SmartGrid eBook FINAL 081010

8/2/2019 SmartGrid eBook FINAL 081010

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Business Intelligence:Solving Smart Grid Data Management Challenges

2010, Social Media Today, LLC

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2/14

Business Intelligence:Solving Smart Grid Data Management Challenges

Tom Raftery |Lead Analyst,GreenMonk

Christine Hertzog |Managing Director,Smart Grid Library

Ty Hamilton |Business Columnist,The Toronto Star

Michael Giberson |Center for Energy Commerce, Rawls College of Business, Texas Tech University

Nicholas Eisenberger |Senior Strategist,Green Order



3 Introduction

5 Part1:SignsofIntelligentLifeontheSmartGrid

7 Part2:TheSmartGridandtheAdvanceofCivilization

8 Part3:EEStorsLatestPatent:Large-ScaleGridStorageforRenewables

9 Part4:TheDarkLiningtoaSilverCloudontheSmartGridHorizon

11 Part5:DemandResponseGettingReadyforitsClose-upinResidentialMarkets?

13 Part6:SmartGridHeavyHitters:JonWellinghoff,ChairofUSFederalEnergyRegulatoryCommission
http://greenmonk.net/http://www.smartgridlibrary.com/http://www.thestar.com/businesshttp://ec.ba.ttu.edu/http://www.greenorder.com/http://www.smartgridlibrary.com/http://www.smartgridlibrary.com/http://www.smartgridlibrary.com/http://www.smartgridlibrary.com/http://www.greenorder.com/http://ec.ba.ttu.edu/http://www.thestar.com/businesshttp://www.smartgridlibrary.com/http://greenmonk.net/


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Look behind the scenes of Smart Grid deployments and

technologies and youll discover a common challenge andopportunity to them. Theres new data, and lots of it.

From real-time, granular weather analysis and forecasting

for wind and solar power generation models to individual

home energy consumption tracking, massive new volumes

of data are being created. Indeed, a new industry term,

hanalytics has been coined to describe the analysis of

residential home energy patterns to optimize use and reduce

energy costs. The challenge and opportunity for utilities,

service providers, and consumers is to intelligently manage

this data and make sense of it.

Consider these Smart Grid scenarios that can occur in the

not too distant future:

A company that provides demand response (DR)

management services uses meter and home area network

(HAN) data aggregated from customers in neighborhoods,

microgrids, or business campuses to shed loads (reduce

electricity use) at specic times of day. Participating

customers benet by shedding load and from either

lower electricity rates or payments rewarding theirenergy-reductive behaviors.

An energy storage farm manages megawatts of stored

energy derived from variable energy sources such as

wind or solar, and applies complex analytics to detailed

weather models to predict how much energy they can

safely bid and discharge daily into a regional power

market while maintaining energy reserves to conform

with market requirements.

The eet manager of a municipalitys electric vehicles

(EVs) uses historical data along with predictive softwareto conduct carbitrage and create detailed charge and

discharge schedules for the eet to sell back electricity

to the grid and create a new source of revenues for its

constituents.

Current Smart Grid projects include utility initiatives that

are focused on upgrading the existing transmission and

distribution networks with intelligent electronic devices

or IEDs and smart meters to deliver remote monitoring

and management capabilities. The volumes of data thatIEDs accumulate will challenge human capacities to

assess and respond, so operations centers for utilities,

transmission companies, and power generators must rely

on computing power to assist in intelligent management of

the giga, tera, and petabytes of data routinely collected.

Analysis of this data can be used to develop predictive

maintenance schedules for transmission and distribution

assets and insights into grid stability. Real-time analytics

will automatically trigger reactions in response to critical

conditions that threaten the reliability or safety of the gridand avoid brownouts and blackouts.

The growing number of distributed generation and microgrid

facilities also presents challenges and opportunities in

data management for power markets and utilities. For over

a century, business models and operations have been based

on centralized power generation with extensive investments

continued on next page

IntroductionChristine Hertzog |Managing Director, Smart Grid Library

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in transmission assets to bring electricity to commercial,

industrial, institutional, and residential consumers.Integration of localized renewables and distributed energy

storage assets into the grid, co-located with consumers,

creates new business needs for software and reliable

communications networks to transmit data about asset

status and respond to requests to add power to the grid

or to island (disconnect) microgrids from the larger grid

to reduce electricity demand at critical times. Since

electricity moves at the speed of light, these transactions

must also occur with little or no human intervention,

relying on automated business intelligence solutions tomaintain grid stability.

All of these examples illustrate that the Smart Grid needs

intelligent data storage and applied business intelligence

to manage new volumes of data that exceed existing

utility and grid infrastructures and operations. The data

management challenges are signicant, but the benets

to utilities, consumers, and our global environment gained

from computer-aided analytics and decisions make the

efforts worthwhile.

Introduction(contd)

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In recent years, the vision for a smarter electricity grid has

been painted vividly by a broad spectrum of academics,entrepreneurs and utility company executives. By now,

the storys familiar: Improving the grid with intelligent

infrastructurein turbines, transmission lines, toasters

and everything in betweenpromises to greatly reduce the

nations energy consumption and carbon emissions, spur

the growth of renewables, enable the broad use of electric

cars, and save Americans billions.

The vision is compelling but the job of making it real

is enormous.

The grid is an immensely complex (if still technologically

primitive) ecosystem populated and shaped by hundreds

of utilities and regulatory agencies with widely varying

priorities, thousands of suppliers offering non-standard

approaches, and millions of customers with vastly different

needs. Can we evolve the current power infrastructure into

a far more advanced state? Is it mostly still hype, or is

there evidence that the smart grid has already been born?

This was the topic of a panel I moderated earlier this at

Fortunes Brainstorm Green conference about business and

the environment. With representatives from GE, Cisco,

Google, and a leading cleantech venture rm on the

panel and executives from major utilities, automakers, IT

companies, smart grid start-ups, and other players around

the table, I wanted to tease out whats happening now, not

more talk about tomorrow.

What did we learn? The full realization of the smart grid

from turbines to toasters, as GEs Kate Brass saidremainsdecades away. But progress has been encouraging in the

last year. The federal government has allocated over $4

billion of stimulus funds to smart grid projects. This is

expected to lead to the deployment of an additional 18

million smart metersdigitized metering devices that

are one of the core building blocks of the smart gridon

top of the 10 million already in place. Likewise, there are

now over 40 gigawatts of power use that can be turned

down remotely when demand peaks, helping to reduce the

need for costly (and still largely dirty) new power plantsnationally.

But the best examples of the smart grid in action were at a

smaller, more human scale, highlighting that when tackling

such a complex challenge, simplicity is key.

Michael Terrell of Google, whose web-based and smartphone-

readyPower Meter is designed to give consumers more insight

into their energy consumption, told us how he discovered,

to his surprise, that he was paying for his neighbors useof the laundry room in his apartment building. The typical

consumer, he said, has about of 500 watts of their own

hidden, always on powerfrom outdoor lights, to little-

used appliances, to poorly wired applications.

One participant objected that many smart meter consumers

have been forced to pay for the new devices, but havent


Signs of Intelligent Life on the Smart GridNicholas Eisenberger |Senior Strategist, Green Order1

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Signs of Intelligent Life(contd)

seen their bills go down yetwhich led to a small smart

grid backlash amongst utility customers in Bakerseld,California last year. Another noted that the typical energy

bill is too small and consumers too busy for most to bother

with any of the advanced analytics and power management

options that smart meters will eventually make possible.

Good points. But James Connaughton of Constellation

Energy, the former Chair of the White House Council

on Environmental Quality under Bush, had a good

answera simple orb theyve developed that you plug in

over your kitchen counter that glows red when power isexpensive and green when its cheaper. Smart, yes, but

most importantly, simple.

There were many more examples of how the rise of the

smart grid doesnt have to wait for the entire grid to

be transformed.

Tony Posawatz, whos leading the development of

the soon-to-be-released Chevy Volt (with the perfect

name) told of GMs plans to use its On-Star system tohelp manage power demand for users charging the car.

Lew Hay, the CEO of Florida Power and Light, spoke of

using real-time lightning-strike satellite data to better

predict where power outages are likely to have occurred.

And there were plenty of reminders of how far we still

have to go. As Jeff Taft, Ciscos chief architect of smartgrid solutions noted, In the past, a successful career for

a utility engineer was if they didnt break the equipment

they found when they started. Wholesale transformation is

certainly difcult in the face of that kind of culture.

Yes, the smart grid will require common communication

standards, billions and billions of dollars, and fundamentally

new ways of thinking on the part of us all. But the

overwhelming impression I took away is that there is a

tremendous amount of low hanging fruit for early players topluck. The market is evolving. There are signs of intelligent

life on the grid.

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The Smart Grid and the Advance of CivilizationMichael Giberson |Center for Energy Commerce, Rawls College of Business,

Texas Tech University

2Scientic American has an article on the start-up pains

associated with smart grid development:

Only one thing is worse than the lights not coming

on when the switch is ickedand thats the lights

going out right afterward. The fact that the problem is

most often a burned-out lightbulb is testimony to the

reliability of whats sometimes called the worlds largest

machinethe U.S. transmission and distribution grid

for electricity.

This made me laugh:

If Alexander Graham Bell returned to Earth today, the

progress in telecommunications over the last 125 years

would be mystifying, said Robert Catell, chairman of

the New York State Smart Grid Consortium, at a smart

grid event in New York City at New York University

(NYU) in February. If Thomas Edison came back today,

not only would he recognize our electricity system, hecould probably x it when problems arise.

Probably not true. After all, most of the grid is based on

alternating current (AC) technology, but Edison was a

proponent of and best understood direct current (DC). Now

if Catell would have said Nicolai Tesla, that would have

been both funny and true.

The article mentions many trials and early advanced

metering programs, emphasizing the costs and uncertain

benets. Catell is quoted again, saying, An educated

and informed consumer is the best weapon in the war

against energy demand, and the smart grid is the best way

to educate the consumer. Some of the examples in the

article have benets coming from having consumers act in

response to information provided (via the meter, email and

even an in-home orb that glows different colors depending

on the price of power).

But engaged, immediate consumer response to changing

prices is likely only to play a small part within the bigger

energy picture. People (who are not energy policy geeks

or early adopters) have too many other things to do. As

Alfred Whitehead said of civilization generally, consumer

engagement in the electric power industry will advance by

extending the number of important operations which we

can perform without thinking about them.

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Since its been all-too-quiet on the EEStor front, I gured

Id at least draw attention to the companys latest

atent approvalthis one titled Systems and Methods for

Utility Grid Power Averaging, Long Term Uninterruptible

Power Supply

A link to the patent, which was just approved a few days

ago by the U.S. patent ofce, can be found here at the

TheEEStory.com. EEStor and ZENN appear to be in complete

lock down no information is owing from either. Ivebeing hearing chatter in the investment community that

EEStor has run into some technical (not nancial) trouble,

but then again, Ive been hearing this kind of chatter for

the past few years since I wrote my rst feature on the

company in the Toronto Star. I tried to arrange a visit to

EEStors headquarters in Cedar Park, Texas, for some time

this summer. I wanted to gather some information for a

book Im working on that will be released next fall, but

Weirdespite my offer to sign a non-disclosure wouldnt

allow it. He wished me luck and said he doesnt want orneed the attention. (The book, by the way, isnt just about

EEStor, but EEStor will represent a chapter in it. The book

will be about barriers to energy innovation stay tuned).

Fair enough.

The explanation in the patent of how an EESU could benet

the grid is pretty straight forward, so this is really no

surprise. But its nice to see the company beginning to

accumulate a sizable stockpile of patents to protect its

IP. Despite the silence out of Cedar Park (and Toronto), I

do nd it interesting that there are some other ventures

hot on EEStors heels, just as Weir was expecting. On April

29, for example, the U.S. Department of Energy announced

funding as part of its ARPA-E program. One recipient of

funding was venture spun out of Penn State University

called Recapping Inc., which received $1 million.

Recapping Inc. and researchers at Pennsylvania State

University will seek to develop a novel energy storage device

based on a 3D nanocomposite structure with functional

oxides that provide a very high effective capacitance. The

basic fabrication of the dielectric materials and devices will

utilize traditional multilayer ceramic fabrication methods

that will provide a cost-effective alternative to battery

solutions, with the added benets of exploiting mechanisms

that could maintain higher cycling and possibly deliver

charge with high power density. This technology hopesto create a cyclable and economically competitive energy

storage device that will catalyze new, related cleantech

industries and contribute to the reduction of greenhouse

gases and oil imports, according to the DOEs description

of what Recapping is doing. Notably, whos the only

executive of Recapping Inc.? That would be Alex Kinnier of

Khosla Ventures. I tried to contact Kinnier, who wouldnt

talk but said to come back in 12 months.

EEStors Latest Patent: Large-ScaleGrid Storage for RenewablesTy Hamilton |Business Columnist, The Toronto Star

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My blog dated April 19 focused on PG&E activities that

seemed to be designed to kill the spirit and the objectives

of the Smart Grid. Since then, PG&E has admitted that

mistakes were made in some meter installs (although my

PG&E smart meter functions perfectly, thank you very

much), the tariff change is wending its way through the

regulatory process, and California voters decided the fate

of Proposition 16. This proposition was sponsored and

funded by PG&E. According to the latest news reports, PG&E

spent $46 million on TV, newspaper, and print media adsextolling the virtuesin PG&Es viewof voter-protected

monopoly power. The vote breakdowns make it clear that

PG&E lost in its own territory of Northern and Central

California. It scored more votes per dollar in territories

served by Southern California Edison and San Diego Gas

and Electric than in its own backyard. Rumor has it that

even PG&E employees hated the measure.

Was this evidence of a smart meter backlash or a simple

demonstration of that adage that familiarity breedscontempt? Only detailed surveys will determine that, but it

is clear that PG&E needs different advisors in the executive

suite and a fresh approach to interacting with customers.

So, community choice is safe in California, and this is

excellent Smart Grid news for two reasonsbut theres a

real warning in the poll results too. (Community choice lets

cities, counties, or neighborhood entities purchase and/or

generate electricity for residential and business use within

their boundaries. Community choice means local control

over energy resources, more renewable sources of energy,

plus a lower overall cost of electricity.)

First the good news. Community choice should accelerate

the integration of sources of renewable energy into the

grid. As the environmental devastation grows from oil spills

(even on landsee the Red Butte Creek spill in Utah), it

is becoming apparent to even the most oblivious that thisis one fossil fuel that we would be well-served to render

obsolete. For instance, communities can band together to

create solar gardens and aggressively convert rooftops to

solar power to generate local clean and renewable power

for their electric vehicles.

A second benet is that distributed generation improves

our grid security. Complete reliance on centralized energy

generation puts all eggs in one basket. If you believe the

reports about hackers inltrating the computer networksthat control the electrical grid, or even if you only believe

a fraction of them, theres serious reason to be alarmed and

deploy solutions that improve the stability and reliability

of the electrical grid. A grid studded with microgrids and

CCA-controlled energy sources is a smarter grid, less likely

to be completely disabled and able to recover faster from

natural disasters or acts of criminality and terrorism.

Continued on next page

The Dark Lining to a Silver Cloudon the Smart Grid HorizonChristine Hertzog |Managing Director, Smart Grid Library

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Dark Lining(contd)

However, there is a real worry in the Proposition 16 results.

It is clear that PG&E customers dont trust PG&E. Thisdoes not bode well for future PG&E efforts to educate

their customers about TOU (Time of Use) rates and other

measures to reduce electricity needs at peak time periods

to save money and reduce carbon emissions. Enlightening

consumers about their energy use and encouraging

participation in smart energy programs is a process of

complex messaging, and it requires a relationship of trust.

PG&E doesnt have that now, and the big question iscan

they earn consumer trust to be effective in their future

Smart Grid solution rollouts? If they fail in that endeavor,we all lose.

The Smart Grid Library blog appears weekly to deliver

information and perspectives about Smart Grid solutions,

companies, and industry trends that will change our

relationship with electricity.

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Proxy Demand Response (DR) is a creative program that can

be used to offset the need to build expensive peaker plants

and help with the management of renewable sources of

energy that are intermittent in nature, like wind and solar.

While the wholesale market has been operating in other

states and later this year in California, the retail market

has barely been accessed, due to several factors. First, it

represents a smaller chunk of electricity consumption than

Commercial and Industrial (C&I), and naturally utilities

and third party aggregators focused on the low-hangingfruit. Second, the recent arrival of Smart Grid technologies

only now offers opportunities for uti lities to consider mass

residential deployment and participation.

Smart Grid technologies such as robust Home Area Networks

(HANs) and Home Energy Management Systems (HEMS)

come into play here to communicate information about DR

events as well as dynamic pricing programs for residential

responses. Third, the vast majority of residential consumers

or ratepayers are completely unaware of these programs,their processes, or their benets. And its difcult to

communicate anything about DR in a sound bite, much less

a Proxy DR program.

There have been some limited residential DR programs here

in California aimed at air conditioning (AC) cycling, but

these involved targeted groups of ratepayers and required

special equipment to remotely control residential AC units.

Utilities are now looking at much more ambitious programs

that impact most ratepayersin the form of new pricing

programs that more accurately reect the time component

of electricity generation. The average Joe or Jane Ratepayer

would be surprised to learn that generation of electricity

has different costs at different times since this is not

typically reected in their current bills.

Education is one of the three big challenges to implementing

wide spread DR programs for residential use. It will take

time to communicate carefully developed messagesthat build the foundation of knowledge for residential

ratepayers to appreciate the price variations in generation

and the benets of DR and dynamic pricing. They will need

exposure to messages like this one offered by CAISO in

their December 2007 eGrid Technologies Help Achieve

Environmental Goals report, Demand reduction is just as

effective, and often less expensive, than adding megawatts

onto the grid and it doesnt add a single pollutant.

The second challenge focuses on the business model.Proxy DR for residential participation requires new business

entities called Demand Response Providers (DRPs)

enterprises that can aggregate enough consumers to

represent the amount of electricity that can be bid into the

retail market. There are a few businesses operating in this

market, but they are relatively new to the space, and there

is much to learn about how to set up the most efcient and

protable model.

Continued on next page

Demand Response Getting Ready forits Close-up in Residential Markets?Christine Hertzog |Managing Director, Smart Grid Library

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Demand Response(contd)

The third challenge is technological. Consumers will need

robust and reliable HANS and easy-to-use HEMS applicationsto participate in DRP programs. Their HANs must reliably

communicate price signals and/or DR alerts to enrolled

devices that can either automatically shut off or reduce

their electricity use. The HEMS applications must be simple

to use to achieve the widest possible consumer adoption.

One of the most interesting HAN technologies that promises

that robustness and reliability is the Open Source Home

Area Network or OSHAN. Stay tuned next week for some

more information about it.

The Smart Grid Library blog appears weekly to deliver

information and perspectives about Smart Grid solutions,

companies, and industry trends that will change our

relationship with electricity.

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Jon Wellinghoff is the Chairman of the United States

Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC)the FERC

is the agency that regulates the interstate transmission

of electricity, natural gas, and oil. As such, the FERC was

the agency which Google Energy applied to for its licence

to buy and sell electricity on the wholesale market,

for example.

Shortly after his appointment as Chair of the FERC in 2009

by Barack Obama, Chairman Wellinghoff made headlines

when he said

No new nuclear or coal plants may ever be needed in

the United States renewables like wind, solar and

biomass will provide enough energy to meet baseload

capacity and future energy demands.

A chance came up recently to have him on this show, so I

obviously jumped at it!

We had a great chatso good, in fact that I turned it into

two shows rather than edit any of it out.

In this rst video we discuss:

What a smart grid is and its benets

The backlash to early smart grid rollouts in Texas

and California

How long it will be before we see full smart grids

deployments


Smart Grid Heavy Hitters: Jon Wellinghoff,Chair of US Federal Energy RegulatoryCommissionTom Raftery |Lead Analyst, GreenMonk

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VIDEO

TO

PLAY

HERE

Click above to play the video in your browser.

Part 1

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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jon_Wellinghoffhttp://ferc.gov/http://greenmonk.net/google-energy-to-start-disrupting-the-utility-industry/http://greenmonk.net/google-energy-to-start-disrupting-the-utility-industry/http://www.nytimes.com/gwire/2009/04/22/22greenwire-no-need-to-build-new-us-coal-or-nuclear-plants-10630.htmlhttp://twitter.com/smartdatacohttp://feed//feeds.feedburner.com/smartdatacollective_allpostshttp://print/http://smartdatacollective.com/http://www.nytimes.com/gwire/2009/04/22/22greenwire-no-need-to-build-new-us-coal-or-nuclear-plants-10630.htmlhttp://greenmonk.net/google-energy-to-start-disrupting-the-utility-industry/http://greenmonk.net/google-energy-to-start-disrupting-the-utility-industry/http://ferc.gov/http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jon_Wellinghoff


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Jon Wellinghoff(contd)

Click above to play the video in your browser.

Part 2

In part two Chairman Wellinghoff once again states that the

US does not need to build any more coal or nuclear power

plants, that renewables can meet the energy requirements

of the US and discusses how electric car owners in some

trials are being paid over $3,000 per annum for use of theirbatteries for grid regulation services by their utilities!

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SmartGrid eBook FINAL 081010