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

[Fred Baker <[e-mail]>]

On Feb 13, 2010, at 11:47 AM, Andy Bierman wrote:

> Are there papers which explain why residential SmartGrid service is  
> worthwhile?


I think it's fair to say that the Smart grid needs some consumer input  
(understatement).

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.

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.

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.