April 30, 2014 Public Meeting: Physical Characterization of Smart and Grid

- Connected Commercial and Residential Buildings End

- Use Equipment and Appliances
Summary of Public Comment in the Discussion Periods Following Presentations

Presentation: DOE Vision and Objectives , Joe Hagerman, DOE/Building Technologies Office
Public Comment
Q uestion (Q) : What is the end result ? A consensus on definitions and how you would do things to be used by standard organizations like AHRI or CEA ? Are you looking at doi ng any rulemaking in DOE?

A nswer (A) : W e don’t have the authority to apply grid services within our current rulemaking , but t his is the same process we use for appliance standards development . That process is public and transparent.

. Comment (C) : It sound s like you’re taking best practices out of the rulemaking process even though this isn’t a rulemaking process, so think about how formal the process is. There isn’t much opp ortunity for indirect dialogue, open discussion and transparency

. It would be better to incl ude people in the whole process

. A: There is more flexibility to give interim feedback through this process because there is no legal standard that’ s going to be issued

. It will be more iterative with stakeholders.

C: A long wit h interconnectedness, there are a lot of people here that are working on the same issues

. W hat comes out of this group influences where those other conversations go ( outsid e of DOE)

. Q : T his 100 MW example with ISO, there may be technology in the future th at will help us accomplish this objective, but there are many layers of complexity. How is this effort going to be leveraged with the existing connected appliance effort with Energy Star? How will this fit in with those new specifications?
A: There is n o s traightforward answer right now. We are talking with EPA about t his physical characterization work so they are aware of our effort in characterization. We don’t foresee this being adopted by Energy Star

. C : Building managers don’t care what they can do for the grid. Need to look at operations issues , and there needs to be a link between what business process is supported by each of these things. Building operators are not here at this meeting, and they should be.

A: Today we are going to discuss values to different pools of potential users and we n eed to be clear on the values to building managers and operators

. You can help enocurage the participation of building owners in this effort. We also believe that buildings can provide grid service benefits , whi ch we’ve shown with some r esearch projects , such as one involving R ooftop Unit Air Conditioners

. Presentation : Terminology and Definitions , Scott Whalen, PNNL

1How can these terms be better defined? What other terms are important to define?
Public Comment s
C : “ S mart ” and “ connected ” seem like they overlap to a large degree , not sure the differentiation help s

. Requirements in the smart and connected devices were essentially the same

. C: Need to get rid of the term “ smart ” . Use signal or demand responsive inste ad.

C: It needs to be a customer friendly name so they see the value of it. Grid

- connected might be hard for them to see the value in it. Customers make the ultimate decision. C: Don’t want the term smart to be used, as opposed to dumb. T he grid or loads are dumb, in the sense of being mute. They are not communicating what they know about themselves.

C: N eed clarity of technical definitions in this room

. C: The s ystems piece is lost from the focus on devices. The connected definition only used the word

“ receive ” , are we considering “ transmit ” as well ? Physical characterization

– the systems are dependent on lots of changes so when we are defining physical characterization need to think about continuous characterization, not a snapshot in time.

C : T here a re three things being conflated here in these definitions that are going to lead to confusion later. A technical definition would help. They are: 1) Characterization of stand

- alone autonomous devices 2) Characterization of services provided

– such as tell ing your current set point

. 3) C ommunication

– authentication and identification

. From a device perspective there is a communication link that comes in. T he authentication and identification of who is making the request seems to be tied to the definition of grid

- connected or not grid

- connected.
C: No issue with the word smart , that doesn’t always mean grid connected. As a building owner, I want to keep my daily energy below a daily threshold. Don’t care what grid thinks as long as I stay below budget. A diff erent word would need to carry all the same meaning s

. C: The word smart is overused and worth dropping. Smart meters would not meet the defintion used here. If a device can provide services whose value is fully reflected in the meter and you don’t need a direct connect ion between the device and the grid, do you need that?

C: T his effort is about defining characterizations for whatever your application is. The issue we are trying to tackle is getting definitions around what a piece of equipment would do. Focus on speed of response, what protocol devices can communicate over, etc.
C: A dd some nuance and urge us to step back from the discussion of what a device is. Don’t apply a degree of homogeneity that isn’t there for both small devices and 30 ton roofto p units . Think about clusters of applications and their capabilities and strategies and how we would approach them.

C: Definition of word “device”

– when us ing more abstract terms like systems , it becomes harder to map that to a physical substantiation or deployment. When you refer to services, you need to further differentiate into functions versus commodities, don’t call those the same thing.

2Comment: I t would be helpful to define what’s not covered by the term device

. Analogous to what is
not a covere d product.

C: B ack to grid

- connected conversation

– we are walking by the key attribute. Smart means self

- aware about energy use over time, at the device level. Each device (or system ) , needs to be self

- aware of its energy use over time and n eed s a basi s for negotiation

. C: What is the definition of a building ; the

s ystems, subsystems, population in the building? There is concern about emphasizing connectivity. If everything is connected, do we have enough intelligence to do things that we want to do? Buildings are operated under satisfactory conditions, but if we are pushing the envelope, do we have the models, algorith ms etc. to make those decisions?

C : W e are trying to make the definitions useful and clear, as well as define what the practical appli cations are , but w e need to separate those. Definitions need to be permissive enough to clarify how we would use things, but we don’t yet understand all the potential application s at this point

. C : I n real life we need to separate definitions of devices an d systems. RTUs would work through Building Automation Systems, not directly. With user input and a BAS , you don’t need to leave out building level control systems.
Presentation: End

- User and Grid Services , Sean McDonald , Facilitator

C : With regard to the End

- User Services slide, these examples are at very different levels. Operations and maintenance can cover a whole range of things. These are more categories than services. Grid services lines up with wholesale market products

. It’s missing timing and avo iding demand thresholds.

C: T hat is a really good point. We can take the grid (wholesale, transmission, distribution) and make it all integrated. Need to clarify those opportunities

. C: There is a false dichotomy here between “grid” and “building” s ervice s. What’s grid and what’s buildings? It may be more useful to differentiate between traditional and new grid services.

C : W hen you look at how you partition these services, from a pragmatic point of view you need to look at attributes you’d use to charact erize the services

– they will help define categories.
Q : I f anything, we want to tie grid services closer to loads. How do we make those services available even at lowest levels?
Q: I f a building has dynamic pricing and a device may change its behavior t o reflect that, does that count as a grid service if that is the only interaction ?

A: I would argue yes.
Q: Since we only talk about end user, we need to define the provider to make it complete. Who is the provider and who is the end user? Define both sides.

C : The only success so far is OpenADR in terms of the digital world, and w e’re at a very academic and technical level right now. There is nothing wrong with the list (slide 12) but it begs us to dig into detail that could crush us in the future. Power and energy over time are the two attributes that govern grid stability. It get s back to what you can actually build and how you can incentivize a customer. Recommend focus ing on fewer things, to start, on slide 12

. 3C: F ollowing up on services and end users comment , w e get a lot of mileage in software by talking about service orient ed architecture. The key is that the role you’re taking in an interaction is bound by your role in the transaction. By focusing on provider , you avoid a lot of confusion. C: The grid services on slide 12 can be provided by OpenADR.
C: Somebody is providin g a service, defined many ways, but we want to allow disintermediation because we shouldn’t care who is providing the service. If one “end” of the system talks directly to the other end, that is very efficient.

C : There is some interest in not having disi ntermediation, but from a standards POV you should provide capability for either . Not everybody is indifferent to disintermediation.
Presentation: Physical Characterization Framework , Rob Pratt (PNNL) and Ben Kroposki (NREL) What should a physical chara cterization framework contain? What device actions should be characterized?
Public Comments

C : Y ou characterized what it wasn’t (appliance/efficiency testing) so I’m confused on the time domain of the characterization . Need to separate loads by size

– big and small. Are you asking for characterizations (by size or aggregate of load) ? F or large loads you need something that is real time responsive

. For the mass market smaller devices, recommending going through the testing process

C : I think the use of the term “ devices ” is constraining our thinking. “Devices” range in size from 100 watts to a 100 kW chiller system. Need to separate these into useful buckets first.

C : Model need not distinguish between sizes of loads if done right. C an be simplified into “yes/no” provision of service. C omplexity is a challenge

– a lot of this is fractal in nature, the closer you look, the more complicated it gets. Looking at some aspects in terms of the dynamic response of what you might think of as l ow level responses . F ocus on simple components or the transactive surface of systems. The large aggregators for demand response can’t do this for all the devices in their system. Probability distributions are extraordinarily useful. C: Keep the focus simp le to make this useful, otherwise we’ll go down the slippery slope of developing a universal taxonomy. Look at the energy services interface.

C : I f presumption is that we’re trying to characterize performance of devices in order to transact services, then we need to do the characterization within the context of the services.

C : I f we develop the conceptual model appropriately then we can define substantiations. What type of device it is might be less important than what service it represents.

C : T here is value in us building our components. Trying to say we’re all going to deliver the same service makes differentiation much harder. What does the smart grid need? What characteristic?

C : B ring conversation to defining the physical characteristics based on services they need to provide. Need to characterize the devices , the systems that they’re operating in , and the systems in the physical environment. All those systems have sets of requirements.

4C : We have no interest in controlling customers, but in gener al when it comes to DR, there are two types (direct load control and regulation services ) and manufacturers need to keep in mind that it doesn’t make sense to build products that meet all grid services. Direct load control type generally uses proprietary signals. But OpenADR type of signal is a good option. With those technologies you need to give customer capability for how to respond to those types of signals.

C : B ack to mass market, what types of actions are performed? Are we worried about energy or re al time power control? The types of responses that we need to get out of mass market devices is a request to use more power or less power.

C : Y es, one could do that but do we want to? We can stop innovation by detailing the types of things they must be mo nitoring all the time.

C : H earing about devices reacting to a signal coming in, but they need to report out what they are capable of doing, even if just energy consumption

– even more important to export information.

C : T hat depends on the service it’s trying to provide. The m ore energy people use, the more money to process forecasting data. Don’t necessarily have to know how each resource (such as a toaster) is responding.

C : L oad serving entity might not care, but others do care. : I t is a load within a system. You’re not going to change the way the toaster behaves, but there are systems within the facility that want to understand how that works.

C : T here is an entire class of rate

- based pricing actions that don’t have any need to communicate back to the grid to be available . It may be beyond the scope of this , but d on’t exclude an entire class (pricing based responses).

C : Some items are discretionary and some are necessary. Our primary purpose (for a refrigerator) is food safety.

C : There are devic es now that can incorporate things like pre

- pr ogrammed time of use rates . How many data points you need depends on goals (use versus power) , but want to emphasize how important getting the data sets coming out of devices are.

C : W e are talking about thing s that are never going to happen , such as communicating toasters and microwaves . Third party integrators will focus on bigger energy users when they com e to commercial buildings

– that’s where we should focus. How can we make that more practical?
Presentation: Device Testing at the Energy Systems Integration Facility, Ben Kroposki , NREL
Public Comments

None.
Presentation: Value, Benefits & Metrics , Sriram Somasundaram , PNNL
Q: W e are missing a point here about flexibility. To what degree does the use of these smart devices result in flexible loads that enable variable generation clean energy to ac tual ly deliver y CO2 benefits?

C : S urprised not to see “ reliability ” as a key metric . I t is m ore important than the number of devices.

5Q: With regard to slide 24, “National Benefits”, , how would you determine customer acceptance of a device or a system? Trying to make that determination may stifle innovation. I bought it , doesn’t mean I accept it.
C : CO2 benefits are not necessarily double counting because DR avoids peak plant usage so can enable CO2 reductions.

C : The whole issue around “smartness” raises red flags about costs , including who pays for the smartness, and whether we’re act ually saving energy. When we talk about benefits we need to be talking about “ net benefits ”

.

- Be sure we’re characterizing benefits, but also costs and “energy penalty” of some of the “smart appliances”

.

- Another concern is from an energy efficiency perspect ive, what are the impacts on annual energy consumption on a household, business, device (any level) ?

- Energy Star smart fridge is less efficient than one that is not smart. Troubling

– how do we wrestle with those costs ?

- There is an energy cost for devices to be connected , but we w ant to drive down consumption. There has been a lot of work to keep things disconnected when not in use , so as we drive up value , what are we doing to overall energy consumption ? Q: Are the metrics for DOE? For Manufacturers?

A: They are for both. And for all participants.

C : F ocus on metrics used to be how we measure success or progress. What’s the focus now? The metrics that you’re looking for are how you show progress in the future. Going forward, to help manufacturers, inst ead of dollars and CO2, you need to focus on something concrete like kWh. What percent of load of nominal baseline can be shifted an hour , 12 hours or 5

- 10 minutes ?
Q: Q uestion about feasibility of coming up with meaningful benefit numbers. For energy benefits we’re talking about utility grid. When you add connectivity to devices, it will principally be for functional and convenience purposes. Those functional benefits ma y drive changes in behavior of device.

C : T otal value is something that is a natural thing to put up there but it may not be quite as valuable as the subtotals or things like grid reliability. I disagree philosophically with Energy star because the math d oesn’t work to break even. Being able to integrate load s via DR has a large systems

- wide CO2 benefit

– reliability and additional renewables are enabled . O ther performance metrics are important but don’t translate well with dollars

. C : T he problem of reduc tionism is a critical one in terms of value. When you add up a lot of efficient things you often get an inefficient system.

C : C onsumers are the ones that need to make those choices. It’s a systems deployment issue. There are economic factors or interacti ons. People put energy conservation way down low on their list.

C : O n consumer acceptance, look at long term acceptance rates instead of points in time.

6C : O n CO2, it’s always been hard to quanti fy for grid management benefits. On consumer acceptance, th ings are purchased for convenience and comfort, not grid benefits. G ood statistical field evaluations are needed to understand the benefits in terms of DR

. C : We like these metrics, care a lot about consumer benefits and achieving national efficiency and

e nvironmental benefits. Reliability is a key constraint. On CO2 we’ve spent time with an ISO to understand CO2 benefits of grid connected water heaters. I ntermediate flexibility as a national metric. How will this influence future policy making for things l ike R enewable Portfolio Standards (R PS ) . Over next 5, 10, 20 years decisions will be made on RPS, mix of generation, etc., and additional flexibility is one consideration

. C : I t’s time to evaluate what we mean by energy efficiency

– you will have to make t radeoffs between responsive devices and classic energy efficiency

. We’ve focused traditionally on devices, and now we need to take a systems perspective. DR can provide good systems benefits in the service of CO2 mitigation and sustainability.
Additional Public Comment Period : Open comment on pre

- lunch topics Value, Benefits and Metrics

C : What matters to the grid is if they can shift load in a reasonable amount of time or change demand in the current moment. M etrics around that determine success

. C : C ustomers are not concerned with national grid unless yo u show a cost reduction

. C: For manufacturers, what matters is how the customer benefits. Functionality is key. Just reporting data to the grid is not of value.

C : Figure out what big c ontributors to the load are, especially when you need to adjust things.

C : B ig picture issue is we are basically looking at standards for the future, the C adillac level, two

- way, real time communication between device and grid. Not the only kind of DR tha t is useful , also need standards for one

- way communication. Legacy systems (such as pager

- based direct load control) have immense value.

C : W hat are the limits of physical characterization?

C : Assume w hen we say load we’re talking about electric load. Wi th a h igher degree of load use and distribution, the ability to monitor or detect energy consumption might be valuable

. C : W ho is the audience for this?

C : Who is the beneficiary ? N eed to look at home owner viewpoint. Is energy savings a possibility? Cons ervation Voltage Reduction ( CVR ) is one reason Dominion put on smart meters in Virginia . What are the CVR benefits home owners can get without spending a lot of money? Physical Characterization Framework

C : T he notion that someone not in a business connection with the facility understands the business enough to control some of their things is crazy. Application has to be useful for occupant , manager , owner. O ther things we want to accomplish need to be mediate d through barrier

.
7C : The discussion of controlling things that are life safety issues is disturbing. Codes and regulations understanding are prerequisite to being able to touch these systems. You can’t assume that laws will be obeyed.

C : N eed to define capabilities that devices might have and b e specific about latencies, protocols used,
etc.
C : T he characterization not only contains the notion of what can be achieved through the service, but also its availability at a certain time, which limits what can be done at a particular time.

C : W ould it be productive to take a straw

- man example of one or two devices and say “this is what we’re l ooking for these devices to do”?

C : T he dimensionality of this problem is very large, given that you have characteristi cs that are somewhat static, plus time of day, etc.
End

- User and Grid Services

C : Mi ght help whole process to separate end user from grid services. Create a framework that is friendly for manufacturers but doesn’t interfere at all with their interactions with end users.
C: End

- use versus grid services is a false dichotomy. Some devices can serve multiple challenges. Terminology and Definitions

- “energy self

- aware nodes” instead of “grid

- connected devices”

- “energy aware” instead of “energy self

- aware”

- “ d evi ces” should be “nodes”

- “smart” devices today don’t have much to do with implementation
Q: S houldn’t the communication be two way?

A: A ssumed that was covered by interactions with external devices

. C : Power distribution and functional context are two very different things.

C : T he benefit of talkin g back is the customer/end

- user. We can get a lot of benefit without feedback to the grid.

C : DOE can help by having smart manufacturers to report ID like a car VIN number ; would be a good way to answer these questions.

C : Equipment should be capable of communicating two ways especially for part

- load performance . With traditional DR, sending a si gnal back would be nice to get a response

– then you know which transponders are working.

C : W ith regard to devices br oadcasting a specific identifier , like a VIN number, that might be fine for building internal systems, but the utility wouldn’t want that much information and detail

– only want capabilities, and whether or not device responded.
Services

8C : The services may vary, but it’s really where the request is coming from and who is making the request. I f the services aren’t valued by the person buyi ng the device then they won’t be bought.
Actions

C : M ore focus on device actions, the more security risks and privacy violations there are. Actions increase the complexity to the operator because they have to know more devices and they assume more risk. A ctions are a massive violation of security, reliability and privacy.

C : S eems like it might be difficult to draw a difference between a service and an action

– same thing for smart and connected device. Inclined to merge them and then have characteristics defined.

C : T hese are not command and control actions driven externally

– unwarranted assumption. Physical characterization

C : E lectrical power or load chara cterization instead of physical , or rather a “service characterization”

. Services correctly go beyond energy to include maintenance, O&M and others. Physical is the wrong term because that could include size and color.
Q: C ould it be that what we’re actual ly looking at characterizing are surface sets?

C : P art of the sales pit ch is that the purchaser gets information about the state of the device that is valuable in addition to energy information. Therefore, don’t want to limit it too much or ignore that value proposition. Key Stakeholders that DOE should engage

- EPA (working o n standards for connected devices)

- NIBS committee

- Facilities M aintenance and O perations C ommittee , National Institute of Building Sciences (NIBS)

- Consortium for Energy Efficiency

o Manufacturers of HVAC and White Goods

- 100 manufacturers that are repre sented by trade groups but we need direct feedback

- Response: Manufactuers are in this room

– Johnson Controls, Ingersoll Rand, Honeywell, Carrier, Rheem, Emerson, Mitsubishi.

o You don’t need their input , what you need is their buy

- in

- Consulting industry (no industry organization but they pick what goes in the buildings)

- Facility management companies that provide energy services

-

- Homebuilders Reports, analyses, case studies that DOE should review and consider

- Public R&D agenda that helps with grid operatio ns, etc.

o Bpa.gov/ti for EE and transmission/transmission operations roadmaps Other topics that DOE should consider related to smart and grid

- connected appliances and equipment

9- A s much openness as possible. There is a lot to discuss and a lot of people are supportive of this concept. Don’t adhere to a strict process drawn from the regulatory realm

.

- There is a business model problem. All costs sit with manufacturers and m ost entities in grid industries serve regional markets

– there needs to be something in it for the manufacturers.

- W hen thinking about the complexities, we might benefit from a consensus

- based standards approach. That would provide clarity about what might be required.

- Who is driving this work? Who is the benefactor? We want t o understand wh o is driving this

– is it DOE, regulation, others ?

- They’ve been working on this in Europe for many years . T he novel approach that has worked is an interplay between thermal and electrical energy , working with ISO organization in Europe

- To help identify g aps, a DOE developed compendium summarizing completed research in this area would be very valuable to all of us. A grid could be the utility grid or a microgrid. Definition of grid is changing so need to specify what is meant

.

- Haven’t discussed potenti al business model

– what about the middle man, the service side. From the personal viewpoint of the residential owner, could this movement drive to develop new business model of people that serve as integrator.

- N eed to understand that there is currently “ fuzziness” around this business model. Different business models might merge as this industry matures.

10