mapawatt » smart grid

Preparing a Home for the Electric Car

pmapawatt — Fri, 05 Feb 2010 08:00:00 +0000

Henry Ford with his Model T

As my electric Porsche Boxster reaches the final stages of construction, I’ve been working on preparing my home for the car. Bringing home an electric car is a different experience than trading in an old Volkswagen for a Toyota Prius. The Prius takes the Volkswagen’s place in the garage or driveway with the only disruption being the fanfare and excitement of having a new car.

Preparing for the evBoxster requires thought about such things as length of commute, where to charge the car, type of electricity at the point of charge, etc. These thoughts naturally lead to contemplating the bigger picture of how our nation will prepare a home for the electric car.

The early adopters of electric vehicles have the same spirit and enthusiasm of “living on the edge” that owners of the first motor cars had when they purchased the first mass-produced autos of the 20th century. However, will these electric car owners have to overcome the same obstacles?

In September of 1908, when the first mass-produced motor cars went into production, new owners had to make a place in their home for their Ford Model T. There were no gas stations for fueling, no auto parts stores for buying oil and no local repair shops every few miles to troubleshoot problems and service your car. Owners had to outfit their homes with the tools and equipment to fuel and maintain their vehicles and learn how their vehicles work to keep them on the road.

An Early Gas Station circa 1920

The Model T didn’t have a battery or starter. Owners had to hand-crank the car and then a magneto supplied electricity for the ignition system.

The cars did not have a water pump since Henry Ford understood that hot water would rise to the top of the radiator where it would be cooled by air flowing through it. This created a circulatory flow without a pump and is known as convection.

The cars also lacked a fuel pump. The gas tank was located under the seat – higher than the carburetor so gravity caused the flow of fuel to the engine. Owners had to learn to go up steep hills in reverse when there wasn’t enough fuel in the tank to feed the carburetor.

They had to buy gasoline at the hardware store from a barrel or from some pharmacies and grocery stores that sold gasoline as a side business. This often required having storage space at home for fuel and a way to transfer it from a barrel to the gas tank.

Imagine how carefully owners would have to plan for a trip in the motor car? A long trip on dirt roads built for horse-drawn wagons made it difficult to calculate range between refueling stops in towns that sold fuel. What if the car broke down or had a flat tire from the muddy, rutted roads that were the only paths available? These first car owners had to carry tools, parts and tires in case the inevitable happened away from home.

So how does this compare to early adoption of the electric car? We have paved roads built for cars that make it much easier to gauge range between charges. The entire country is electrified and there are power outlets in 99.9% of all structures in the country. We have AAA for nationwide towing capability and lots of other infrastructure that caters to the automobile.

Electric Vehicle Charging Stations

I would wager that if you asked the average homeowner in 1908 if they could see a future of millions of automobiles traversing the country on paved roads at speeds of over 70mph, over 120,000 gas stations covering the nation and accessories sold in almost every type of store, they would have smiled and chuckled. This is the same smile and chuckle I’ve witnessed when visionaries speak of our nation dotted with charging stations and electric cars whizzing down the roads silently in every city and town across the country.

We have a lot of work to do to prepare for the coming of the electric car. We have to adapt our infrastructure to this new fuel source but this seems like a much easier hill to climb than those that Model T owners climbed in reverse over a hundred years ago.

However, I did check with the engineers working on my evBoxster and it does have a reverse gear.

Circuit Detective – Which Breaker Controls that Plug?

pmapawatt — Wed, 21 Jul 2010 10:00:18 +0000

Find your Power Zones with Circuit Detective

As we strive for more knowledge of how we use energy in our home, at some point we begin to wonder how different zones of power are organized in our home. I encountered this issue when I worked on installing my TED 5000 Power Monitor into my dual panel 400 amp service in my home. This required two transmitters(MTUs): one for each panel. Unfortunately, I now have to toggle between the two transmitters in my Google Powermeter. Unless I was able to confirm which outlets, lights and appliances were controlled in each panel, it will be very difficult to determine where my power is going.

If your circuit breakers are not labeled properly in your circuit panel, there is no easy way to find out which breaker controls different outlets, lights and appliances . I have an incomplete map or key of my circuit breakers so I started Googling to see if there were any tools to help. I found the Circuit Detective!

The Circuit Detective comes in two pieces. The transmitter plugs into an outlet and the receiver is used at the breaker panel to scan the breakers until you find the one that controls the outlet. It is really simple to use.

If you want to track a light fixture, you will need to buy a small adapter at the hardware store that screws into the bulb outlet and has a plug outlet on the other end. These were common in the early 20th century when homes only had a few plugs and lights retrofitted into the home when neighborhoods were attached to the grid. Once the adapter is in place, you can plug the transmitter into the outlet adapter in the light fixture.

Once the transmitter is in place, open up your breaker panel door and begin to place the receiver over each breaker until you get a blinking arrow and hear a tone. When the arrow blinks, you have found the breaker that controls the outlet or light in your home! It doesn’t get much easier than that.

The first time you use the device, you do need to calibrate it by scanning your complete breaker panel so the microprocessor calibrates to your panel. Once this is done, you can follow the instructions above to build your own power map of your home and circuits!

- The Mapawatt Team

Smart Grid: Who benefits most – Utilities or Customers?

Chris — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 02:26:34 +0000

There is a lot of buzz about the “Smart Grid”, and I’ve written several article on the topic in the “monitoring” section, but nobody really knows what the electricity grid in the U.S. will look like 10-20 years from now. Government hails the smart grid as the savior for renewable energy and energy efficiency, consumers look forward to learning more about how they use their power (or at least a small percentage of us do), and utilities want to know more about how the power they put on the grid is used (which helps them adjust their economic models).

One of the perks of being a blogger is that you get to meet other bloggers located all over the world who share your interests and passion. One of those bloggers is Alexander Bischoff who runs the blog Open4Energy and has posted an excellent article about an event on the Smart Grid hosted by Earth2Tech that was held out in San Francisco. Alex is posting his experience at this event as several posts, and his first one focuses on PG&E’s efforts to make the smart grid a reality for their customers.

I highly recommend reading his whole article, but there are several excerpts that I found interesting:

Over 50% of the distributed energy generation in the United States, in particular rooftop solar, is produced by consumers within PG&E’s coverage area. Providing reliable energy with this level of distributed generation (will increase), and a complex system of demand response is soon to be further challenged by the availability of electrically powered vehicles. The traditional nighttime storage capabilities may be lost as thousands of consumers use nighttime electricity to charge their car batteries. Electric cars do require energy, and although the break from a dependence on fossil fuels is welcomed, the energy to charge the batteries still needs to be delivered. I was pleased to hear that PG&E have joined with 30 car manufacturers and epri to define the common standards for a smart vehicle charging system. Can you imagine if a home would only support charging a particular manufacturer’s vehicle?

In describing the similarities and differences in the internet and the smart grid:

The first difference is found in the driver of demand. The Internet was built by the telcos in response to consumer demand for information access. The smart grid is being driven by the utilities as a way to better serve their consumers. These could not be more different, end user pull vs. supplier push. The second difference is in rate of change. The Internet refreshes it’s technology every few years. Consumers are willing to replace computers, routers, screens in order to get what they want. The electrical grid must deal with 40 year technological increments. I am still digesting the implications of this statement as I reflect on the purchasing criteria and standards issues utilities must consider.

In describing how utilities value energy data vs. how consumers will use energy data:

Customers need to to be able to use the data about their electricity supply to make changes to what their bill will be, and not simply be told what it was one month after the event. He likened the existing billing structures to receiving a credit card statement with a single amount, and no ability to compare to what had been done. But there was an implied statement here, for at the moment the only way I can change my bill is to reduce the number of kilowatt hours. If the utility company is going to introduce other factors making up my bill, then they will need to provide ways for me to manage these other factors.

I suddenly realized that there is a huge disconnect between what the utilities think the opportunity in providing more granular electricity consumption data is, compared to what I, TED and other monitoring/display technologies companies think the data can be used for. We have been examining the use of individual appliances on a second by second basis and suggesting that this information be displayed to help consumers change behavior and save electricity. The utilities are thinking that more data is an opportunity to invent new billing models, and to equip the home owner to manage these. Both are correct, both are useful, but they are fundamentally different.

I look forward to seeing what the smart grid has to offer, and I love seeing how it unfolds and the perceptions that people have of its progression. In any scenario, I believe consumers in the near future will use less electricity either due to increased energy awareness or higher bills from their enlightened utilities. Either way, we’ll all be better off.

GE Smart Grid Augmented Reality

Chris — Fri, 02 Oct 2009 01:52:13 +0000

I’ve covered the smart grid before - with the basic blog What is this Smart Grid thing and Smart Grid and buildings – but no resource on the web covers the Smart Grid in a vaguer, yet more entertaining way than GE. As part of their ecomagination campaign GE has an augmented reality section of their Smart Grid site. And what it lacks in providing information, it makes up for in coolness.

I would highly recommend the tool for parents that want to get their kids excited about clean energy (you just need a webcam). I’m sure the only other people who will utilize this tool are energy nerds like me

Here’s a video that is probably 45 seconds too long, has a bad actor (it’s me, I can say that) and poor quality, but it does highlight GE’s cool feature. Enjoy!

TED 5000 iPhone App – Home energy on the go

Chris — Tue, 18 Aug 2009 22:22:16 +0000

TED 5000 iPhone App

I’ve been hearing rumors about a TED 5000 iPhone application for a few weeks now and I was happy to search the iPhone app store today for “TED 5000″ and find the app there waiting for me. The app was developed by Brent Halsey and is a very nice way to see what your TED 5000 is doing when you are away from your computer or display unit. Thankfully it is free!

The application displays the following:

Gateway time
Current Power
Current Cost (Hr)
Average Power (Hr)
Average Cost (Hr)

The only downside to the application is that unlike the TED display unit, it is not a real-time feed. The app only refreshes when you tell it to. The “Gateway Time” on the app is the time that the iPhone app pinged the Gateway to get the data. If you wanted to see the data every minute, you would have to refresh every minute. It currently does not display any trends or reports, just a snapshot of your instantaneous household energy consumption. I’m not sure if future editions of the app will have added functionality, or if this functionality is limited due to technical limitations imposed by the TED 5000 unit.

Since my TED 5000 is hooked into my wireless router and I am not doing anything fancy (like posting my TED 5000 information on a dedicated web-site for all to see) I am only able to use the iPhone app to access my gateway when my iPhone is on my home wireless network. If I were using 3G or on the internet somewhere else the app would not work.

Setting up the application is very straightforward. Once you download the free application, you just have to enter in your TED 5000 IP address. I had forgotten how to find my TED’s IP address and when I googled the topic, I came across a comment on Mapawatt from Loren that I had overlooked addressing this very own topic:

David, you might call Roman at TED regarding finding your IP address. I just spoke with him and he guided me through it very quickly. However, your situation will be a bit different because of the fact that I have Windows on my Mac which allowed me to find the IP address very easily using the Run command and typing in “cmd” and then “ping ted5000″ which gave me the IP. I was then able to simply type in an address that looks like http://192.xxx.x.xx/Footprints.html and everything works just great.

After entering in your IP address you’re all set to go. If you have problems, make sure your iPhone is connected to your home wireless network by choosing (on the iPhone) Setting –>Wi-Fi–> On–>Choose your network. As long as your TED gateway is hooked into the same wireless router that the iPhone uses, you should be fine.

For me, it’s nice to have this capability on my phone so I dont have to carry around the display unit (which stays in my office) if I am downstairs or in bed and I am curious about how much power my house is consuming. Eventually I am going to put my TED 5000 on a dedicated page so I can access the data from anywhere, so this is just the start. We all the know the smart-grid will be here eventually, but it sure is nice to see glimpses of it right now!

Smart Grid and buildings: An office view of the future

Chris — Tue, 11 Aug 2009 10:34:09 +0000

Smart Grid City

PECI, a national energy efficiency consultancy based in Portland, Oregon has completed one of the best analysis I’ve seen on the coming Smart Grid and what it means for buildings (both residential and commercial). The PDF of their report can be found here: Smartgrid Whitepaper. PECI is focused on residential, commercial retail, and large commercial clients. If you are in any way involved with conserving energy for your business, office building, or if you’re just the energy manager for your home, this is a great read to understand what the future of conservation hold for our buildings.

In regards to how the smart grid will result in energy savings, the report says:

A comprehensive smart grid deployment would result in energy saving improvements from generation source to end-use of the electrical grid. This is due to reduced power line losses in transmission and distribution networks, more efficient voltage control, and lower energy consumption in individual buildings. This paper focuses on energy saving opportunities in buildings linked to the smart grid.

The paper also discusses “building commissioning”, which is the idea of documenting a building’s performance and ensuring it is operating as it was designed. For example, you can make a LEED building with all the fancy energy meters, temperature sensors, efficient AC units, etc., but if all of those systems malfunction and nobody is monitoring them, then they are pointless. Often times buildings have great energy saving gadgets installed, but nobody ever maintains them so when they malfunction, the gadgets become useless. You can learn more about building commissioning from the Building Commissioning Association website.

A large focus of the report is on communication, mainly how buildings will communicate their energy consumption and needs to their occupants and the smart grid. Mapawatt covers the importance of building communication for residential users in our Monitoring section. Since energy is basically transparent (you can’t see electrons flowing through copper or natural gas through a pipeline), the tools that help individuals and utilties monitor and communicate energy usage are going to be a vital part in our efforts to use less and conserve more!

TED 5000 is installed! It’s alive!

Chris — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 23:03:48 +0000

TED 5000 opened

***Update 10/6/09 – Google has announced they are working with the TED 5000 as a device partner for their Google Power Meter software. Follow the link above to learn about it and to update your firmware. This is pretty big news and will no doubt send sales of the TED 5000 through the roof! I spoke with TED customer service and they said that if you already own a TED 5000, the Google Power Meter software update will be on their site on Friday, 10/9/09. If you don’t already own a TED 5000 but buy a new one, the new unit will ship with the Google Power Meter software. I’m looking forward to seeing if the Google Power Meter software will have many advantages over their Footprints software!

Original Post:

In the future, when the smart grid is finally here, every home will have a smart meter. But the future is a long ways off, so there is no sense in waiting. Energy, Inc., the manufacturers of The Energy Detective and the TED 5000 announced on Tuesday, June 30th that the TED 5000 was ready to order. Well, my TED 5000 came by FedEx today and I had it installed and running in around an hour. While I have only had it a few hours, I am very impressed. While I have already covered the TED 5000 once in my post announcing its release date and some off its features, this will be an overview of some of the first things that have caught my attention.

The TED 5000 installs much the same way that the TED 1000 does. I really dont want to cover installation that much because if done wrong, it can be dangerous. While I’m not an electrician, I do have a decent amount of knowledge around electrical equipment, so I felt comfortable installing it. The biggest thing is to ensure the main breaker is turned off so no electricity is in the panel. But please don’t take this blog post as installation instruction. There are good installation instructions, getting started guide, and instruction manual that comes with the unit, but if you aren’t that comfortable around electrical equipment call an electrician. If the electrician is competent he will be done in under 30 minutes as it is not hard at all for someone who knows what they are doing.

Display Unit

I purchased the TED 5000-C, which is the model that comes with the Display Unit. You can purchase the TED 5000-G which does not come with a display unit and you would just access the data through your computer. I think the display unit is very cool, so I paid the extra $40 bucks and got it. The total amount I paid was $239.95 before taxes and shipping. When I opened the TED 5000 there were three smaller packages containing:

MTU – this comes with the current transformers (CTs) and wires and installs in your breaker panel. It sends data to the…
Gateway – This is plugged in an electrical outlet by your computer. It receives signals from the MTU over your home’s wiring. It then sends data over an Ethernet cable to your router or directly to a computer. It can also send data wirelessly (ZigBee) to the ….
Display unit – This is an option but I highly recommend it. It plugs into the wall for power but gets its data from the Gateway over a wireless connection. It looks like a big silver Ipod video.

Aside from separating the Gateway and the Display unit, the biggest change with the TED 5000 is the Footprints Software. They have done an amazing job with this. Unlike the TED 1000, which sold the software as separate and came on a disc, the TED 5000 includes the software in the price, but the software is retrieved directly from the Gateway, meaning there is no installation necessary. You simply have to type “ted5000″ in the internet address bar to access the software after the Gateway is connecting to your network. (see screen shot of software on my computer at the end of the post)

Initial configuration is all done through a set-up wizard. I did notice one error in the “Quick Start Guide” when setting up the software. The guide instructs you to start from the “Setup Menu”, but they must have made a revision, because there is no “Setup Menu”. You have to go to “Edit –> System Wizard Setting”. From there it is very straightforward.

The guide highly recommends plugging the Ethernet cable that comes out of the Gateway into a router, and not directly into a computer. I would also recommend this because it makes things much simpler. The beauty of having the software reside on the Gateway is that as long as the Gateway is connected to your home router, you will be access the data from any computer on your home network! I had to do this because my laptop is wireless and I use a VPN to get on my work network. When I tried to access the TED 5000 software while on the VPN, I had trouble connecting. When I booted up the desktop, which is not wireless, I was able to access the software right away. This is the beauty of having the software reside on the Gateway and connecting the Gateway to the router!

Energy, Inc. has definitely beefed up the footprints software and it is much more intuitive and helpful. There are many, many features. The biggest of which is that you can EXPORT THE DATA! If you recall, this is why I returned my TED 1000 unit. The Gateway unit has internal memory that stores the data (up to 90 days of hourly data, 24 months of daily data, and 10 years of monthly data). The TED 1000 had no internal memory so it had no way to store and export the data unless you used your computer for that function. Since the Gateway has internal memory it can store data when your computer is off. This is great for seeing how your house uses energy while you sleep or when you are on vacation.

Exporting the data is vey simple and the data is exported in a .CSV format so you can easily view it in Excel.

Finally, another great feature is that the Footprints software has a widget that displays your local weather. All you have to do is tell it your zip code. Now, my only suggestion for Energy, Inc. is that they store the average temperatures and export those values with the energy data. This way, you can see how the local weather is affecting your energy consumption and track those changes over the season.

Overall, the TED 5000 has been greatly improved and is one of the best tools I can think of to get control over your electricity consumption. Much more to come in the following weeks!

***Update – 8/18/09 – The TED 5000 iPhone app has been released and is available in the app store. Check out my review here: TED 5000 iPhone app

***Update – 9/13/09 – See what kind of stuff you can do with the TED 5000 data once you have it installed in my latest blog on outside temperature impacts on energy consumption.

***Update – 10/07/09 – Several comments have noted you can’t purchase the TED 5000 from Energy, Inc.’s website, but that has now changed and they do list them for sale and purchase online at the TED 5000 store.

***Update -11/11/09 – So don’t get me wrong. I still love my TED 5000 and the fact I can see my home’s energy consumption on my iPhone with Google PowerMeter but I’m wondering about the quality of the TED 5000. While my monitoring still works, my display unit conked out last week and I have yet to hear back from info@mapawatt about what I need to do to return it. Another Mapawatt team member had an out of box failure with an MTU unit and had some issues getting support as well. Come on TED! I know your swamped right now, but let’s get these problems solved asap!

Footprints Screenshot

What is this Smart Grid thing?

Chris — Fri, 27 Mar 2009 22:37:53 +0000

Power lines are part of the smart grid

If you want the official answer, check out the Department of Energy’s comments on the Smart Grid. If you want the answer you can explain to your children, stay here! Basically, the Smart Grid is a way for Utilities to better monitor and communicate electricity consumption and distribution to its customers.

Right now, our grid is composed of a millions of miles of power lines connected to a bunch of big, centrally located power plants (about 50% of which is coal). The electricity produced at the centrally located sites is pushed onto the electric grid and distributed to the homes. For the most part, the Utilities dont know where the electricity goes once it leaves the power plant and they don’t know how it is used.

How will the Smart Grid help the United States reduce our electricity consumption?

Right now, most of us still have “dumb” analog meters monitoring how much electricity we consume in our homes. Power comes in from the power lines (the grid), spins a little wheel with numbers on it (the more you use, the faster the wheel spins), and once a month a meter reader (you know, the guy your dog always barks at) comes by to check your meter. This is the way utilities have been doing it for decades. You would think things would have improved faster since the first days of indoor plumbing!

With the adoption of the Smart Grid, utilities will be able to see in real time what users who have Smart meters (meters that communicate information back to the utility over a network) are using. Users will also be able to see much more detailed statistics about how they use power. Basically, a smart meter is a TED that you and the utilities use together for your home.

This provides you with a monitoring function so you can better manage your consumption, but it provides the utility the ability to charge a tiered rate for their power. Basically, if you are using power on a hot afternoon (when electricity use is at its highest – mostly due to air conditioners) you will pay a higher rate than if you are using electricity at 3 AM, when demand is low. Why should what you pay for electricity not follow the economic laws of supply and demand?

With your current “dumb” meter, the utility has no clue what times you use your power, they just know the total value you use each month. The smart grid gives them the ability to see when you use that power, but it gives you that ability also, allowing you to know when to avoid using power in times of peak demand. While this is the main function of the smart grid, there are other benefits that will be covered in another blog.

Basically, the Smart Grid helps utilities and users better manage usage of electricity. Enabling us to be a cleaner, more efficient society!

For more information, check out Wikipedia’s comments on the Smart Grid or American Progress’ great report.

The Energy Detective

Chris — Fri, 27 Feb 2009 22:58:33 +0000

As I discussed in monitoring intro, knowing how you are using your power is one of the most important steps to take for your energy conservation efforts. While we wait for the smart grid to arrive, we have a few options on the monitoring front.

While actively reviewing your account history with your power company each month is a start, it really doesn’t tell you that much. It tells you how much you used in a month, but not HOW you used it. You can run outside and check your meter every few minutes, but that is a little hard to do while you are sleeping or at work (or sleeping at work).

Home power monitoring made easy

Another option that I have found is called The Energy Detective. I purchased this device (about $145) last Fall and was very impressed. This handy device hooks over your incoming power lines (turn OFF your breaker, take off panel board, and install) and was very easy to get up and running. The company is based in South Carolina. Their customer support is top notch and believe it or not, they actually had excellent directions.

Once you hook in the main unit, it sends a signal over your existing home wiring to a display unit that you can plug in anywhere in your house. Since I work a fair amount from home, I placed my display unit in my home office. This was also beneficial because I purchased their software (about $45), TED Footprints. The display unit is an instantaneous view of how much power you are using at any given instant. If you want to be able to record history so you can see how much power you use over time and how you use it, you need to purchase the software and hook the display unit (USB) into your computer.

It was very rewarding to be able to sit at my computer, see how much my house consumes when only my laptop is being used (200 watts – all usage aside from the laptop are vampire loads), and tell when my fridge kicked on because I noticed a change in the display unit. This way, I could tell when my wife left the downstairs lights on when she went to work!

The only downside of the current TED model is that there is no internal memory! This means that when you want to record your usage history, you have to keep your computer on the whole time, which obviously defeats the whole “conservation” goal. When I called tech support to complain about this, they informed me they were coming out with a new model that had 5 days worth of internal memory called the TED 5000. They allowed me to return my unit (they have a 30 day window) and reimbursed me.

I am waiting for the TED 5000 release (they expect it to be out by May) which I am going to purchase right away. I highly recommend this device and the company for anyone interested in power conservation!

***Update: Our review of the TED 5000 is up !