Re: [smartpower-interest] [smartpowerdir] FYI OSTP requests input on SmartGrid

[Wilhelm Wimmreuter <[e-mail]>]

Pretty much in line with all said,
 Guess it all will end up something in line with the old stuff they call "Night-power-pricing" in here in Europe. This, pretty old system, sends guard tones over the wire to announce excess energy for a cheap price. Smart consumers like heating systems, washing machines or other high current devices could then use this guard tone to start up and use the cheap tariff during this time. Typically the power companies guarantee some hours during night time with these tariffs which has made up its name.

 Nowdays and for smart grids we might replace this 50 year old guard tone system to some brokerage protocol that allows smart consumers and power sockets to.
 - charge the cars batteries during of peak hours or immediately if needed 
 - start machinery that can be started during off peak hours
 - even deal with different power-supply companies
 - bill power consumption from smart sockets to any contract 
   of your favorite power supply company
 - sell local excess power from batteries of idle cars or
   emergency power supplies to the grid. 
 - ...

As mentioned by Fred, XML and web based communication- and brokerage protocols have all the means to provide more services through Internet protocols. This can replace the old channel-associated guard-tone systems and of course will provide much better load balancing and pricing services.

Willi


On 15.02.2010, at 09:10, Damir Rajnovic wrote:

> On Sun, Feb 14, 2010 at 12:22:25AM -0800, Fred Baker wrote:
>> Where I have a problem, like you, is the idea that I'm going to spend  
>> my day staring at the electric meter and make random changes at random  
>> times at the whim of the utility. What makes a lot more sense to me is  
>> the idea that the electric utility will give me (or my electronic  
>> proxy) an idea today about pricing issues tomorrow, and I can set up  
>> policies in accordance that intelligent devices in my home will  
>> implement.
> 
> I would say that it must be my electronic proxy. The same way it is unlikely
> for people to watch their meters all day long it is not likely that they
> will review "power pricing forecast" every night and then make adjustments
> to their equipment. We also have to bear in mind that these tarifs and
> times are just forecast. If something significant happens in the grid
> utility may shift times when price is low/high up or down.
> 
> So, instead of programming my devices in absolute times, I may want to use
> a mechanism similar that is used for recording TV shows. I can see on TV
> schedule that movie I want to record is after a sport event. But if the
> sport event runs over then the movie will start that later. So, instead
> of programming my recorder for some exact time I tell it to wait for the
> movie code to be sent by the broadcaster and then start recording.
> 
> Now substitute "TV schedule" with "power pricing forecast" and "movie"
> with "low tarif" and that is it. I can review if pricing forecast for
> tomorrow/next week is acceptable to me and then decide to utilise it
> or not. Having in mind that price forecast times may change my instruction
> to the proxy may be "use low tarif for heating at all time except 
> between 06:00-07:00".
> 
>> 
>> BTW, a sudden wide-scale cut-off is bad for the electric utilities  
>> too: imagine them sending out such a command, and within the next  
>> hertz everyone changing their demand levels. Read RFC 3439 section  
>> 2.2.2; the issues and arguments are much the same for the grid as they  
>> are for the Internet.
> 
> Should we then introduce switch off/on interval to spread in time when
> devices will turn off/on? We can give users ability to say "turn off/on
> this device within an interval from <Start> and <Finish> time" and then
> leave the proxy or meter to randomly select exact time when device
> will be turned off/on. The only worry would be for all meters to pick
> the same random number.
> 
> Thanks,
> 
> Gaus
> 
> 
> 
>> 
>> But imagine that I was told yesterday (or even an hour in advance  
>> today) that the price would be "low" most of today but between the  
>> hours of <this> and <that> the price would be "high". With 24 hours  
>> notice, I could decide to do my laundry in the morning, for example,  
>> if that was a real issue. With even an hour's notice my home energy  
>> controller could tell my air conditioner and my refrigerator/freezer  
>> to control to a slightly lower temperature for an hour, and then at  
>> the magic time (or five minutes before) it goes back to controlling to  
>> the normal temperature. The refrigerator/freezer, btw, doesn't run the  
>> defrost cycle during the high price interval - it waits until 12 hours  
>> later or so. That has much the same effect of randomization without  
>> either the square wave for the utilities or the stomach acid for me.
>> 
>> Alternatively, one could imagine the air conditioner having two  
>> temperature settings, one for when power is cheap and one for when the  
>> cost is high. I'll pay extra to keep the house below 90', perhaps, but  
>> only cool to 78' when power is cheap.
>> 
>> Where this fits into the technical work is that the information models  
>> for communications in the AMI (eg between the meter and the utility),  
>> we need some way to have the utility able to say "the price between  
>> <date/time> and <date/time> is <price> per <unit>".
>> 
>> It might look like this:
>> 
>> <tarrif_event>
>>      <Start ss:Type="DateTime">2010-06-01T13:00:00.000</Start>
>>      <Finish ss:Type="DateTime">2010-06-01T16:59:59</Finish>
>>      <Price ss:Type="Float">0.50</Price>
>> </tarrif_event>
>> 
>> be sent from the utility to the home energy controller aand be  
>> interpreted in accordance with the contract with the utility, which  
>> probably specifies the local currency as the unit of measure.
>> _______________________________________________
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>> https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/smartpower-interest
> 
> ==============
> Damir Rajnovic <[e-mail]>om>, PSIRT Incident Manager, Cisco Systems
> <http://www.cisco.com/go/psirt>      Telephone: [phone]
> 200 Longwater Avenue, Green Park, Reading, Berkshire RG2 6GB, GB
> ==============
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