Wednesday 19 November 2008

"Supply companies will need to learn about DR possibilities and efficiencies"

Interview with Alastair Manson, senior consultant, Engage Consulting Limited

smartelectricnews.com Special

The decision to go for a demand response programme in case of businesses depends upon a number of factors. For such initiatives, organisations have to diligently plan, implement, and monitor activities, which best fits in with the kind of business they are in, scale of their operations and other factors.

While for smaller retailers there might be not be a lot of electric load they can shift to off peak times, for relatively larger businesses the issues tend to be much more complex considering decisions related to production schedules, selection of equipment and much more.

Still, the general consensus seems to be that the understanding of such process, which is all about reducing load when contingencies occur that threaten supply-demand balance or market conditions occur that raise supply costs, is only gradually picking up.

"You would have to say that there is a lot to be learnt. There is much that is understood about demand response but more that is not known. Similarly, the generation profile will change in ways that are unknown," says Alastair Manson, senior consultant, Engage Consulting Limited.

Manson, who is scheduled to speak during Intelligent Demand Response for Electricity Summit 2009, to be held in Amsterdam on 28-29 January 2009, says smart meters do not in themselves deliver demand response but can offer a number of ways that can provide or facilitate various levels of demand response: They can be linked to displays (giving consumption and pricing information including potentially CPP); They can have load limiting capability – in line or auxiliary switches that could control all or part of supply; They can be linked to other devices in the home directly or via an energy control device to allow automated management of devices usage and so on.

"It is probably fair to say that suppliers are investigating various levels of load control and with various levels of sophistication but that our initial challenge in Great Britain is to get the implementation of smart metering underway with the right functionality to allow for options to be decided into the future," Manson told
smartelectricnews.com.

DR programmes are like other programmes but there is a particular need to learn along they way and to take in innovation, says Manson.

According to Manson, supply companies will need to learn about DR possibilities and efficiencies.

"There is a constant learning process and they need to keep learning what is effective with customers and what customer's abilities to change usage are. They need to understand what the rules are and have an understanding of what the rules will be and keep learning what technologies can provide," he added.

Automated DR systems have been deployed for critical peak pricing and demand bidding and are being designed for real time pricing.

On how does automating DR allows greater levels of participation and improved reliability and repeatability of the demand response and customer facilities, Manson said automation will suit many customers who will not want to manually micro-manage their consumption.

"It is a service that has to be seen as acceptable to customers rather than being inflicted on them. There needs to be an education process from suppliers and beyond including government. There needs to be an energy service to customers not just an energy supply service. Customers need to appreciate benefits of DR -this will take learning and time and they will need alternatives that make DR acceptable and a benefit rather than just reducing their demand," said Manson.

While the lack of knowledge about how to develop and implement DR control strategies is a barrier to participation in DR programs like CPP, another barrier is the lack of automation of DR systems.

At least one way that DR can be facilitated is via smart metering with sufficient abilities.

"But DR cannot be implemented by stealth," said Manson.


In terms of opting between Manual DR programme, and Semi-Automated DR, which involves a pre-programmed demand response strategy initiated by a person via centralised control system, and Fully-Automated Demand Response, which does not involve human intervention, but is initiated at a home, building, or facility through receipt of an external communications signal, Manson said this has to be done by study of what works and what is acceptable to and desired by customers, bearing in mind that conditions may well be very different not so far in the future.

Recently, it was indicated that less than one percent of all commercial and industrial companies use advanced technology to measure and manage energy spend, whereas nearly 100 percent use advanced technology to measure and manage telecommunications spend in the US.

Assessing the situation as far as the maturity level of Advanced Metering in Total Energy Management in the UK is concerned, Manson said, "I would be surprised if it is really one percent. I would have to say that UK is in its infancy but will grow quickly."

Intelligent Demand Response for Electricity Summit 2009

Alastair Manson, senior consultant, Engage Consulting Limited is scheduled to speak during Intelligent Demand Response for Electricity Summit 2009, to be held in Amsterdam on 28-29 January 2009.

For more information, click here:
www.smartelectricnews.com/demand08

Or

Contact:
Abbie Badcock ,
Smart Electric News,
abbie@smartelectricnews.com
T: +44 (0)207 375 7581

IBM CEO recommends smart systems

IBM chairman and CEO Sam Palmisano has stressed upon the importance of technology and smart systems for improving global infrastructure.

He cited reports that energy grids lose as much as 40 percent to 70 percent from inefficient systems and said traffic congestion in the US costs $78 billion a year. That's 4.2 billion lost hours and 2.9 billion gallons, he said. Stockholm, Sweden's smart-traffic system reduced traffic by 20 percent and drove emissions down by 12 percent, while 40,000 new users take advantage of daily public transportation, he said, according to InformationWeek.

Palmisano, proposing a technology-fueled economic recovery plan that calls for public and private investment in more efficient systems for utility grids, traffic management, food distribution, water conservation and health care, said, "It's obvious, when you consider the trajectories of development driving the planet today, that we're going to have to run a lot smarter and more efficiently -- especially as we seek the next areas of investment to drive economic growth and to move large parts of the global economy out of recession." He added, "Fortunately, we now can. We see this in how companies and institutions are rethinking their systems and applying technology in new ways."

CalAmp embeds Ember ZigBee Technology

Ember Corporation has teamed with CalAmp Corp. to enable ZigBee and IP-based wireless networks to work together for automated meter reading, peak energy demand response and other smart grid applications.

CalAmp has integrated Ember's EM250 ZigBee System-on-Chip (Soc) and EmberZNet PRO ZigBee networking software into its new WiMetry IP-based wireless communications platform. WiMetry enables smart grid functions such as demand response, peak demand reduction and other advanced metering infrastructure (AMI) applications.

The integrated devices provide a two-way communication pathway to ZigBee enabled smart meters or In Home Devices (IHD) for energy load control, demand response, energy consumption or tariff display.

Referring to ZigBee wireless connectivity to both electric meters and ZigBee enabled IHDs, CalAmp's Industrial Monitoring and Controls unit VP and general manager Mark Christensen said the goal of the company was to provide real-time, two-way wireless communications to manage the sensing, collecting and monitoring of data from all portions of a utility's electric distribution grid.

The need for smart energy solutions is becoming more and more urgent, said Bob Gohn, vice president – marketing, Ember.

CalAmps WiMetry platform allows utility customers to implement efficient smart grid applications quickly, helping them respond to changes in their industry and the economy.

EnerNOC set to achieve its 2008 targets

EnerNOC says its on target to end this year with over 2,000 megawatts under management and it has dispatched the liability based capacity in its demand response network over 90 distinct times year-to-date and delivered an average performance of 98 percent based on nominated versus delivered capacity across all reporting events.

Sharing its third quarter results, in which EnerNoc posted record revenue performance of $44.2 million, 131 percent increase overall revenue in the third quarter of 2007, the company stated that this performance track record demonstrates the scalability and robustness of its network operation center and its fifth generation proprietary software application called Power Track, which is the primary application that it uses in EnerNOC for notifying, monitoring, and managing its expanding network of active customers' sites.

It uses this application for both demand response and its growing energy efficiency business.

On the performance during the quarter, Tim Healy - chairman and CEO, EnerNOC Inc., said, "This year-over-year growth was the result of many things including the significant expansion of our presence in the PJM market and our continued strong performance in New England as well as the growth and diversification of our portfolio demand response and energy management solutions throughout North America."

The company grew its demand response network ending September with over 1,760 megawatts under management, which is the capacity equivalence over 17 average size peaking power plant.

"These megawatts come from 3,400 different end-use customer sites in our network as of September 30, 2008 up from 3,067 customers' sites in our network as of the end of the second quarter," stated the company. "We have sold approximately 100 new megawatts since the end of the third quarter, with over 1,850 megawatts in our network we feel good about our ability to exit 2008 with over 2,000 megawatts under management."

Echelon extends its project winning spree in Europe

Sustaining its project winning spree, Echelon Corporation has bagged a smart metering project in France. The development follows recent contracts in Germany and Denmark.

The company shared that the Group of Electricity Distributors in France (GAELD), a consortium of electricity distributors, has chosen Echelon's
Networked Energy Services (NES) System for up to 90,000 homes.

The project, awarded to Echelon partner Alter Way, is expected to begin within the next few months and to be completed by 2013.

One of the utilities in the GAELD consortium, Régie d'électricité de Loos, is allowing homeowners to sell back solar produced electricity to the utility. They are doing so using the ability of NES meters to measure the amount of electricity produced separately from the energy consumed, as opposed to simple "net metering" in which the details of production versus consumption are lost, making this the first instance of Echelon's meter to be used in an alternative energy application in France.

Echelon's NES advanced metering infrastructure consists of advanced electronic electricity meters, accessed via a web services based network operating system over an IP networking infrastructure. Multiple NES meters can share a single IP connection through the use of Echelon's power line networking technology.

According to the company, this decreases the per-point connection cost, enabling the system to easily and cost-effectively incorporate new wide area networking technologies over the life of the system.

"Far too many vulnerable Scots are facing soaring energy bills this winter"

Cabinet Secretary for Finance John Swinney has shared that annual public sector electricity bill is around £200 million.

Speaking in Parliament, Swinney said, "Far too many vulnerable Scots are facing soaring energy bills this winter – that is why this Government is putting an extra £10 million into the free central heating programme this year."

In this context, the new strategy aims to harness the combined purchasing power of the public sector to save taxpayers' money so that it can be invested elsewhere.

The contract will provide public bodies with access to energy management measures such as advanced metering, small scale renewables initiatives and opportunities to sell electricity into the grid.

"Elsewhere, we will increase advice to businesses and individuals. Scottish Enterprise has now started recruiting manufacturing professionals to double the size and capability of the Scottish Manufacturing Advisory Service, to ensure that even more companies are able to gain access to quality advice," said Swinney.

"We will also provide a fast and effective, quality of service to people should they become unemployed. Partnership and local delivery are key to helping people back into work. That is why we will ensure that the Partnership for Continuing Employment initiative will be ready and available to provide the support that individuals require should they lose their jobs. This local network is unique to Scotland - and we will continue to develop it so that it helps us respond to redundancies as they occur," said Swinney.

Thursday 6 November 2008

PG&E opts for Landis+Gyr as one of its primary AMI suppliers

Landis+Gyr has signed a four-year contract to supply a major portion of the planned deployment of more than five million advanced electric meters to Pacific Gas and Electric Company (PG&E).

The San Francisco-based utility plans to deploy Landis+Gyr Focus advanced metering infrastructure (AMI) meters to empower residential and small business customers in Northern and Central California.

Landis+Gyr's electric meter contract is part of PG&E's SmartMeter programme. Through this initiative, PG&E is rolling out advanced metering technology to its entire customer base, including over four million natural gas and five million electric customer accounts. As per the information available, this $1.7 billion deployment ranks as one of the largest ever undertaken in the US.

The company added that some of the services and products under the agreement are contingent on regulatory approval as part of PG&E's SmartMeter Programme Upgrade.

PG&E recently began billing a portion of its customers on data collected through its SmartMeter automated metering infrastructure. This data has been consolidated and validated using the meter data management solution provided by Bloomington, MN-based Ecologic Analytics, which is part owned by Landis+Gyr.

LCA increases its equity stake in RLtec to 77.4 percent

Low Carbon Accelerator (LCA) has made a further equity investment of £300,000 in ResponsiveLoad Ltd (RLtec).

LCA's investment was part of an overall £550,000 funding round, with £250,000 provided by a private investor. Further details weren't shared.

As part of this investment, LCA has converted its £900,000 convertible loan in RLtec, previously announced on 21 December 2007, into preference shares. These transactions result in LCA's equity stake in RLtec increasing to 77.4 percent and takes LCA's total investment in RLtec to £2,053,500. In addition, LCA has agreed to provide a further £300,000 in funding subject to the achievement of milestones.

It was originally envisaged that the convertible loan note would finance RLtec to the completion of a larger third party funding round. The company now expects to pursue this larger funding round after RLTec has agreed terms with the National Grid for the provision of grid balancing services using RLtec's patented dynamic demand technology. RLtec is targeting agreement of this contract in early 2009.

For its part, RLtec has shared that it is making steady progress towards agreeing a demonstration project with Ofgem and a major utility supplier under the UK's Carbon Emissions Reduction Target (CERTs) programme. It has also recently received an order to trial its product using electrical load available in the Sainsbury retail store estate, in addition to successfully completing application testing with a major appliance manufacturer.

RLtec has developed technology suitable for demand- response and Smart Grid energy balancing applications.

HSBC to use advanced mini-building management system

HSBC is teaming up with energy management specialist t-mac Technologies to reduce energy consumption in its retail outlets by 20 percent.

t-mac Technologies will provide HSBC with its advanced mini-building management system (BMS) - t-mac.

By deploying the t-mac system, HSBC will be able to monitor and control the amount of energy their buildings are using.

The system gathers metering data and energy consumption information from sources of power, such as a building's air conditioning unit, lights and heating. The technology then identifies waste, with information collected into reports that can be used to gain an understanding of energy consumption patterns. HSBC will use the system to identify areas where buildings are losing and wasting energy, providing the bank with recommendations on how to cut carbon emissions and costs.

Stephen Gathergood, data centre and engineering manager, HSBC Bank, said, "The technology deployed through our partnership with t-mac is a good example of how our buildings can be more efficiently managed, without any material increase in operating costs, which enables us to continue to deliver the same value to both our shareholders and our customers."

The vendor says t-mac system works via the Internet and is therefore fully interactive from any location. In practice, when an air conditioning unit is leaking energy or operating outwith pre-set criteria t-mac will send the bank a text message or email to alert them to rectify this inefficiency. The bank can then log on to the Internet where they can, by the click of a mouse, turn down the heating or turn off the lights instantly without having to go on site.

PG&E to deploy up to 3.3m GE meters equipped with SmartMeter technology

Pacific Gas and Electric (PG&E) has shared its plans of deploying 3.3 million GE meters equipped with SmartMeter technology to utility customers in Northern and Central California.

Overall, PG&E plans to deploy 10.3 million SmartMeter gas and electric meters by the end of 2011 to virtually all of its customers.

The GE meters will be equipped with Silver Spring Networks smart grid/advanced metering infrastructure (AMI) communications technology.

According to GE energy, this technology will enable two-way communications between the utility and the electricity customer. It will support renewable generation at the customer's home, critical peak and time-of-use pricing and more. The company also shared that by employing SmartMeter technology, PG&E will, in the future, be better able to detect and respond to power outages.

According to EPRI, California experiences the greatest losses associated with power outages and disruptions, totaling $13.2-20.4 billion per year. That's more than any other state.

Swansea University develops advanced Smart Electricity Meters

The Power Electronics team from Swansea University's School of Engineering has developed what is being described as one of the world's most advanced Smart Electricity Meters.

The team, based within the Electronic Systems Design Centre, is currently supplying nearly 1.5MWh per year of free `Green electricity' to the University.

The project is one of a number of Welsh Assembly Government Knowledge Exploitation Fund research projects being undertaken in Wales and facilitated by the Welsh Energy Research Centre (WERC) to ensure Wales is at the forefront of current energy technologies.

The team implemented their prototype Smart Meter to highlight the potential of electricity metering technologies. Termed as the focal point for consumers' personal energy queries, the Smart Meter monitors energy consumption, giving information not just through a traditional power reading, but in a user-friendly way by displaying animated graphics of money on a large clear screen on the meter, according to the University. Plus, it monitors individual power circuits, including upstairs lighting, downstairs lighting and kitchen sockets.

The University added that the team believes there is also the possibility to monitor individual appliances when the technology is adopted further. The presentation of consumption information is complemented by the ability to show power generated from micro-renewable technologies in a 'plug and play' manner, similar to the wind turbine currently commercially available, and generic solar panels.

The Smart Meter is linked to a number of solar panels on the roof of the University's Engineering building through a power converter. The power delivered from the solar panels is monitored within the meter to allow the 'Green energy' produced to be reviewed in an easy to understand way. This allows clear indications whether the renewable technology has been a beneficial purchase and the likely financial performance from the initial investment.

The meter also has communication abilities, allowing the readings of power consumption and generation to be instantly available to the supplier and to the consumer via web pages, wireless in-home displays, or potentially even a television channel.

Wednesday 5 November 2008

"Both positive and negative incentives can be used to involve the end user"

smartelectricnews.com Special

The recent automatic electric meter installation by Sweden's Vattenfall for supporting the development of a secure grid is expected to result in better control over the electricity network and significant cost savings.

According to Telvent, the IT company which supplied and managed the automatic remote electric meter reading system for the project, an AMI system together with the rest of the Smart Grid Solution (SGS) suite will decrease operation cost, reduce frequency and duration of outages, improve customer service and satisfaction, optimise grid investment strategies and finally, prepare for the future where full customer involvement in voluntary usage profile management, peak shaving and energy demand side management will be a reality.

In an interview with
smartelectricnews.com, Ignacio Gonzalez-Dominguez, executive vice president of Telvent's Energy division provided an insight into how this project supports the development of a secure grid as well as additional services for end clients, ways to attract the participation of the end user and much more. Excerpts:

smartelectricnews.com: Telvent acted as the main meter supplier by providing 600,000 of the 850,000 total meters, and allowed Vattenfall to bill all of its clients through remote reading of electric consumption. Can you take us through the key observations? Can you elaborate on how this project supports the development of a secure grid as well as additional services for end clients?

Ignacio Gonzalez-Dominguez: The role that Telvent accepts is to help utilities to transform their current grid into one that distributes electricity more efficiently and securely, while meeting the continuously changing demands of the customer base, all in a sustainable way.

We believe that Vattenfall, by executing this modern AMI project, has demonstrated an aggressive strategy to take enhanced levels of control of their electricity network, to realise significant cost savings in delivering their services on their network and to improve levels of customer service and satisfaction. The AMI system is delivering valuable actionable information (not just data) to other back-office systems that will improve network operations, network planning and outage management functions in the utility.

In the early stages of operation of the AMI system, Vattenfall is in a position to continue moving towards a true Smart Grid environment. These next steps promise to further reduce operating costs, improve utility network reliability and customer satisfaction. As an example, Vattenfall is able to use the load profiles delivered by the new system for demand response programmes that will influence consumption patterns in their customer base. The system provides Vattenfall, in addition to the obvious metered usage data, power quality information and other "events" such as tampering and diagnostics. Further, the system's ability to support new emerging technologies such as home area networks promises opportunities for new and innovative services for end customers.

One distinctive value that Telvent AMI customers can leverage in the future would be related to combining of real-time meter data with other advanced operational applications such as Outage Management (OMS) and Distribution Management (DMS) and even integrated with Telvent's flagship OASyS SCADA product to acquire, validate and analyse operations data and manage grid behaviour in real-time. With the complete suite of applications, Telvent's customers can develop grid investment strategies to minimise frequency and duration of outages, provide high levels of customer service and improve overall customer satisfaction with the utility.

smartelectricnews.com: Which according to you is an optimal way of inducing a change in consumers' usage habits, potentially resulting in lower energy costs and achieving energy efficiency gains?

Ignacio Gonzalez-Dominguez: It is clear that demand response optimisation is needed to achieve the levels of sustainability and reliability we expect as a society. The key factor in any optimisation strategy is the end user, who will respond to various and relatively (with respect utility asset investment) short term financial incentives by modifying habits and routine in the use of their personal and commercial electric power.

Of course, both positive and negative incentives can be used in concert to attract the participation of the end user. Society generally is interested in a sustainable and secure world so the efforts of the utility industry in playing their part through marketing programmes will become common-place in the years to come.

smartelectricnews.com: It is not a simple `one size fits all' situation– residential programmes can be done along the lines of one size fits all, but commercial and industrial programs can not. Can you elaborate on the basic differences for Demand Response programs in various environments?

Ignacio Gonzalez-Dominguez: Demand response programmes cannot be designed with the same criteria for both residential and C&I customers. The residential DR programmes are going to be largely influenced by the availability of new HAN (Home Area Network) devices that will allow integrators such as Telvent to make new intelligent load management applications. C&I customers, however, will not be able to leverage these applications to the same degree since their loads are mostly critical and/or constant. Very specific load management programs will be needed for C&I customers.

smartelectricnews.com: Recently, it was indicated that less than one percent of all commercial and industrial companies use advanced technology to measure and manage energy spend, whereas nearly 100 percent use advanced technology to measure and manage telecommunications spend in the US. How do you assess the situation as far as the maturity level of Advanced Metering in Total Energy Management is concerned?

Ignacio Gonzalez-Dominguez: It is a fact that today telecommunication and information technology costs of any business are tightly monitored and dynamic in nature as the competition for these services is wide spread and new incentives are being offered continuously. Businesses are hungry for more communication with their customers and are anxious to use more and more IT to create real-time business decisions. Even the very utilities we are speaking of here, like banks and public administrations, manage their communications and IT spends for gathering, distributing, archiving, integrating and optimising their customer data.

It is clear that this can be a source of competitive advantage for them. Many utilities are now realising we have the technology to allow us to focus on energy spends with respect to cost, efficiency and ultimately competitive advantage. It is logical to think that bi-directional communication with your customers and the ability to optimise energy generation and distribution to reduce operating costs, all in real-time, is going to be a significant strategic advantage for the progressive utility.



Intelligent Demand Response for Electricity Summit 2009

Intelligent Demand Response for Electricity Summit 2009 is scheduled to be held in Amsterdam on 28-29 January.

For more information, click here:
www.smartelectricnews.com/demand08

Or

Contact:
Abbie Badcock ,
Smart Electric News,
abbie@smartelectricnews.com