What's happening behind the meter?
As many utilities examine and evaluate the benefits of Advanced Metering Infrastructure (AMI), there is a natural focus to place greater emphasis on tangible values for information and control that are primarily meter-centric. Normally, these areas include remote meter reading, interval consumption information, energy demand, power outage and restoration, tamper, theft, service reconnect/disconnect, power quality. However, as more robust communications systems are being deployed to support these “smart” meters, there are additional benefit areas that can accrue from services that are behind the meter, such as information and management of devices connected to a Home Area Network (HAN).
“Smart Grid” is widely discussed topic; however, there are potential and significant applications that are emerging within the premises – many of which could leverage the AMI network. Within these applications areas, there is a growing interest in appliance control and management. While for AMI this may be a new area, understanding this potential and setting the goals for this arena has been a topic of interest for some time.
In the mid 1990s, a study was commissioned by EPRI to determine how well interval data could be used to identify specific appliance load characteristics. This study, titled Non-Intrusive Appliance Load Monitoring System (NIALMS) TR-108419, used a standard meter with a collar that contained a collector and modem. This collar was connected to a back-office system and was programmed to capture and report one-, five-, 10-, and 15-minute interval data. Seven utilities participated in the beta test of this system. The final report (www.epriweb.com/public/TR-108419.pdf) indicated that there is a high confidence that the non-intrusive monitoring could be used to identify five of the seven loads monitored. The five noted include central air conditioning units, hot water heaters, water-bed heaters, refrigerator/freezers, and heat pumps. The remaining two that had a lesser degree of certainty included pumps (well or sewer) and clothes dryers. Using this information, utilities could ascertain if loads were active and, more importantly, if actions such as demand response were effective.
Today, with the advent of a HAN included as a potential standard feature of an AMI system, there is an expectation that these appliances could be directly controlled and report their activity to the meter.
One of the outcomes of this workshop was an alignment of the key stakeholders and the benefits and drivers they are seeking. The needs of the utility for demand response and retail sales potential were noted:
Although this effort was started over six years ago, there has been little in the way of mass market adoption and use of smart appliances since that time. However, some strides have been taken by at least two major appliance manufacturers.
In late 2001 and early 2002, the Department of Energy held one of its first workshops to explore the “Home of the Future.” This workshop was an attempt to set the energy vision of the home in 2020. This workshop involved a collaborative effort of over 35 attendees from various industry disciplines as shown in the following breakdown:
Whirlpool
Whirlpool has been very active in this space and has demonstrated its Grid-Friendly Appliances (GFAs). According to Gale Horst, lead engineer at Whirlpool’s Energy Research, some of the drivers for an appliance manufacturer’s participation in Energy Management Research include:
a belief that energy consumption will be a cooperative effort in the future
to research the technology issues in the energy-managed home
to learn how Whirlpool can assist consumers in managing their energy needs in a non-intrusive manner
to understand the consumer attitudes and expectations.
In these trials Whirlpool categorized an “energy-managed appliance” into four categories, namely:
grid friendly – those appliances that automatically sense conditions on the grid and provide some brief level of load shedding
curtailment – those that would respond to a urgent request to shed load
criticalPeakPricing – those that would execute a change in operating mode base on a signal that prices have changed
load / peak leveling – coordination of a energy consumption strategy.
To accomplish this, Whirlpool appliances in these programs were designed to respond appropriately based on:
capability of the appliance hardware
flexibility of the appliance control system
ability to meet request without objectionable customer disruption.
Safety and process management certainly are among the key factors the modification of modification of the functionality of appliances in response to a control signal. In particular, there are many interlocks that must be maintained that would not permit automatic restarting of interrupted devices. In the area of process management, there are some key sequences that must be executed to completion regardless of the call for energy reduction. This is necessary because of the adverse results that could occur if, for instance, a clothes washer were to be interrupted during a bleach cycle of a wash. Whirlpool continues to be very active in various smart metering programs.
Miele
Miele, the German appliance manufacturer of high-end products, has taken a different position in this area by focusing on more service-focused efforts. By using the Internet, the company is able to monitor and manage its service contracts and provide value-added services to its customers. Leveraging the proliferation of WiFi-enabled homes, Miele refrigerators, wine coolers, and dishwashers are being provisioned with WiFi communications capabilities.
According to Steve Polinski with Miele’s Product Development in Princeton, NJ, the diagnostic capability of the company’s RemoteVision service that is built into these intelligent devices now enables Miele’s service personnel to respond in a more timely manner to alarm trigger events, better monitor appliance performance characteristics, and even potentially resolve problems remotely. On the consumer benefit side, Miele can call the owner, send an email to their blackberry or send a text message to their cell phone, so corrective actions can be taken or arrangements made for access and service. This feature could save the consumer hundreds of dollars by avoiding possible spoilage of refrigerated or frozen good.
Although Miele’s business model is currently focused on appliance diagnostics and repair, having a two-way connection to these appliances opens the potential for energy efficiency application as well.
In the case of Miele, WiFi was selected as the most universal means of communicating with the company’s products. While Miele did investigate other technologies such as ZigBee, the lack of uniform standards, reliance on meters owned by utilities to be equipped with this capability, the lack of geographic saturation of clientele they serve in a given utility footprint (mostly high-end) and other factors, made the homeowners’ WiFi the most logical configuration choice. Furthermore, since this is a value-added service provided to its customers, Miele gains the necessary permission to use the customers Internet network connection as part of this offering.
While many of major appliance manufacturers continue their respective efforts to advance their products and extend communications and control capabilities, the AMI industry, in some cases, continues to debate the value of HANs. Although there is a strong potential that there will be a utility-centric HANs and a consumer HANs, there will be a logical intersection of these networks that can provide value to all stakeholders.
Next month, AI will look at this intersection between utility-centric HANs and consumers HANs.
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