Overview
Power miser or energy indulgent: what kind of energy consumer are you? This is just one of the insights some 120 volunteer homeowners learned as they piloted a year-long GridWise project in the Pacific Northwest that monitored electricity usage based on realtime pricing rather than fixed rates.
Participants decided how much they were willing to spend, and their appliances adjusted the amount of energy they consumed in response to fluctuating prices (for example, if the price goes up, the thermostat shifts down a few degrees).
The Department of Energy funded the project, which included resources from its Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL). IBM and Invensys provided the technology.
Here's how it works.
The home: Some like it hot
First, the homeowner registers on a Web site and programs her appliances (hot water heater and thermostat) to optimise for comfort or cost. Each appliance wirelessly connects to an Invensys gateway box, which provides the raw data and control connections to IBM middleware. The middleware then bids, on behalf of the house, into a local (shadow) energy market.
Don't like the price? Wait five minutes
The energy market receives realtime data from a variety of sources: bids from participating households and businesses, a Dow Jones energy price feed and rates from generators. The data is sliced and diced: Prices are analysed, cleared and reset every five minutes.
Home again
The new electricity price is then interpreted by the IBM middleware, and control signals are sent back to the house where the appliances react according to the parameters originally set. Cost-conscious consumers have heating and cooling switched off as prices spike, and turned back on again when prices fall. Adjustments occur only when needed, based on classic supply versus demand behaviour. The goal is that the system be invisible to the homeowner but responsive to market conditions. The homeowner can override the system at any time.
Buy local
Increasingly, regions are developing localised sources of power to ease the stress on the national grid. This GridWise pilot market included a local "micro-turbine." As demand surges and prices climb, the micro-turbine kicks in, feeding electricity into the market, easing stress and lowering prices. Eventually, this intelligent network could handle many new sources of locally generated power, from businesses to residential housing developments.
