Opportunities and Impediments

David Culler

University of California, Berkeley

Retreat

January 13, 2010

“Energy permits things to exist; information, to behave purposefully.” W. Ware, 1997

Energy is THE Problem

• Energy and the environmental impact of extraction, use, and disposal

• THE problem of the Industrial Age• We need to find Information Age

solutions to THE Industrial Age Problem

• it starts with the Faustian bargain of oblivious consumption

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The Grid: Marvel of Industrial Age Design

• Deliver high quality low-cost power• To millions of customers over thousands of

miles• Synchronized to <<16 ms cycle (60 Hz)

• With no orders, no forecasts, no plans

• No inventory anywhere in the supply chain

• To enable rapid economic & industrial growth through oblivious consumption

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A New Reality …

1. Energy becoming increasingly dear– increased cost of acquisition– inclusion of environmental costs

2. Improvements in energy efficiency cause high dynamic variability in the load– high peak-to-ave ratio, bursty

3. Limitations of existing grid present transmission and distribution bottlenecks

4. Incorporation of renewable resources reduces control over supply– most are non-dispatchable (solar, wind)

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Aware Co-operative Grid

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• Monitor, Model, Mitigate• Deep instrumentation• Waste elimination• Efficient Operation

• Shifting, Scheduling, Adaptation

• Forecasting• Tracking• Market

• Availability• Pricing• Planning

Grid Exists

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Conventional Electric Grid

Generation

Transmission

Distribution

Load

Internet Exists

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Conventional Electric Grid

Generation

Transmission

Distribution

Load

Conventional Internet

Intelligent Energy Network as Overlay on Both

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Conventional Electric Grid

Generation

Transmission

Distribution

Load

Intelligent Energy Network

Load IPS

Source IPS

energy subnet

Intelligent Power Switch

Conventional Internet

Where to Focus?

• Buildings …• 72% of electrical consumption,

40% of total consumption, 42% of GHG footprint

• 370 B$ in US annual utility bill• 9.5% of GDP in bldg

construction/renovation• Primarily Coal generation• Primary opportunity for

renewable supplies9

Renewable energy consumption

Electricity source

Coal consumption by sector

Energy “Spaghetti” Chart

10-8-2008 10

A Time of Opportunities

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UCB as Living Laboratory

• CAL climate action plan

• CoGen Plant plan

• Action Webs

• SECORI 50%

• BEARS – Singapore

• CITRIS

23年 4月 18日 12

Envi

ronm

enta

lO

pera

tiona

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CEC Building Grid

• Pervasive monitoring of a large complex load

• Understand energy spend, reduce it, forecast

• Optimize in concert with an intelligent grid

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Conventional Electric Grid

Generation

Transmission

Distribution

Load

Conventional Internet

ACTION WEB Foundations

1. Observe and infer with a viewpoint to planning and modifying action

2. Use a hierarchy of platforms to develop and modify action plans

3. Tasking sensors, programming the ensemble

4. Closing the loop

AdobERCADaptively Optimal Buildings Engineering Research Center

A building … • should not be viewed as a fixed structure with HVAC, lighting, and

other utility systems, but instead as a plant that manufactures customized environments to maximize occupant productivity, while minimizing energy and environmental cost throughout the supply chain.

• Like modern manufacturing, buildings must become context-aware, interactive facilities that actively optimize for productivity and efficiency.

• They must gain a sense of time at multiple scales, utilizing historical trends, current and projected demands, and forecasts of energy supply and weather to develop production plans and schedules.

• This type of planning will allow optimally harnessing renewable sources, sharing energy storage with neighboring adaptive buildings and cooperating with the power grid.

Adobe Thrusts• Human / Building / Computer Interface and Factors : extract the ‘building

environmental product specification’ from occupant actions, activities, and operational plans.

• Building Integrated Modeling : integrates the design-time Building Information Model (BIM) electronic documents, or post-hoc derived BIMs, with models of occupant operational processes to permit analysis of real and proposed building operation.

• Building Observation and Measurement creates the fundamental awareness of the building to its own state, integrates diverse physical information from legacy instruments, pervasive sensor networks, activity detectors, the requirements and needs of its occupants, and the interactions of these with the external world.

• Building-wide Optimal Control : construct and execute a model-predictive multi-objective optimal control strategy that maintains a minimal energy environment over observed demand within safety and operational constraints, simultaneously integrating subsystems (HVAC, Security, Lighting), internal activities and external factors.

• Integrity, Security and Reliability : protect and secure IT-centric, interactive buildings that are aware of and respond to their occupants and the information regarding their occupants.

• External Factors : address optimizing the building in concert with an intelligent grid and associated policy issues.

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Energy Innovation Hubs• http://www.energy.gov/hubs

– Fuels from Sunlight; – Energy Efficient Building Systems Design; – Modeling and Simulation for Nuclear Reactors.

• Bold Perspective– Orchestrating rapid, transformative changes to the energy system

portfolio represents a technological challenge of historic scale. – Success will require major national mobilization of basic and applied

energy research capabilities, accompanied by commensurate investments in engineering and development necessary to accelerate the deployment of revolutionary energy technologies.

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Pervasive IT breakthrough

• Selkowitz, ARPA-E meeting• ARPA-E,TC Chan

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NUFIPBF (2009-2013)

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but…

• probably the only domain more resistant to innovation than buildings is utilities

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Time

log

of

som

eth

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log Time

anyt

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Impediments

• Scale• Cost• Criticality• Physical Embedding• Entrenched Vested Interests• Vertically integrated silos• Standards, Faux-Standards, and …• Fragmentation• Diversity (site, use, design, …)

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Impediments (cont)

• Lack of Product Orientation or Cycle

• On-site Manufacturing (construction )

• Not growth oriented

• Energy under valued

• Intertwined policy, regulation, certification...

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Impediments (cont)

• Inherently Multi-disciplined

• CS “undisciplined”

• Performance ill-defined or undefined

• No benchmarks

• No measurement or system validation

• No functional definition

• Uncertainty

• Challenged empirical methodology26

Embrace The Challenge

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Example: Testbeds

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Example: PC (personal climate)

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Internet 101• Plan for change, enable distributed innovation

– what will be, not just was is (or was)

• Intelligence at the edge, not the core– Smart Grid => Dumb Grid with Smart End Points– Reliability and performance by buffering and continuous

measurement and adaptation– Lower cost, incremental Deployment, Greater Resilience

• Horizontal Layering not Vertical Integration– Technology agnostic protocols– Application agnostic protocols

• Create the new as an overlay on the old30

Thoughts …

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