Smart Energy

Chapter 1. Smart Energy Solution

Electricity is essential to modern life. More than four-fifths of the world’s population has access to it according to the International Energy Agency, and in the US, it is so pervasive we often take it for granted. Whether we’re preparing our meals, drying our clothes, charging our mobile phones, or powering our alarm clocks, we’re using electricity at all hours of the day—often without considering how it’s made, how much we use, and how else the system could work. What if that could change?

Imagine having a range of new choices and insights to help you make smarter decisions about energy use. For instance, would it be possible to train your house to always know how to achieve the right temperature whether you’re at home or away? Could you bestow your office with the ability to provide the right amount of light anywhere, anytime, in the building, automatically? What about being able to divine when the cleanest energy was being to transmitted to you and charge your electronics at those times? Could you even find a way to capture and store the sun’s energy and then use it at night?

Thanks to advancements in technology and connectivity, our options for “smart energy” abound. It’s now possible to maintain the upside of traditional energy (reliability and coverage), while reducing its downside (high cost, inefficiencies, and a heavy reliance on fossil fuels). Internet-enabled devices, the latest in energy production technology, and advancements in power storage solutions are forming the backbone of a new smart energy marketplace. They are enabling more of us to take an active role in it. Informed by streams of intelligence and empowered by these resources, we can now produce, trade, and consume electricity with more efficiency, lower cost, and greater sustainability.

Enabled by the IoT

Whether you’re producing electricity or consuming it, making informed decisions about energy is a lot easier today. A network of agents—the Internet of Things (IoT)—exists that can help you with that task. These agents come in the form of meters and sensors deployed throughout the electrical grid and in homes and businesses. They gather a myriad of data, connect to the Internet, and transmit the data to cloud-based applications where it can be aggregated, analyzed, and compared with other data sets. The result is information that can help you to decide how best to power your life and livelihood while saving money and minimizing impact on the environment.

For example, most utilities deploy a network of wireless sensors between their facilities and their customers’ meters to monitor energy flow. These devices have replaced the “meter men” of old and provide real-time data on power demand, supply, and outages. When analyzed along with historical data, it enables utilities to spot trends. Combine it with third-party intelligence like forecasts on weather, fuel availability in the commodities market, or population growth, and it helps them to optimize energy production and adjust the technology in their portfolio.

This helps utilities to become more energy-efficient, saving them money and reducing their carbon footprint. Likewise, customers have an array of IoT solutions to help them achieve the same “behind the meter.” For example, today you can buy temperature control systems that are able to learn and adapt. Nest, a residential solution, and Comfy, a solution geared more toward the business environment, can automatically adjust indoor heating and cooling to the desired level. As you teach the systems your preferences, they quickly adapt, analyzing and making adjustments to the settings on their own to optimize comfort and energy use.

Another example is intelligent lighting systems, like the commercial wireless solution offered by Daintree. In a business facility, all spaces are not occupied equally all of the time. For instance, most offices only conduct business during the day. These systems can be programmed to turn on, turn off, or dim lighting at preset times to accommodate business hours. They also use a variety of sensors, including motion and thermal detectors, to determine when a conference room is occupied and lights should be on. In addition, some systems use ambient light sensors. They determine how much sunshine a room is already receiving and adjust the indoor lighting accordingly.

Lastly, what if you want to use the cleanest energy available on the grid at any given time? WattTime, a nonprofit devoted to solving this challenge, has developed a solution that can be incorporated into any Internet-enabled product that draws electricity.

“Every time you flip a switch or your equipment turns on, some power plant has to increase its electricity output right away—the ‘marginal’ plant,” explains Gavin McCormick, co-founder and executive director of WattTime. Which power plant is marginal? The answer is constantly changing, up to every five minutes. “We provide a service to sync the moments your smart devices draw energy to match the moments when your local marginal power plant is a cleaner one,” said McCormack.

WattTime estimates your local marginal plant and its cleanliness by matching public power grid information with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Continuous Emissions Monitoring System. It’s being used today in conjunction with electric vehicle charging stations sold by eMotorWerks. Another big opportunity McCormack sees is pairing it with smart thermostats. “In most cases it is possible to reduce the carbon footprint from electric heat and air conditioning with essentially zero impact on user comfort or their energy bill.”

These IoT-based energy solutions provide awareness and optimization. They enable producers to operate more efficiently by offering insights into real-time demand, analysis for making more accurate predictions, and automation to adjust power generation accordingly. They also enable customers to learn when, where, and how much energy is needed, understand options for sourcing it, and automate usage to achieve optimal energy efficiency based on personal preference. This intelligence and capability is essential to ushering in a new era. However, the vision for smart energy only realizes its full potential when the Internet of Things is combined with advancements in energy production and storage technologies.

Fueled by Advancements in Power Technology

We’ve seen how smart energy solutions can help utilities better anticipate demand and enable customers to pare back energy use. This creates positive results even in a traditional marketplace where all of the power is generated by the utilities and is based on fossil fuels. Each party saves money and benefits from releasing fewer greenhouse gas emissions into the atmosphere. The good news is that there’s even more to be gained by pairing these solutions with new technologies that empower anyone to produce clean, renewable energy and use it at the optimal time.

Here’s why clean production is paramount to smart energy. It’s the most viable path for sustainability, and it addresses the power industry’s major contribution to global warming. According to the CAIT Climate Data Explorer, an open source database developed by the World Resources Institute that contains well-founded data on climate change, “Electricity & Heat,” a subsector of Energy, contributed nearly a third of the global greenhouse gas emissions released in 2012.

This oversized impact is due mostly to the industry’s reliance on fossil fuels—primarily coal. These limited resources are not renewable on a human timescale and are comparatively heavy polluters.

Figure 1-1 shows data from the National Renewable Energy Lab (NREL) study of the life cycle greenhouse gas emissions for select energy technologies from “cradle to grave.” This table shows the median emissions estimated for each technology based on public data, some of which they were able to harmonize. What comes through clearly is the stark difference between fossil fuels and all other technologies listed.

Natural gas and coal contribute at least nine times more greenhouse gas emissions to the atmosphere over their lifetime. When comparing coal to hydropower, it’s as much as 143 times more. Ideally, these fossil fuel technologies would be used sparingly, if at all. However, there are logical reasons they continue to play a major role in power generation today.

Figure 1-1. Life cycle analysis: comparison of select energy technologies

In a separate study NREL considered the capacity factor of different energy technologies. This is the amount of energy it produces over time divided by the amount of energy the technology could produce if its system were at full capacity.

The study shows coal has the highest range of capacity factors along with nuclear, geothermal, and biopower. They operate at more than 80 percent, making it easy for them to produce the base load (minimum level of demand) for electricity on the grid. Natural gas and hydropower have the widest range of capacity factors. In fact, natural gas-fired combustion turbines (NGCT) can operate between 10 and 90 percent. So even though it’s one of the dirtiest technologies, it’s the best match we have today for “marginal plants,” which produce power swiftly to meet the grid’s peak energy needs. While wind and solar are cleaner technologies, they have the lowest range of capacity factors. They are subject to varying weather conditions and the earth’s rotation, and rarely operate beyond 50 percent.

Knowing the pros and cons of these technologies and feeling increased public scrutiny of its contribution to climate change, the power industry signaled its interest in greater innovation over the past few decades. The market responded favorably. New technologies arose that enabled utilities to moderately reduce emissions tied to coal and natural gas–generated electricity. More importantly, utilities diversified into cleaner, renewable energy as those technologies became more feasible and affordable. Those advancements also led to a proliferation of solutions in the market to help end users generate their own renewable power.

One such solution is solar energy. According the U.S. Department of Energy, Home Depot, one of the leading home improvement retailers in North America, only began selling residential solar power systems in its stores in 2001. Prior to that, the cost and performance of this technology did not make solar an attractive option for mainstream customers. Since then, the technology has become more efficient, cheaper to produce, and much less expensive to install.

Today, you can contact a turn-key company, like Solar City, to install, monitor, and maintain solar photovoltaic (PV) panels for your home or business. They will also finance them for you and share any savings that come from reducing the electric bill from your utility. This has become such a viable option for customers that by the end of 2014, nearly 645,000 US homes and businesses had chosen to go solar, according to the Solar Energy Industry Association.

Advancements like these give life to smart energy. They empower everyone to participate in the market contributing to a sufficient, reliable supply of electricity through more choice, greater efficiency, lower cost, and increased sustainability. The latest clean energy technologies deliver on this vision in spades, especially when paired with IoT-enabled solutions. Even so, more opportunity remains.

Without viable energy storage options, all electricity has to be used when it’s produced. This limits the role that clean energy technologies, like solar and wind, can play in the overall power portfolio. Because they produce energy intermittently, they have less capacity to generate electricity just as it’s needed. The absence of energy storage also prevents producers and customers from realizing additional cost savings and efficiencies. Storage is the last piece in the smart energy puzzle. Fortunately, breakthroughs in technology are making energy storage more feasible than ever and paving the way for mainstream adoption.