Twenty years elapsed between the creation of the Internet in 1969 and the 1989 invention of the World Wide Web by Tim Berners-Lee. It took another four years until the introduction of Mosaic 1.0, the first commercial Web browser, and a few more years before the term “Web” became a household word. Today, forty years after its creation, the population of Internet users is estimated to be 1.5 billion, almost a quarter of the entire world’s population.1 A similar progression is unfolding with an “Energy Web” that has obvious parallels to today’s World Wide Web.
Like its counterpart, the Energy Web provides an infrastructure for wide-scale communications, but with a singular focus on upgrading today’s one-way electrical distribution grid to a Smart Grid; one that provides two-way communication allowing for increased energy efficiency and the integration of renewable resources. The Smart Grid’s importance stems from the need to manage increasing energy demand without having to construct expensive, new energy generation as well as U.S. foreign policy objectives regarding carbon emissions and national security. These goals, however, can’t afford to wait another forty years for the development of the Energy Web.
The Internet is infrastructure that uses a browser as the lens through which consumers and businesses access the standard unit of value: information. Similarly, the Smart Grid is the infrastructure upon which the Energy Web is today taking its first steps. In essence, the Smart Grid is to the Internet what the Energy Web is to the World Wide Web. Meters, thermostats, transmission lines, home appliances and more are combining to create a personalized view into Energy Web’s standard unit of value: energy.
The vision for the Energy Web looks something like this: energy produced locally is transmitted and used globally. Solar energy from the Sahara Desert delivers power throughout Africa; wind power harvested off the Irish coast powers not only the local economy, but is also sold to Hong Kong or Delhi; geothermal energy from places like California, Nevada, Idaho, and Oregon steps up to meet America’s growing electricity usage. Energy captured everywhere and distributed where needed, when needed.
And there’s more. The Energy Web means that consumers are able to personalize their energy consumption. Think of consumers’ energy preferences in the same way you do a mutual fund. They are comprised of numerous elements, some risky, some not. Tomorrow’s consumers can subscribe to a low-carbon energy plan that includes a mix of renewable resources, allows their local utility to automatically adjust the thermostat or air conditioner during severe conditions, and choose the “green grid” button on the washer to schedule operation at any time within the next twenty-four hours based on sustainable resource availability or percentage of carbon content.
Alternatively, consumers can opt for a “9-to-5” energy package that relinquishes control of home energy while that consumer is out of the house, even or a “healthcare” package for elderly or handicapped individuals that are not in a position to make energy sacrifices.
Because consumers have become accustomed to personalized Web services, it’s logical to assume that they will want to subscribe to sustainable resources and clean energy if it’s simple and affordable. The Energy Web will be organized into roles and resources that respond in predictable patterns, much the way browsers define generic services, but Web pages personalize.
Dynamic energy consumption will become a transparent process, with access points consisting of everything from the home thermostat to a cell phone to a Web page. Want the lights to automatically turn on when the GPS device in your phone is within 200 yards of your home? Simple. Want to turn the air conditioner off via your Web-based energy console when you’re stuck working late? Done.
From Here to There
So how do we turn this vision into reality? For starters, we need a common goal and a mandate. In large part, President Obama’s stimulus package – the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) – has captured the commitment to the Smart Grid by solidifying the need for increased energy efficiency and outlining the goals of a growing incorporation of renewable energy.
The challenges facing the energy industry are vast and the impact on our environment and the global economy is clearer than at any other time in recent history. This means that the public is watching, and the opportunity to evolve from a rate-only business to a rate-plus-value business is also present.
Already, there has been significant progress. Unlike the World Wide Web, the Energy Web can emerge locally, in regional pockets. As one utility begins to implement their Smart Grid strategy, the opportunity to layer consumer-facing applications on that grid is readily available. We’ve seen this in Ontario, Canada where Hydro One is in the final stages of a province-wide Smart Meter deployment. We’ve also seen it Louisville, Kentucky, where E.ON USA has improved the energy efficiency for their users by approximately 30%.
To expand and replicate these activities globally, the following Smart Grid characteristics and standards need to be in place:
Security. Like any critical communications infrastructure, business and consumer security needs to be assured.
Interoperability. Energy is harvested locally, but exported globally. Connecting a global system of consumers, utilities and energy providers requires a common, interoperable playing field.
Flexibility. Utilities are charged with building out an infrastructure to support applications that haven’t even been imagined yet.
Scalability. Scalability is best accomplished through an open application platform; a modular, open architecture and the incorporation of multiple standards-based solutions.
Reliability. Electricity was the world’s first ‘always on’ network. Keeping it that way is vital.
Security
Smart Grid security must meet the most stringent of utility requirements, both with respect to protection of data and protection of the communications network. These are distinct and separate functions.
Both instances require open, standards-based authentication and encryption solutions. Access to the network and to data needs to be authenticated and have privacy policies and procedures in place. And all of these procedures also need to be verified by industry experts.
Existing standards such as ANSI C12.22 provide application layer security and AES (Advanced Encryption Standard) assures message privacy via 128-bit encryption. Data collection policies can further strengthen appli cation and network security.
Interoperability
We know from history that industry innovation is stifled without adherence to comprehensive standards and interoperability. The sheer magnitude of change ahead of us cannot – and will not – be supported by a narrow set of proprietary supplier frameworks. If we are to innovate, we must invest in a robust infrastructure that will deliver early results while supporting the future through scalable and universal connectivity as well as application integration serving utility operations and consumers.
If we pursue piecemeal strategies as we have in the past and walk into the future blinded by our old habits and tactical initiatives, the risk that we will not be able to manage information and energy capacity in a volatile future increases dramatically and the opportunity for sustainability of growth will pass us by.
Interoperability is not an ideal. It is an imperative for sustainable and economic change management. If we consider the sheer magnitude of connectivity inherent in the Smart Grid and application development needed to support our future, we must embrace interoperability and compatible standards.
Moreover, interoperability must not be based on proprietary AMI or any one supplier’s definition of networks. Rather it must ensure wide-scale energy efficiency, consumer-oriented demand management, enterprise operating efficiency, universal grid networking, and yes, real-time metering from a choice of advanced metering suppliers using interoperable industry standard connectivity.
Some utilities have chosen open standards solutions based on IEEE and Internet Protocol (IP) compatible networks, emphasizing energy conservation and demand management along with advanced metering. Connecting these elements without standards is very challenging. It requires placing all of the risk with a few suppliers and investing in massive integration and migration, with an obsolescence risk that possibly replaces all of these proprietary assets at a later date or inhibits adaptability to increasingly complex conditions.
As a supplier of network infrastructure and Smart Grid solutions, we know first-hand that we simply cannot build our business to support this complex and wide-scale industry without using off-the-shelf technology, robust networks and innovative secure protocols. We feel that it is imperative to focus on making multiple standards work together in a utility-grade network rather than pushing a lock-in on customers by embracing on a select few standards.
Flexibility
In order to create self-sustaining consumer behavior and distributed energy resources, the command-and-control side of the Smart Grid must be augmented by balancing strategies that allow the consumer to personalize their energy usage.
This flexibility requires a normalized data model for simplified integration. On the utility front, such flexibility manifests itself in processes such as time-of-use (TOU) scheduling; real-time on-demand and scheduled reads; the incorporation of multiple rate plans, group plans and multiple calendars; and open APIs for billing, CIS and OMS integration.
On the consumer front, the Energy Web will take the form of a self-service, customizable model for energy consumption. Transparency and flexibility will go hand-in-hand, as each consumer will choose the method through which they access their energy consumption.
A particular challenge of building in Smart Grid flexibility is the long horizon of utility applications. Web-based applications and services can be built, deployed and retired in a matter of months. Silicon Valley doesn’t typically think in terms of decades-long time frames. But that is exactly how utilities need to envision and architect their Smart Grid infrastructures.
Scalability
Utilities need to ensure that their Smart Grid communications infrastructure provides enough headroom to meet the needs of tomorrow’s utility applications. In addition, to ensure that assets are not stranded, devices need to be ‘firmware upgraded’ over-the-air.
Because the communications network and devices that a utility deploys today are expected to last for well over twenty years, they must support applications that have not yet been imagined. Just as no one imagined at the dawn of the Internet that combinations of Internet, Web and communication standards would lead to YouTube or Twitter, utilities need to prepare themselves today for applications they can’t even imagine.
This is best accomplished through an open application platform; a modular, open architecture and the incorporation of multiple standards-based solutions. The Smart Grid and the Energy Web, like the Internet and the World Wide Web, is composed of multiple standards. Embracing only a few of these standards will only lead to utility Balkanization in the future; that is, a collection of small, mutually hostile factions that will wind up serving no one properly.
Reliability
Individuals and businesses hold utilities to a far higher standard of reliability than they do their ISP or phone carrier. Having your electricity interrupted like a bad phone connection can have disastrous consequences. To assure the levels of performance needed, standards and best practices need to be in place from the meter to the head-end, from the utility (supply) to the consumer (demand), and across every access point in a complex and comprehensive infrastructure.
To maintain electricity’s ‘always on’ capabilities as the underlying infrastructure becomes more complex, as consumer energy consumption becomes more transparent, and as demand continues to surpass capacity, is one of the most important challenges of the energy industry today.
Conclusion
The Smart Grid and the Energy Web will be driven by the evolving needs of customers and the increasing density of distributed and sustainable forms of energy. Utilities need a widely-dispersed and high-performance Smart Grid network to unify operations.
The energy consumer needs tools to effectively use new assets such as electric vehicles and sustainable generation. All the while business needs ways to better implement green and sustainable practices. Efforts like these, done in concert, will help to reduce carbon emissions and improve capacity utilization.
Today’s World Wide Web is a tapestry of complex and protean standards. Comprised of standards around markup languages, style sheets, object models, communications, connectivity and more, and run by no single entity, the Web is undoubtedly the most successful global network of all time. But without the standards in place today that simultaneously fostered its growth and breadth, the Web would very likely have faltered. Where the World Wide Web came to rely on TCP/IP, HTML, CSS and more, the Energy Web will come to rely on standards such as TCP/IP, CIM, ZigBee, ANSI C12.19/22, and others.
Yet unlike the World Wide Web, the Energy Web can reach critical mass in smaller, localized implementations. Ontario, Canada is arguably the largest Smart Grid implementation in North America and is well on its way to a mature Energy Web. We are seeing these pockets of maturity evolve around the world, and it is one of the most promising and gratifying developments of the past few years.
As the world increasingly turns its collective gaze on our industry, it is important to recognize how much progress has already been made. Our industry will not be subject to the twenty-year gap between the birth of the Internet and the development of the World Wide Web. Issues around energy consumption, foreign policy and carbon emissions simply can’t wait that long.
About the Author
Eric Miller is Senior Vice President, Solutions for Trilliant Inc. His career in the energy industry spans more than twenty-five years, combining entrepreneurial, strategic, marketing, and product leadership in the areas of enterprise software, energy efficiency, customer data collection, renewable energy development, and wholesale power marketing. Prior to joining Trilliant, Eric was Vice President of Software for Itron and Vice President of Strategy for Silicon Energy.
