Think Globally. Act Locally. Grind Teeth. Relax.

"Think Globally. Act Locally." is a slogan I first heard in the eighties that has annoyed me ever since. Today I was reminded of it when I was reading this article about the correlation of CO2 emissions to global GDP.

To put this another way, if we get a 12 percent reduction in GDP, CO2 in the atmosphere may fall by 4ppm.

    Thinking about this for even a few second leads to the obvious observation that global aggregate CO2 emissions is the wrong feedback loop to drive reduction of CO2 emissions. It is far too indirect. It is much more effective to allow companies and individuals to monitor their own emissions. Tendril have an initiative to do just this and they moved monitoring all the way to mobile devices:

“Consumer engagement is critical to smart grid success,” said Ying Wu, Senior Analyst at Lux Research. “It is vital to provide information and control to consumers in ways they are already familiar with and that are personal to them, such as in the home, on the Web or on mobile devices.” Many people are away from their homes during the day when energy usage is at its highest and energy prices are most expensive.

With the mobile TREE platform, consumers can remotely monitor and manage their energy usage, no matter where they might be. Among the features accessible from the mobile platform are monthly bills including the past 13 months of billing history and the daily cost of electricity. The daily cost can be broken down to an average per-hour cost. Data can also be presented in easy to understand graphs.

Detailed information like this allows consumers to identify behaviour patterns that conserve energy. The application can also be configured to respond to alert signals sent out by the power company and the ability to participate, or opt-out of, demand response programs. The size of a homeowner’s carbon footprint is also presented.

This gives much tighter feedback loops and with the right information and incentives, people might act and reduce their CO2 emissions.

As much as it makes my teeth grind when I write it, this is a case of thinking globally and acting locally.

Google Smart Metering

In this Google blog post, Ed Lu of Google engineering discussed the Google Power Meter project:

Google’s mission is to "organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful," and we believe consumers have a right to detailed information about their home electricity use. We're tackling the challenge on several fronts, from policy advocacy to developing consumer tools, and even investing in smart grid companies. We've been participating in the dialogue in Washington, DC and with public agencies in the U.S. and other parts of the world to advocate for investment in the building of a "smart grid," to bring our 1950s-era electricity grid into the digital age. Specifically, to provide both consumers and utilities with real-time energy information, homes must be equipped with advanced energy meters called "smart meters." There are currently about 40 million smart meters in use worldwide, with plans to add another 100 million in the next few years.

But deploying smart meters alone isn't enough. This needs to be coupled with a strategy to provide customers with easy access to energy information. That's why we believe that open protocols and standards should serve as the cornerstone of smart grid projects, to spur innovation, drive competition, and bring more information to consumers as the smart grid evolves. We believe that detailed data on your personal energy use belongs to you, and should be available in an open standard, non-proprietary format. You should control who gets to see your data, and you should be free to choose from a wide range of services to help you understand it and benefit from it. For more details on our policy suggestions, check out the comments we filed yesterday with the California Public Utility Commission.

In addition to policy advocacy, we're building consumer tools, too. Over the last several months, our engineers have developed a software tool called Google PowerMeter , which will show consumers their home energy information almost in real time, right on their computer. Google PowerMeter is not yet available to the public since we're testing it out with Googlers first. But we're building partnerships with utilities and independent device manufacturers to gradually roll this out in pilot programs. Once we've had a chance to kick the tires, we'll make the tool more widely available.

Update 12 Feb 2009
Daily Climate News and Opinion put the Google announcement in perspective

Watch the business pages this week, and you'll see technology giants like Google, Microsoft and IBM tripping over each other to announce their latest "smart" technology for tracking energy and emissions from businesses and homes. Their timing is as smart as the technology they hope to sell. The economic stimulus package that won approval in the Senate today includes $4.5 billion for “smart” grid technology and billions more for energy efficiency. Tech companies large and small were already busy behind the scenes talking to the new administration in Washington and sending testimony to state agencies to ensure that this new energy world President Obama envisions includes their software, equipment and applications. Their selling point is this: It's easier to save energy, cut foreign oil imports and reduce your carbon emissions if you know where your energy is being wasted. For businesses, that means having all the emissions and energy data – from resource acquisition to production to transit – in one easy-to-access place and continually updated for analysis. 

Google, in typical Google fashion, wants to transmit your home's entire energy diet into an online app that can count the kilowatts for you. This morning, it introduced PowerMeter, a new online application that has the potential to track a home’s energy use, appliance by appliance, in real time. Of course, a computer application can’t do much without data. All those tracked appliances will have to have chips installed that can feed their energy information to a computer. Google still needs to work with manufacturers to develop that part of the plan. With PowerMeter still in beta testing, Google might seem to be getting ahead of itself. But by announcing the project now, Google is declaring a stake in the game. It's well aware of President Obama’s energy plans for the country, which include higher energy efficiency standards and the installation of 40 million smart meters in U.S. homes. Yesterday, Google urged the California Public Utilities Commission to write the state's smart grid principles in a way that would ensure consumers have direct access to real-time electricity use data in a standardized format – something applications like PowerMeter would need.

Google engineer Russ Morov, one of a few dozen beta testers, said that simply knowing where his power was going helped him cut his energy consumption by about 60 percent, primarily by replacing two 20-year-old refrigerators, his incandescent lights and the timing on the pool pump. He says he's saved about $3,000 a year. That’s probably high, however studies do show that people who are aware of where they’re wasting energy tend to reduce power use by about 15 percent .

Algae for Biofuel Production

Investing in Algae Biofuel says

Algae ... could supply all U.S. diesel power using a mere 0.2% of the nation's land. In fact, enough algae can be grown to replace all transportation fuels in the U.S. on only 15,000 square miles or 9.6 million acres of land. That's about the size of Maryland.

Biofuels are really a form of solar energy. Because crops convert solar energy into chemical energy in a process called - anyone, anyone - photosynthesis. It's this chemical energy, in the form of oils, that we need to produce biofuels.

According to the UNH report , the more efficient a particular plant is at converting solar energy into chemical energy, the better it is from a biofuels perspective. So in this area algae's the clear winner. In fact, algae does this so well that up to 50% of its body weight can be fat, or the oil needed to make biodiesel. That makes algae the highest yielding feedstock for biodiesel, producing 24 times more oil per acre, on average, than the next leading feedstock - palm oil at 635 gallons/acre/year.

In fact, one company can produce 180,000 gallons of biodiesel every year from just one acre of algae. That comes to about 4,000 barrels, at a cost of $25 per barrel or $.59 per gallon. To put that in perspective, it takes 3,750 acres of soy to make the same amount of biodiesel at a cost of about $2.50 per gallon for 4,000 barrels.

The Wikipedia entry on algae biofuel says

Algae grow rapidly and can have a high percentage of lipids, or oils. They can double their mass several times a day and produce at least 15 times more oil per acre than alternatives such as rapeseed, palms, soybeans, or jatropha. Moreover, algae-growing facilities can be built on coastal land unsuitable for conventional agriculture.

The hard part about algae production is growing the algae in a controlled way and harvesting it efficiently. ... Most companies pursuing algae as a source of biofuels are pumping nutrient-laden water through plastic tubes (called "bioreactors" ) that are exposed to sunlight (and so called photobioreactors  or PBR). Running a PBR is more difficult than a open pond, and more costly.

Algae can also grow on marginal lands, such as in desert areas where the groundwater is saline, rather than utilise fresh water.

The difficulties in efficient biodiesel production from algae lie in finding an algal strain with a high lipid  content and fast growth rate that isn't too difficult to harvest, and a cost-effective cultivation system (i.e., type of photobioreactor) that is best suited to that strain. There is also a need to provide concentrated CO2 to turbocharge the production.

Waste water can  be used as a nutrient  for biofuel production:

A possible nutrient source is waste water from the treatment of sewage, agricultural, or flood plain run-off, all currently major pollutants and health risks. However, this waste water cannot feed algae directly and must first be processed by bacteria, through anaerobic digestion. If waste water is not processed before it reaches the algae, it will contaminate the algae in the reactor, and at the very least, kill much of the desired algae strain. In biogas facilities, organic waste is often converted to a mixture of carbon dioxide, methane, and organic fertilizer. Organic fertilizer that comes out of digester is liquid, and nearly suitable for algae growth, but it must first be cleaned and sterilized.

Future Oil

While Solazyme's exact species and strains of algae are a closely guarded secret, Dillon assures that the company uses several obscure strains as their workhorses. "You're lucky if you can get 10 papers to come up on PubMed that name them," he smiles. "We look at algae that have been isolated from all over the world," from Irish peat bogs to equatorial swamps. For feedstock, Solazyme's algae eat anything from waste glycerol and sugar cane to sugar beet pulp and molasses. "You can use just about anything," Dillon says, as long as the feedstock is high-volume and low-cost.

Dillon says that Solazyme's algae produce some hydrocarbons, but mostly triacylglycerides. To make their biodiesel, the company takes the glyceride backbones from these fats and adds methanol. To get renewable diesel, they take that fatty acid methyl ester and "hydrotreat" it, stripping off oxygens and saturating the molecule with hydrogens. That gives them a straight-chain alkane, not much different from the diesel that flows from gas pumps into millions of diesel engines everyday across America. In nature, algal cells are rarely above 30% oil. Yields of 50-60% oil per gram of dry weight of algal cells are considered excellent. Solazyme's algae, however, stores 75% oil per gram of dry weight. "We have incredibly good scientists here," Dillon says.

Dillon says that he expects Solazyme to be producing algal biofuel at "demonstration levels of tens to thousands of gallons" per day by 2009, and aims to be producing its fuel products at commercial levels by 2011. "The scalability is not something that frightens me too much," he says.

Smart Meter Funding

In a Smart Grid Jobs Report released recently by the GridWise Alliance, it is estimated that up to 280,000 new jobs can be created directly from the deployment of smart grid technologies. The report explains that Federal investment in a smart grid could act as a catalyst for these planned and immediate direct jobs as well as spawn many indirect jobs. Brisbane City Council is subsidizing smart meters as part of their $50 Climate Smart Home Service .

Here are some more recent blog posts and news articles on smart meter funding.

$5m Country Energy smart meter trial comes to NSW

However, according to an Energy Australia report last year, energy prices are also a major obstacle in Australia to a smart metering system: due to the relatively low price of energy, a full-scale rollout could be hard to justify. Consumers should not expect the technology in the near future: Country Energy plans to spend just AU$5 million from its AU$500 million annual capital expenditure budget, and is yet to source vendors to supply the smart meters, sensors and the network, said Hamilton.

"We're looking to partner with vendors -- telcos and specialist equipment manufacturers — who are interested in how their equipment could fit within the project. This is a long term project for the company so we're not going to leap into anything," he said.

A Smart Grid Jobs Report released recently by the GridWise Alliance says

During the next four years, KEMA’s projection anticipates that a potential disbursement of $16 billion in Smart Grid incentives would act as a catalyst in driving associated Smart Grid1 projects that are worth $64 billion. The impact of these projects would result in the direct creation of approximately 280,000 new positions across various categories, of which more than 150,000 will be created by the end of 2009. Furthermore, we estimate that nearly 140,000 new direct jobs would persist beyond the Smart Grid deployment as permanent, on-going high-value positions.

The indirect jobs, while more difficult to quantify, are substantially larger. Smart Grid is universally understood to be the key enabling technology for the nation's ambitions for renewable energy development, electric vehicle adoption, and energy efficiency improvements.

In the absence of Smart Grid investments, many more hundreds of thousands of jobs in these related sectors will either be deferred or not created due to the inability of the electric infrastructure to incorporate these new technologies. Smart Grid is to the electric energy sector what the Internet was to the communications sector and should be viewed and supported on that basis.

$11 billion in stimulus package delights IBM

IBM loves the stimulus package, CEO Sam Palmisano told President Obama on Wednesday. What IBM likes most about it is the $11 billion to modernize the nation's power grid with "smart grids" and "smart meters." Which just happens to be one of IBM's bigger initiatives these days. It's also a "central focus" of IBM's Venture Capital Group in San Mateo, according to Drew Clark, the group's director of strategy. Working with local companies identified by the venture group, such as San Mateo's eMeter, IBM has already deployed several hundred thousand smart meters in Northern California. It is also working with Redwood City's Silver Springs Networks and others on developing smart grids.
For IBM, it's merely a piece of a much larger vision it calls "Smarter Planet," which involves nothing less than "bring(ing) a new level of intelligence to how the world works - how every person, business, organization, government, natural system and man-made system interacts." The Venture Capital Group is "locked at the hip with

Energy Efficiency and the Stimulus Bill: Show Me the Money

Nowhere in the (Obama stimulus) bill’s language is there anything about 40 million smart meters or 3,000 miles of transmission grid. Granted, these are probably extrapolations of the dollars that ARE in the legislation (that is, “if there are $N billions of dollars for the smart grid, that would pay for X [meters, transmission lines, towers, etc...].”) Where it gets interesting is in the actual dollar calculations. When you factor in the program costs, installation and the meters themselves, 40 million meters (at, reasonably and aggressively, $250 per meter) would cost $10 billion. Nowhere in either the Senate or House version of the bill is there $10 billion allocated exclusively for smart grid meters. What IS allocated is $4.5 billion that can go into programs for the smart grid—of which some percentage could go toward smart meters (but the list of qualifying technologies and projects for the $4.5 billion is fairly large). Some of that $4.5 billion goes toward 50/50 matching grants, so if all of the $4.5 billion was matched, that could equate to $9 billion. If the money was used EXCLUSIVELY for smart meters, then we’d be close to the figure we need to install 40 million smart meters in America.

The Einstein Refrigerator Revisited

Wikipedia tells us

The Einstein refrigerator is an absorption refrigerator which has no moving parts and requires only a heat source to operate. It was jointly invented in 1926 by Albert Einstein and his former student Leó Szilárd and patented in the US on November 11, 1930 (U.S. Patent 1,781,541 ). This is an alternative design from the original invention of 1922 by the Swedish inventors Baltzar von Platen and Carl Munters.

This Guardian article  tells us that the Einstein refrigerator still has some uses:

Now Malcolm McCulloch, an electrical engineer at Oxford who works on green technologies, is leading a three-year project to develop more robust appliances that can be used in places without electricity.

Pressurised gas fridges based around Einstein's design were replaced by freon-compressor fridges partly because Einstein and Szilard's design was not very efficient. But McCulloch thinks that by tweaking the design and replacing the types of gases used it will be possible to quadruple the efficiency. He also wants to take the idea further. The only energy input needed into the fridge is to heat a pump, and McCulloch has been working on powering this with solar energy.

 This Green Optimistic post  gives a little more detail on McCulloch's invention.

McCulloch describes the device rebuilt by him. At one side is the evaporator, a flask that contains butane gas. “If you introduce a new vapour above the butane, the liquid boiling temperature decreases and, as it boils off, it takes energy from the surroundings to do so. That’s what makes it cold”, he says.

But the fridge developed by Einstein and Szilard was inefficient with that time’s technology, so the producers passed on to using freon gas and compressors. McCulloch, on the other hand, believes that by modifying the design and replacing the gas types he uses, he will be able to obtain 4 times Einstein’s efficiency. Going a little bit further, he wants to insert a solar powered heat pump (to be green). ‘No moving parts is a real benefit because it can carry on going without maintenance. This could have real applications in rural areas,’ he says.His team has completed a prototype of a type of fridge patented in 1930 by Einstein and his colleague, the Hungarian physicist Leo Szilard. It had no moving parts and used only pressurised gases to keep things cold. The design was partly used in the first domestic refrigerators, but the technology was abandoned when more efficient compressors became popular in the 19
50s. That meant a switch to using freons.

The article goes on to discuss using  magnetic fields for cooling:

Other researchers, working at Cambridge, got the idea of cooling without adding extra energy by using magnetic fields. “Our fridge works, from a conceptual point of view, in a similar way (to freon fridges) but instead of using a gas we use a magnetic field and a special metal alloy. When the magnetic field is next to the alloy, it’s like compressing the gas, and when the magnetic field leaves, it’s like expanding the gas. This effect can be seen in rubber bands - when you stretch the band it gets hot, and when you let the band contract it gets cold.” said managing director Neil Wilson.

Another Green Optimistic post  discusses a Danish group doing work on the same topic

A group of researchers at the Technical University of Denmark’s project laboratory in Risø have discovered a cooling method that uses magnetic materials instead of electricity, reported daily free newspaper Nyhedsavisen.

The invention will allow for refrigerators to replace existing electric refrigerators in homes and businesses with a fully environmentally friendly power source. Although the first prototype will not be ready until 2010, the project’s researchers say the appliance’s cooling cycle efficiency will be 60 percent greater than that of conventional refrigerators.

The new method uses opposing magnetic fields to increase the temperature of the materials employed. The heat energy is transported through a non-volatile fluid, such as water, and then thermodynamically reversed to a cold temperature. The scientists have already been able to cool a 20° C room to 11°C using the new technology.

Pattern Recognition and Smart Metering

This Electronics Weekly article says:

University of Oxford spin out Intelligent Sustainable Energy (ISE) is to make electricity meters so smart that they can recognise which domestic appliance is operating at any time...Instead, the firm's intellectual property covers algorithms that interpret mains voltage and current waveforms. "It is artificial intelligence - pattern recognition," said Donaldson, who would not go into any more detail.

This implies that each device in a house has a characteristic pattern of electricity usage that ISE's algorithms can identify. The ISE webpage  says

The core of the ISE solution is the intelligent energy monitor which connects to the energy supply at a single point. Using patented artifical intelligence and signal processing techniques developed over a number of years at Oxford University, the system analyses the electricity supply and calculates the power consumption of each appliance without the need for any other sensors. This information can then be communicated to the consumer through a variety of methods including local in-home displays, web portals and itemised billing services.

There is some more information in this story.

Intelligent Appliances
MIT's Project Oxygen has the notion of Intelligent Spaces

Space-centered computation embedded in ordinary environments defines intelligent spaces populated by cameras, microphones, displays, sound output systems, radar systems, wireless networks, and controls for physical entities such as curtains, lighting, door locks, soda dispensers, toll gates, and automobiles. People interact in intelligent spaces naturally, using speech, gesture, drawing, and movement, without necessarily being aware that computation is present.

Environmental devices, together called an E21, provide a local-area computational and communication back-plane for an intelligent space. E21s are connected to nearby sensors, actuators, and appliances, suitably encapsulated in physical objects. They communicate with each other and with nearby handheld devices (H21s) through dynamically configured networks (N21s). E21s provide sufficient computational power throughout the environment

Related Papers
Current Sensor Based Non-Instrusive Appliance Recognition (copy protected PDF) by Saito et al explains one way of finding the current usage patterns of electrical devices. They use Nearest Neighbor classification.

Exploration on Load Signatures

Estimation of Variable-Speed-Drive Power Consumption From Harmonic Content  paper proposes a VSD power estimation method based on observed correlations between fundamental and higher harmonic spectral content in current. The technique can be generalized to any load with signature correlations in harmonic content, including many power electronic and electromechanical loads.

Update,  21 October 2009
I am putting together some proposals for products based on HANs and pattern recognition. If anyone has similar interests please contact me on peter.williams.97@gmail.com to discuss collaboration opportunities.

Smart Metering

This Smart Meters blog post says

In the report, information compiled by the American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy (ACEEE) from 21 different studies of projects varying in size found that the median amount of energy saved would be 18 percent over 13 years. This works out to Americans saving 1.5 percent more energy each year, which has been demonstrated at utilities deploying aggressive energy conservation programs.

Reduction of peak load can range between 7 and 22 percent according to other ACEEE studies. Depending on the geographical area, savings can be significantly higher. For example, in the southern states summers are typically hotter so there is much more potential for consumers who are enrolled in demand response programs to cycle down their air conditioning on the hottest days.

So what is a "Smart Meter"?

Smart Meters
Wikipedia says

A smart meter  generally refers to a type of advanced meter (usually an electrical meter) that identifies consumption in more detail than a conventional meter; and optionally, but generally, communicates that information via some network back to the local utility for monitoring and billing purposes (telemetering).

There are a lot of smart metering projects taking place in the world. Click on the map below to navigate to your part of the world.

World Map of Smart Metering Projects

View Larger Map

Applications of Smart Meters

Smart meters and electric cars: a match made in efficiency says

Studies have found that electric vehicles could be charged with electricity produced under the current system, if done at the right time, agreed National Resources Defense Council scientist Simon Mui.

It might seem that simply plugging in your Chevy Volt or Ford Escape before bedtime would do. But increased use of electric vehicles could lead to everyone plugging in at the same time, peaking demand and complicating things, particularly if electric vehicles take hold of entire neighborhoods, as car trends often do, Kjaer explained.

So instead, Edison and auto manufacturers are turning to "smart metering" technologies. Such technologies allow consumers and, potentially appliances, to be aware of how much electricity is being consumed everywhere so that they can try to consume when other people are not.

Smart Metering Products

Comverge

offers a spectrum of Demand Response, advanced metering, and grid management solutions – all designed to assist utilities and end consumers in utilizing energy "smarter" and more efficiently.

Tendril Inc's TREE platform

The TREE Platform is an open, enterprise-class demand side energy management software solution for utilities and energy retailers. Designed to support multiple energy management applications simultaneously, including Energy Efficiency , Demand Response , and Pricing . TREE provides a complete solution that is scalable, unified, and optimized for seamless integration with the utility back-office, a variety of meter networks, and ZigBee® enabled devices.

The TREE platform can be accessed by consumers in various ways including, the Vantage consumer portal, mobile devices, an energy management widget, smart thermostats , and smart in-home displays. These devices provide access and information about the other devices in the Home Area Network (HAN) as well as details on their energy consumption and billing information. The Vantage Utility Management Center provides energy retailers with the ability to monitor and manage millions of HANS simultaneously, and communicate directly with their customers regarding service and support in real-time. 

SilverSpring

Utilities are challenged to connect a variety of disparate systems, including AMI/AMR, GIS, and supervisory measurement and control systems. Only one technology will mitigate the considerable risk posed by obsolescence or proprietary solutions: a network based on open, secure standards.

The protocols making the Internet possible have become ubiquitous–every major standards organization has embraced the suite of networking protocols, simply known as IP, in one form or another. Use of IP provides the highest ROI, the least financial risk, the greatest number of proven security options and the shortest payback cycle.

An IP-based network empowers utilities to add new products today and advanced services as they become available.

Software solutions include UtilOS®, a network operating system designed to enable maximum control, and UtilityIQ®, a network management platform for advanced meter reading, advanced network management and scalable, reliable data management. Network infrastructure is enhanced with Access Point SG, a central hub between end-point devices and the enterprise, and Relay SG, a highly reliable, open, standards-based RF repeater. Silver Spring Networks also makes endpoints more intelligent with Network Interface Cards (NICs) and the Gas Interface Management Unit™.

Trilliant 

Trilliant was the first AMI vendor to introduce an open standards-compliant wireless mesh network solution for mass-market (residential) applications. The MeshReader™ intelligent metering communications product family has established a new open standards and cost effective approach to two-way communications for residential customer applications. ..Our products are all standards-based, state-of-the-art devices. They include different options (retrofit, external box), to cover all needs for electric, gas and water meter data collection and management. The utility will find all the appropriate solutions for its different requirements. We have developed very economical devices for the residential and small commercial customers.

Ember

Ember is the ZigBee leader, delivering a series of industry firsts:

First fully integrated System-on-Chip combining processor,memory and radio on a single chip

First ZigBee coprocessor simplifying the addition of ZigBee networking to a wide range of systems

First ZigBee PRO Feature Set stack, enabling truly scalable, robust, and reliable ZigBee networks

Ember has proven the ability to enable scalable AMI and AMR network solutions. The EmberZNet PRO stack implements important AMI-oriented enhancements, including advanced “deep sleep” modes that minimize power consumption for gas and water meter applications, where multi-year battery life is critical.

In addition to leading silicon and ZigBee stack software, Ember also provides the software and tools infrastructure to deliver complete, robust solutions quickly. This includes reliable over-the-air software updating, complete reference applications for AMI and Home Automation devices, industry leading development tools that speed system development, and manufacturing test library options that enable high-volume manufacturing.

 Smart Metering Protocols

Can 100M ZigBee Fans Be Wrong?

Shipments of chips based around the 802.15.4 standard will rise to 292 million units in 2012, way up from the seven million sold in 2007. (ZigBee  is based around 802.15.4) About one-third of the chips on the 802.15.4 protocol will be based around d a ZigBee stack, but that’s still nearly 100 million chips sold.

A leading driver of demand for these chips will be smart meters and sensors for home networks. With these home networks, electric meters will be able to turn down air conditioners or turn off the heater in dryers to save power.

EETimes  interview

ZigBee has great market opportunities, but only if the promise of extreme low cost and low power can be realized. For the target devices, battery lifespans are measured in years and the market won’t bear more than $1 or $2 per unit for the ZigBee controller and radio. A company can be successful in this market only by aggressively cutting costs in every area of design, engineering, and production.

WiMAX
This Energy Australia's WiMAX rollout article says:

Data will be collected over the last-mile via WiMAX-enabled substations which will connect to new upstream and downstream smart metering devices installed in homes and businesses.

A new 1000km fibre backbone, built over the last three years, will carry the data from the substations to 250 sites across the two states.

The fibre backbone replaced an aging copper network with upgradeable 1Gbps Virtual PrivateLAN Service (VPLS) and Multiprotocol Label Switching (MPLS) layer 2 and 3.

Advanced Metering Infrastructure
Advanced Metering Infrastructure (AMI) refers to systems that measure, collect and analyse energy usage, from advanced devices such a selectricity meters, gas meters, and/or water meters, through various communication media on request or on a pre-defined schedule. This infrastructure includes hardware, software, communications, customer associated systems and meter data management (MDM) software.

The network between the measurement devices and business systems allows collection and distribution of information to customers, suppliers,utility companies and service providers. This enables these businesses to either participate in, or provide, demand response solutions, products and services. By providing information to customers, the system assists a change in energy usage from their normal consumption patterns, either in response to changes in price or as incentives designed to encourage lower energy usage use at times of peak-demand periods or higher wholesale prices or during periods of low operational systems reliability.

AMI "raises the bar" with regard to traditional Automatic meter reading (AMR) in that it enables two-way communications with the meter. Traditional systems which were only capable of meter readings don't qualify as AMI systems.

This MCE information paper lists the following Smart meter functionalities 

Communications interface – to allow a range of other devices (such as in-home displays and direct load control equipment) to access the communications network through the meter.

Remote load control – devices (such as airconditioners and pool pumps) could be turned on or off by the meter, either according to a remotely-settable time schedule or following a remote request through the communications network.

Export metering – the ability to measure electricity flowing out of customers' premises, supporting tariffs for distributed and embedded generation (such as cogeneration or solar).

Remote connect/disconnect – the ability for the electricity supply to be cut off and restored remotely. Combined with remote special reading this would allow for cases where there is a change of occupancy and there is a gap between the departure of the old occupant and the arrival of the new occupant.

Outage detection - to allow utilities to monitor the status of each meter - for example allowing utilities to test whether supply has been restored to each house before a truck leaves after a repair.

Meter tamper detection - to monitor whether the meter is accessed without authorisation, helping protect the physical meter asset and helping manage non-technical losses.

Remote time synchronisation - to keep the meter's internal clock accurate without requiring a site visit to check and adjust.

Quality of supply measurement and recording - to detect and record events such as outages, voltage spikes and voltage drops at each house or business.

The Victoria (Australia) 2009 smart meter roll-out will focus on four key services that will be of most benefit to consumers.

• Recording electricity used every half hour, so households can better monitor their energy use and cost;

• Meters read remotely, to help make bills more accurate, help retailers respond to customer enquiries better and distributors can more easily identify faults;

• Remotely connecting supply; and

• Remotely disconnecting supply, making it more convenient for people moving house.

Further Reading 

Smart Fridges

 The CSIRO report ‘Smart’ fridges stay cool by talking to each other says

CSIRO Engineer, Sam West, says the smart fridges work as a network of distributed fridges, each fitted with control technology that allows them to communicate with each other via a network to share and store the energy provided by renewable-power generators.

“The fridges are designed to talk to each other, negotiating when it’s a good time to consume electricity and when it’s better not to,” Mr West says. “These scheduling decisions improve the quality of electricity produced by renewables and can help increase renewable uptake in the energy market.”

During the day, for example, supplies of electricity generated from photovoltaics can be interrupted by cloud cover resulting in periods of variable power supply.

“The fridges are designed to talk to each other, negotiating when it’s a good time to consume electricity and when it’s better not to,”

Mr West says.

“These fluctuations are bad for the electricity grid,” Mr West says. “Rapid variations in electricity flow can destabilise the grid and result in blackouts and other unwanted side-effects, but your fridge can help smooth out these fluctuations if it turns on and off at the right time.

“The fridges work together to decide when to cool down, and thus consume power, based on how much surplus power will be available. They are able to anticipate power shortages and change their running schedules accordingly to use as little power as possible during these times. In short, the fridges are working cooperatively to use the available power supply efficiently.”

CSIRO have a broader research program called Smart agents : an intelligent way to manage and control energy

The distributed intelligent agent system gives individual consumers real-time information about their power demand and energy pricing during peaks; utilities are provided with a tool to arrange coordinated action by thousands of users.

The inter-connectivity of the intelligent agents provides global appliance supervision. The aggregated response of the agents can address higher order goals like matching consumer demand to intermittent renewable energy supply systems.

As a result, local generation and load control are made more attractive and beneficial as investment options for power generation companies.

Because power retailers are able to manage demand by aggregating consumer-level supply and demand, businesses can reduce their exposure to high wholesale electricity prices.

The project’s scientists see the typical application of this technology being in a number of commercial buildings and domestic residences where there are numerous energy loads and some local generation.

The Smart agents program is run by Dr Glenn Platt who is described as

Dr Platt is currently putting all of his research and management efforts into an Energy Transformed Flagship project that is investigating the application of intelligent agents into the management and control of distributed energy.

Dr Platt explains 'Distributed energy is the generation of electricity using small generation sources located close to the actual electrical loads, as well as more effective control of how electricity is actually used at the load itself.'

The Smart agents program is part of CSIRO's Flagship research into distributed energy which is described as having the following benefits

With a major asset investment required to meet the predicted growth in Australia’s energy demand, and increasing awareness of the environmental costs of our current power generation technologies, LEDE (Low Emission Distributed Energy systems, which use small scale stationary technology [producing less than 30MW] to provide local power, heat and cooling) offers the least cost, low CO2 option for electricity capacity growth.

It achieves this by providing energy (electricity, heat and cooling) and improved efficiency at the point of use in industrial, commercial and residential applications, avoiding the need for costly transmission and distribution network upgrades and new large centralised generation assets.

Widespread uptake of LEDE would supplement existing, large, remotely-located, base-load power stations and power delivery networks, assisting in overall green

LEDE systems provide energy at the point of use, avoiding the need for new large centralised assets and distribution network upgrades along with their associated emissions.

Some other energy load management products are

• Fujitsu AC Models with Presence Sensors
• Fridges Remotely-Controlled by Power Company 

See also

• Smart Metering 
• Einstein Refrigerator 
• CSIRO Solar (Heat-Powered) Cooling System