iHomes summer 2013.indd

Summer 2013 Volume 10, Number 2
The Impact of Cloud Computing
on Intelligent Buildings
Casey Talon notes that the next
generation of intelligent building
technologies will leverage cloud-based
computing.
www.caba.org/ihomesandbuildings
“Sentrollers” and “The Internet of Things”
Modeling Building Automation and Control
Systems
Transactive Energy for Balancing Smart Grids
Toward Connected and Interconnected Home
Technologies
Summer 2013, Volume 10, Number 2
Contents
Features
Home Systems
“Sentrollers” and “The Internet of Things” by Cees Links........................................................................................7
Large Building Automation
Modeling Building Automation and Control Systems by Jim Sinopoli...................................................................11
Columns
CABA President & CEO’s Message.................................................................................................................................3
CABA Research Briefs
Energy Management in Commercial Buildings: The Value of Best Practices.........................................................5
HomePlug AV2 Technology...................................................................................................................................... 6
Research Viewpoints
The Impact of Cloud Computing on Intelligent Buildings by Casey Talon........................................................... 13
Ken Wacks’ Perspectives
Transactive Energy for Balancing Smart Grids....................................................................................................... 15
Opinion
Toward Connected and Interconnected Home Technologies By John Antonchick............................................. 19
Departments
New Members.................................................................................................................................................................. 4
Networking and Events..................................................................................................................................................10
Upcoming Events........................................................................................................................................................... 21
CABA NewsBrief
Please go to the CABA Web site at www.caba.org to
learn how to freely subscribe and sponsor
Editorial Advisory Board
Managing Editor
Contributors
Dr. Kenneth Wacks Ken Wacks Associates (Chair)
Ronald J. Zimmer, CAE
Ken Gallinger
Steven Brown CSA Group
George Grimes
David Labuskes RTKL Associates, Inc.
Editor
Labib Matta NeXgen Advisory Group FZ-LLC
Rawlson O’Neil King
Robert Knight Environmental Systems Design
Harshad Shah Eagle Technology, Inc
Jim Sinopoli Smart Buildings
Association Office
Continental Automated Buildings Association
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K1J 7S6
Tel: 613.686.1814; 888.798.CABA (2222)
Fax: 613.744.7833
Further editorial use of the articles in this magazine is
encouraged.
For subscriptions, circulation, and change of address
enquiries email [email protected]. For editorial and
advertising opportunities:
www.caba.org/ihomesandbuildings
The views expressed in this magazine are not necessarily those held by the Continental Automated Buildings Association
(CABA). CABA shall not be under any liability whatsoever with respect to the contents of contributed articles. The organization
reserves the right to edit, abridge or alter articles for publication.
CABA Board of Directors
Chair
Vice-Chair
Dr. Satyen Mukherjee
Philips
Dr. Morad Atif
National Research Council Canada
Directors
Laurie Actman
Penn State University
Larry Ehlinger
Pella Corporation
Barry Rogers
SecurTek Monitoring Solutions
Scot Adams
Cadillac Fairview Corporation
Eric Fournier
WattStopper/Legrand
Tom Semler
Hydro One Networks Inc.
Jerine Ahmed
Southern California Edison Company
Bob Gohn
Navigant Research
Dana “Deke” Smith
National Institute of Building Sciences
Scott Burnett
IBM
Jeff Hamilton
Ingersoll Rand
Mark Trayer
Samsung Electronics, Co. Ltd.
Brian Casey
Honeywell International, Inc.
Elizabeth Jacobs
Siemens Industry, Inc.
Hélène Vaillancourt
CSA Group
Jonathan Cluts
Microsoft Corporation
Grant Kroeger
Qualcomm Incorporated
Michel Dostie
Hydro-Québec
Stephen Nardi
RealView, LLC
KEN WACKS’ PERSPECTIVES
Transactive Energy for Balancing Smart
Grids
By Ken Wacks
Many governments have established national goals for the
proliferation of renewable energy resources. For example, in
2008 the European Union adopted the 20-20-20 Renewable
Energy Directive to reach the following goals by 2020:
• Twenty percent reduction in greenhouse gas emissions
compared with 1990 levels.
• Twenty percent reduction in energy consumption
through improved energy efficiency.
• Twenty percent increase in the use of renewable energy.
In 2011 California lawmakers mandated that 33 percent of electricity must come from renewable sources by
2020. The three major investor-owned utilities in California
passed the 20 percent threshold in July 2012 according to
Renewable Energy World magazine.
Renewable energy resources such as wind and solar
produce power that varies with the weather and time-ofday. When more power is produced than can be used locally,
some utilities buy the excess power and allow it to be fed
onto the electric grid. Presently, the levels of renewable production in most countries are so low that this insertion of
power has minimal impact on grid operations. However, as
renewable production reaches about 30 percent of the total
power needed in a region, renewable sources could impact
the business of utility power production and the technology
of power distribution via the grid.
In previous issues of iHomes & Buildings, I introduced
the GridWise® Architecture Council (GWAC). GWAC
is a panel of 13 experts appointed by the United States
Department of Energy to develop smart grid strategies for
the government, the electric utility industry, and equipment
suppliers. We have focused on developing guidelines for
achieving interoperability among smart grid elements. We
are now extending interoperability to Transactive Energy.
Transactive Energy is a new business and technology
CABA iHomes and Buildings Summer 2013
approach to managing the wide-scale deployment of renewable power generation.
Balancing supply and demand
An electricity system requires a balance between generation
supply and customer equipment demand. If the supply is
inadequate, the AC frequency of 60-Hz may sag, currents
may rise, and blackouts may ensue. A traditional utility
is comprised of a limited number of generating stations
and lots of industrial, commercial, and residential
customers connected via a tree-like structure of transmission and distribution wires. A simplified view is shown in
Figure 1.
Balance in a traditional grid is achieved on a very short
time scale of seconds by governors on the generators. A governor senses the speed of a generator, which varies slightly
according to the customer equipment load, and adjusts the
speed to maintain the 60-Hz AC output. On a time scale of
15 to 30 minutes, engineers at the electric plant can bring
additional generators on line or take generators off line
through a dispatch process as demand changes. Engineers
at generating plants and independent system operators
(ISOs) can anticipate loads a day ahead with more than 90
percent accuracy based on historical data, weather predictions, time-of-day, and weekday versus weekend. This
continual procedure of adjusting supplies is called load
following.
Renewable Energy Resources and microgrids
The future of electricity generation and consumption looks
quite different from the traditional utility. The installation of
renewable energy resources such as solar, wind, and stationary batteries will proliferate. Excess power not consumed
locally will be transferred onto the grid. This creates two-way
power flows that will vary significantly by time-of-day and
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ken wacks’ perspectives
Industrial
Commercial
Transmission
Residential
Distribution
Customers
Figure 1 – Conventional Electric Utility
weather. A passing cloud might reduce the output quickly
in a neighborhood that has lots of solar power.
Power production will be shared among traditional
utility plants, renewable resources from large wind and
solar farms, and distributed energy resources operated
by customers. Eventually, the electricity grid may evolve
from a tree structure to a mesh of local power grids called
microgrids, as shown in Figure 2.
Overview of Transactive Energy
As renewable energy installations expand, utilities and ISOs
need to:
• Adjust supplies to accommodate renewable energy
resources.
• Expand operational tools for achieving grid balance.
• Include customer equipment as active participants in
achieving grid balance.
Electric plants have two categories of generators to produce
power:
• Base-load plants
• Intermediate or peak-load plants
The base-load plants use fuels such as coal or nuclear
that operate most efficiently when running at full capacity
all the time. They generate 30-40 percent of all power. As
more power is needed during busy times of the day, the
intermediate or peak-load plants, typically gas-fired, are
brought online.
Utilities will likely scale back or shut the intermediate
or peak-load plants, and sometimes the base-load plants,
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as renewable production surpasses 30 percent. Varying the
output level of a base-load plant is usually not cost effective.
Therefore, the intermediate and peak load plants need to be
more responsive as renewable sources fluctuate.
Fluctuating output from renewable energy resources
reduces the accuracy of load-following supply predictions.
Therefore, new tools are needed to achieve grid balance
between supplies and demand. GWAC has been developing such a tool for this grid management function called
Transactive Energy.
Transactive Energy is an automated strategy for balancing the supply and demand for electricity. Traditional
load “following” adjusts supplies, while Transactive Energy
introduces market and technology methods that adjust both
supplies and loads to achieve balance. Thus, utilities and
customers will use elements of Transactive Energy.
Transactive Energy markets and controls
Transactive Energy (TE) combines market forces and control techniques to achieve grid balance automatically. In a
TE environment, power-producing devices may offer excess
power to the grid via a market bid-and-ask mechanism. The
device would propose power at a specified level and time,
which could be a few minutes or hours later. Loads on the
grid bid for this power, a price is agreed, and the power is
delivered when promised to settle the trade. The price and
power data are exchanged among the devices via a network
using machine-to-machine (M2M) communications.
This financial transaction model is similar to a stock
market, but with significant physical and business constraints. Power must flow from source to load over wires that
CABA iHomes and Buildings Summer 2013
ken wacks’ perspectives
Industrial
Microgrid
Public
Utility
Commercial
Microgrid
Residential
Microgrid
Figure 2 – A Cluster of Microgrids
have capacity limits. Customers expect lights and appliances
to operate.
Financial markets occasionally experience anomalies
with price spikes and a temporary lack of liquidity where
some buyers are shut out. The analogous situation in a retail
electric market might result in some customers not able to
afford power or not having power available at any price. This
would be politically unacceptable. Therefore, TE balances
market forces with network limitations and policies, such as
a requirement to serve all customers with some minimum
level of power.
Elements of Transactive Energy
The GridWise Architecture Council created the GWAC Stack
shown in Figure 3 to describe smart grids. As the GWAC
Stack illustrates, smart grids combine communication
technologies with information and organizational issues
such as procedures, economics, and regulations. Drawing
upon the GWAC Stack, I arranged the elements of
Transactive Energy in a hierarchy as shown in Figure 4.
These elements include physical devices, information, control, and policies.
An important concept in TE is the establishment of a TE
domain. TE is not like a national stock market, but more like
CABA iHomes and Buildings Summer 2013
a farmers market, where buyers and sellers strike deals on
a local or regional level. Eventually, TE could expand into
a market comparable to an ISO.
Transactive Energy challenges
Transactive Energy is a new concept that is now in field
trials with some success stories. A consortium of utilities,
equipment suppliers, and the Department of Energy has
run successful demonstrations of TE features in the Pacific
Northwest. Wide-scale deployment of TE faces challenges
including:
• The ability of TE to achieve grid balance consistently
must be proved.
• Methods must be developed for accommodating
physical constraints such as feeder capacity limits.
• TE must be scaled to the community or region.
• Consumers need to be educated about TE, convinced
of the benefits, and assured that the lights will stay on.
Impact of Transactive Energy
For Transactive Energy to be effective and to proliferate,
manufacturers need to adapt products such as appliances,
thermostats, HVAC equipment (heating and cooling),
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ken wacks’ perspectives
Economic/Regulatory Policy
Organizational
(Pragmatics)
Business Objectives
7. Business unit strategies
Business Procedures
6. Strategies • Tactics • Workflow
Business Context
Informational
(Semantics)
Technical
(Syntax)
8. Political & economic objectives
5. Workflow • Messages
Semantic Understanding
4. Message meaning
Syntactic Interoperability
3. Data structure format
Network Interoperability
2. End-to-end data exchange
Basic Connectivity
1. Physical connections
Figure 3 – The GWAC Stack
Transactions
Transactive Policies
8. Price ranges, time limits, settlement
Transactive Markets
7. Offer & bid mechanism, order execution
Transactive Control
6. System dynamics, performance measures
Transactive Messages
Grid Structure
Grid Elements
5. Syntax and semantics of transactions
Grid Community
4. Transactive energy domains, participants
Grid Constraints
3. Node requirements, feeder capacity limits
Grid Interconnections
Grid Nodes
2. Communications, computer networks
1. Sources, loads, storage, EM agents
Figure 4 – Elements of Transactive Energy
lighting, and distributed energy resources. Some low-cost
devices may not be able to afford TE interfaces. TE functionality may be offered by systems acting as proxies for
a group of these low-cost devices. These systems might
include building automation systems and energy management agents (controllers for an energy management (EM)
system).
The GridWise Architecture Council organized the first
Transactive Energy Conference on May 23 and 24, 2013. We
hoped for about 50 attendees and ended up with 150 registered. The smart grid industry is starting to take note of TE.
The GridWise Architecture Council will continue to work
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with the Department of Energy to support TE integration
into smart grids. Our goal is to maintain grid reliability as
installations of renewable energy resources expand.
•
Dr. Kenneth Wacks has been a pioneer in establishing the
home systems industry. He advises manufacturers and
utilities worldwide on business opportunities, network
alternatives, and product development in home and
building systems. In 2008, the United States Department
of Energy appointed him to the GridWise Architecture
Council. For further information, please contact Dr.
Wacks at 781.662.6211; [email protected];
www.kenwacks.com.
CABA iHomes and Buildings Summer 2013