stove or the fast warm-up on the TV. Small local power sources might be better to handle this small base load, reducing the strain on batteries and temporary generators. With this base-line removed, a larger percentage of the peak load will be shiftable in response to the pricing signals of the market.

Small micro-generation, either tied to a single building or to local distribution grid, is one way to take this base load off-line to the big grid.

This article made me wonder if small dams might be part of a grid-wise picture. It is no secret that I think that GridWise aligns well with the Galvin Electricity Initiative and their emphasis on local generation and micro-grids. Is this suggestion meant for the still off-line Africa part of the prescription for the too-much-on-line North American market?

http://blogs.wsj.com/informedreader/2007/05/07/smaller-dams-could-help-to-electrify-africa/

http://www.spectrum.ieee.org/may07/5054

It’s not your system

I was in the middle of a running discussion on how to get people to understand why NBIMS is important a couple weeks ago. By happy chance I came across this article during the discussion, directed to programmers, on the subject “You are not your user! I found this passage particularly apt:

It's Not Your Software
Contrast the folly and the cunning in software design to understand why you are not your application's user.

http://www.ftponline.com/channels/arch/2007_04/todonnell/

It expressed some of my concerns much better than I did, but in a different domain.

Getting to the real heart of the issue, Platt asked how many in the audience drive a car with a stick shift, and it looked as if nearly every person in the auditorium raised a hand. Guessing that at least three quarters of the audience thought that a manual transmission controlled with a stick shift—something that is harder to learn, harder to use, but gives you better control—is a good trade-off, Platt contrasted this result against the roughly 12 to 14 percent of automobiles sold in the U.S. that come with stick shifts.

"Six out of eight think something that's harder to use but gives you better control is a good trade-off; only one out of eight of the general populace thinks that's a good trade-off. Normal people do not drive stick shifts," Platt said emphatically. "Why? Because they don't care about the driving process in and of itself. It's a means to an end. They don't want to drive somewhere; they want to be somewhere."

Following an outburst of laughter from the audience, Platt evoked a loud round of applause by punctuating the theme: "It's an important distinction. You think your users want to use your software. They do not want to use your software. They want to have used your software."

In this case, the participants in the conversation were domain experts in IT can construction. They understood what they were up to. They seemed not to understand that what motivated them was never going to motivate a wider audience.

The real audience for NBIMS is the enterprise developer, someone who, while technical, does not want to know anything about the deeper IFC. Until NBIMS finds a way to make itself accessible to the enterprise developer, it will remain an interesting side-show.

The next week, I headed off to Dallas, and to the GridWise IT symposium. There I found the same issues. I even used Platt’s audience participation game, and found similar numbers of manual transmission aficionados in the audience.

There I pointed out that none of the avid consumers, totally committed to efficiency and economy was likely to surface. If they wanted to expand the market for their ideas on improving the Power Grid, they were going to have to translate it into some combination of three things: Autonomy, Self Image, and Cool. Find a way to enhance these, or appear to enhance these, for the consumer and the battle is done. Fail to do so, and the technical substance is wasted.

The same argument could be made about Building Systems, and oBIX. In fact, I will be at Connectivity Week in three weeks. I probably shall.