'Power' is Knowledge

[rondurrans]

Check out the following link - it seems the grid operator(s) will soon be turning our appliances off!

http://www.newscientist.com/projects/ibm/artknowledge2010


Ron

[martin]

We're ahead of that! - our very own Ken Boak was suggesting this AGES ago.............

[Ivan]

The government needs to forge some clear unequivocal rules (that they will promise not to change....really promise this time) and these rules need to provide some benefit for consumers - who is going to bother with smart meters on the basis that they can visualise their energy usage. It's interesting, but not enough for the masses. The benefit needs to be CHEAP electricity when demand falls (and correspondingly, EXPENSIVE electricity when demand is high). Then there might be some point in Smart Energy.

I can't see this happening to domestic customers yet, but I guess it makes sense for large consumers on HHMs.

[KenB]

It's about time too....


Whilst working at Onzo this time last year we modified one of our electricity monitors to chirp real time once per second electricity power readings to a web based graphing application.  

This was done somewhat as an "extra-curricular" activity and not part of the main product development - sort of "Black-Ops" without the management's collective blessing, so to speak.

Sitting in the pub, with an iPhone, I could log onto either my live power graph or that of my colleague, and see in realtime with once per second update of what appliances/lights etc were being switched on an off at home.

Then using a similar modified device, we could check whether specific appliances had been left on (inspired when one of our PAs said she was paranoid about leaving her hair straightening tongs switched on in the morning), we could issue a command from a browser running on the same iPhone, and selectively turn devices off.

None of the above is particularly hard to do technically, and anyone who has a permanently on broadband router at home could do something along similar lines.


Here's the blog entry from 28/11/09 which describes the system.  Note the graph screenshot titled "Live Power" - that's the OPS (once per second) data. You can click on it to enlarge.

http://sustburbia.blogspot.com/2009/11/take-control.html

Just need to get manufacturers to agree to standards and use Dynamic Demand control of refrigeration and heating appliances. Who would really mind if their dishwasher or washing machine came on a little later, if you were being charged a much cheaper rate for it?

Ken

[HalcyonRichard]

Hi,
    Wouldn't this allow you to mimick spinning reserve ? i.e. have no spinning reserve or fast response generation. Just switch off all non essential loads for a "short" period. Capital invested in spinning reserve and costs would be eliminated. This of course assumes that enough non-essential load was available. This saves lots of money and CO2 from :- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Control_of_the_National_Grid


There is generally about 1.5 GW of so called spinning reserve—this is typically a large power station paid to produce at less than full output.

NG pays to have up to 8.5 GW of additional capacity available to start immediately but not running, referred to as warming or hot standby, that is ready to be used at short notice which could take half an hour to 2 hours to bring on line.
 
A similar amount of power stations (8–10 GW by capacity) are operable from a cold start in about 12 hours for coal burning stations, and 2 hours for gas fired stations.

So a smart grid could save money and CO2

Regards Richard

[Baz]

It will take a lot of education to get the public to understand that their machines might not come on when expected or turn off suddenly. We trialed a unit recently that switched into standby after a few hours non use ie overnight. These were trialists who had instructions and knew it was a new device but 30% failed to read the instructions and rang in to report a fault. They didn't even try pressing a button on the remote control. If we tried this on the public the call centre would go into meltdown.

[HalcyonRichard]

Hi Baz,
           This would be fridge/freezer delaying cooling or a hot water heater having a few minutes delay(also they could absorb excess load at other times). They would also pay less per kWh for being in a scheme. This would not even require central control but controlled on mains frequency. There are some excellent early posts on this site about this.  Also with gas powered fuel cells or micro CHP the number of powerstations required would decrease. It would also allow each household to operate if the grid failed. This is actually cheaper than building power stations.

Regards Richard

[Philip R]

When electricity load peaks come along every evening, tonight over 58GW was demanded from UK grid, coal generating over 23GW and 24GW from gas, the rest from nuclear,  a GW of oil and a touch of wind a few 100MW, as well also a short 1GW import burst from France, otherwise import 2GW at weekends. Even some of the heavy oil generating units were fired up today for a few hours.

In order to meet these short term peaks, thermal generation plant must be warmed up (sometimes from cold), steam raised and used to warm up the steam pipework and turbines, using a lot of energy & manpower and hence high cost, all to meet a short term peak demand.

Active load leveling would reduce the amount of peaking plant required, could require an awful lot of Scotland & Wales to have its valleys dammed up for pumped storage plant. Not very popular!! As one day we may increase the nuclear generation proportion away from coal. (The Non FGD plants will all close before 2016) as will a lot of the nuclear AGR fleet, magnox already mostly closed. The flexibility will be lost to change load quickly, hence demand side management. (Note, CCGT plant & a gas supply from Russia cannot be switched on and off as easily as a coal station. So we must level load by selective use of appliances. The incentives are now too small to make customer do it. Take E7 tariff, E7 daytime units are dearer than standard day units and the customer is helping to load a lightly loaded system at night.

To introduce active load levelling, smart meters will need to relay real system price info to customers and control devices, then they can decide if they want to run washing machine, tumble dryer etc.

Tonight, the system buy price went to £480/Mwh, i.e.48p/Kwh, otherwise it hangs about 4-5p/Kwh (the typical basket cost of base load and mid merit power generation) They are the prices that would drive customers to level their load, otherwise, they could enjoy cheaper electricity.(Unlikely to happen in UK with privately owned ESI and total lack of comprehension by technically illiterate politicians!!)

[EccentricAnomaly]

Thanks Philip R for a very informative post with some nice numbers.

Something that makes my head hurt, though, is thinking what the consumer price "ought" to be charged in circumstances like this evening's, described in Philip's last paragraph.  It shouldn't be 48p/kWh as that's really just the marginal cost of extra generation (if I understand correctly) and charging everybody that would create a huge surplus.  On the other hand, charging the average cost of the current mix isn't right either as it doesn't give the right incentives to save.

Maybe smart meters could charge, say, the current basket price for the first 1 kW and the marginal amount for anything over that.  That's on the assumption of 20 million households so 20 GW of domestic "baseload" plus all the non-domestic usage.

Maybe, though, it would need to be averaged over a little while.

[JohnS]

Another problem is the increasing use of electronics in appliances.

My Milele dishwasher only swithches on when I press a button.  I cannot have it via a timer.  Hence if we move to smart load management, I would need a new washing machine.

My LG washing machine has a timer.  I can set it to finish in 3, 4, 5-12 hours etc.  If I set it to run overnight and finish when I get up so I can hang the washing up before I go to work, I would not want it to delay for an hour because of peak demand somewhere - agree unlikely overnight.

It is probably possible to run freezers colder and to have off periods.  But I recently upgraded to a more energy efficient fridge frrezer and If I interupted power to it the fridge side would warm up and reguire power before the freezer side.

It is going to take a long time before we get there.

John

[Philip R]

Hi EccentrcAnomaly,
The figure are from the real time data neta webpage.

The figures are for marginal generation cost. i.e. An Olympus peaking gas turbine uses 1350gph light distillate to produce 17.5MW, low thermal efficiency and high cost per KWh.

The power companies having little incentive under current ESI structure as they average out the costs and mark it up before selling to us. The customer would not like to take the risks of market setting unless he sees a cost benefit. Compare to E7 the benefits are marginal, why should active load control be any different.

It does highlight the actual cost of the generation mix. Base load nuclear and coal is quite cheap, peaking plant of any type is expensive.

[Philip R]

Hi JohnS,

Your comment came in while I was writing my response, but I timed out and rewrote.

Your comment on appliance controls is symtomatic of the disconnect in design guidance/regulations and the appliance manufacturers.

Years ago we had in the UK, the Electricity Council who comprised the area boards and the CEGB. They tried to enact policies to the benefit of all, within their governance set out by government at the time of their formation in the late 1940s. Today with the various technologies availible, such an organisation may have possibly devised policies to drive this forward.

Do not hold your breath.

[stuartiannaylor]

The baseline power requirements do have many effects. Its not just peak demand. Renewable intermittency is a huge problem and the UK has stated maximums for wind mainly based on that problem. My dodgy memory remembers a max figure of 20%. Denmark are already at that level and they have a huge problem with having to export and import huge amounts due to intermittency. In denmark they have a huge amount of critics because there renewable energy push has screwed there baseline efficiency and has had a negative effect of increasing electricity costs.

It is all very paradoxical as renewables such as wind have obvious advantages. The peak collection periods of technologies such as grid tied solar when adoption rates become high also become very problematic.  They add renewable intermittency and there power output as adoption increases will be low value energy.
One problem with wind and solar and why hydro might not be an answer anyway is that hydro can startup in seconds but I think it has currently about a six hour generation period. Renewable intermittency can exceed those periods.

I have been keeping an eye on powerline communication products for over five years now. The majority of the grid is already kitted to provide instant consumption levels. The only gap is at the consumer end and it will be the consumer who is forced to cover the cost of load balancing. My personal opinion is that its inevitable and not all that far away. There have already been predictions that in 2014 short period localised power cuts will occur. As peak demands will outstrip capabilities. Electricity is going to be charged in a completely different manner. There will be no such thing as a standard unit cost or really there wouldn't be the need for all these "Smart meters" the utilities seem so keen to push.

[tony.]

Wouldnt you also need some sort of smart consumer unit to actually turn off  these devices

I imagine you would require a large consumer unit with radial cicuits for the circuits/appliances you want to control

I imagine this will definately not happen soon

[KenB]

If we had a genuinely competetive energy market, then the consumer would be able to purchase power from the supplier of their choice on a half hourly basis.

In the late 90's we developed technology to enable "least cost routing" of telephone calls. The same principle could be applied to the power market.  

Right now we have an energy industry dictated by six large players, all of whom buy their fuel from the same sources at roughly the same cost. Any variation in fuel cost is dependent on what long term deal the energy generator has managed to to with its fuel supplier.  This lack of competition will peak in the next few years, when we find that 60% of our power, and domestic heating fuel comes from natural gas.  We will really have all our eggs in one basket from 2015 onwards.

This system stifles innovation, and there is very little incentive to improve efficiency or build new generating plant or capital equipment and grid infrastructure.  

In the end, the consumer will be forced to pay the asking price, and the shareholders will make a healthy profit from them.

Perhaps this is the reason why so many are installing pV.  Energy independence, with a healthy return on investment.  However there will have to be some hasty re-jigging of grid tied inverters should we start to see frequent short term power cuts.


Ken