I Want To Be A Prosumer

Alvin Toffler coined the term “prosumer” to describe a situation where a producer of electricity may also have a consumer relationship with a utility, aggregator, and other energy provider.

That’s exactly what is happening today.  Consumers can play the role of renewable electricity producers at individual or community levels.  For instance, in California, Community Choice Aggregation offers neighborhoods and municipalities opportunities to join forces to source renewable energy for their electricity needs.  This sensible policy encourages growth of local businesses to build and manage renewable energy production and stimulate local economies.  Unfortunately, Pacific Gas and Electric, the monopoly in Northern California, wants to undermine these policy goals and economic benefits to consumers through its Proposition 16 campaign (See my April 19 blog).

Future electricity production must also consider the “negation” of electricity use.  A negawatt is defined in the Smart Grid Dictionary as “A term that identifies watts of energy saved through a reduction in energy use or increase in energy efficiency.  It is the greenest form of energy.”  It is also called the “first fuel”, and it should be bought and sold like any other energy source.

There are growing numbers of solutions that enable homeowners to monitor and manage their electricity use, and create negawatts.  In other words, a consumer can actively participate in reduction of electricity consumption through new Smart Grid technologies.   Traditionally, utilities or third party aggregators enrolled customers into programs that usually delivered day-ahead notification of requests to reduce electricity consumption.  In the future, maintaining a stable grid with renewable resources will require real-time requests for electricity consumption adjustments (and energy storage too).  That implies low cost, high performance reliability in solutions that homeowners use to manage electricity consumption.  One of the most interesting technology platforms uses open source hardware and software – called OSHAN (Open Source for Home Area Networks).  Why is that important? 

Open source solutions (like Linux, MySQL, Apache –foundations of the Internet) have a solid reputation for top quality, reliability, security, and flexibility.  Open source solutions are created at fractions of the cost of traditional development cycles and eliminate risks of buying products that won’t work together. The OSHAN platform could play an important role in unleashing the creativity of software and hardware developers to create innovative products that manage and reduce energy use, creating negawatt value for consumers.   Just as the Smart Grid enables a broad base of participation in electricity production and consumption, technologies like OSHAN can propel the most cost-effective and easy-to-use energy management products into mainstream use.   I look forward to being a prosumer. 

Much like the familiar LANs or Local Area Networks, HANs are simply the same communications capability within a home.   Here is the definition of a HAN from the Smart Grid Dictionary:  “A network of energy management devices, digital consumer electronics, signal-controlled or enabled appliances, and applications within a home environment that is on the home side of the electric meter.  It can also be considered as a home-based LAN, but it connects more than just computers.  HAN specifications include Zigbee, HomePlug, Z-Wave and Wireless M-Bus (a wireless variant of M-Bus).” 

Instead of a network of servers, printers, copiers, and computers, the HAN connects devices that are capable of sending and receiving signals from a meter, In-Home Displays (IHDs) and /or HEMS applications.  While it is unlikely that in the future my refrigerator has anything interesting to say to my dryer, both devices should communicate with a smart meter or an IHD to identify start times or learn operation parameters that were set up by my HEMS application. 

Wired or wireless, there are tradeoffs that involve power consumption, signaling distance, sensitivity to interference, and security.  The main point here is that HANs are not energy management applications – they enable energy management applications to monitor and control the devices on the home network. 

HANs and IHDs still need an energy management application – a HEMS solution – in order to gain the most benefit from these Smart Grid components.  IHDs are great devices, but have limited data input and display capabilities – in fact some do nothing more than provide a visual indicator of the electricity rates at any point in time.  A HEMS web portal is the best interface to the utility billing and Demand Response programs – it enables the easiest designation of intelligent appliances that can be “enrolled” into utility demand response programs.  The HEMS solution allows me to “set and forget” my appliances’ operations, get suggestions on energy efficiency improvements, and see how my energy management compares to others in my peer group or neighborhood.      

What are the other features I’d like to see in a HEMS solution? 

• Open, non-proprietary, and standards-based software
• Simple and intuitive user interface
• Delivers user-definable information to a selection of IHDs
• Support for IHDs that combine HAN gateway and HEMS display capabilities
• Controls any manufacturer’s intelligent appliances
• Contains HAN diagnostics
• Easy to deploy and upgrade
• Secure access to utility billing system to view bills
• EV charging management
• Micro generation and energy storage management and diagnostics

Some of these capabilities are available now from a number of HEMS providers, but others are future capabilities and will be for quite some time.  I’ll talk about other desirable HEMS capabilities in next week’s blog.

I asked this question because this n application will be ubiquitous in homes in the next few years.  The answers I received included an R&D shop’s solution (which might be proprietary), feedback about sensitivity of usage data, and a reference to the UtilityAMI Home Area Network System Requirements Specification.  

Let’s talk about the sensitivity of usage data – how much energy you use.  This is often cited as a security concern – if people can capture the data about the electricity you are consuming, they can tell if you are home or not.  I guess that’s true, but they would have to know an awful lot about my typical electricity use.  What if I’m a careless energy consumer that leaves computers, TVs, cell phone chargers, and lights on all the time – whether I’m home or not?  In this example, will there really be a significant difference in my KWh if I leave town for a week?  Maybe from a stratospheric bill to merely sky-high. 

In a world with more microgrids, the bad guys looking at my usage data would not know that a sudden decrease in my energy bills might be due to my brand new mini-wind turbine and solar panel installation. 

I do think people would be very touchy about the confidentiality of this information – I might not want my neighbors to know that I’m an electricity guzzler.  However, I don’t think extrapolating my usage data is a worthwhile criminal enterprise for people looking to make an illegal buck.     

More malicious activities would involve comprising the integrity of my usage data.  Although I can’t see what monetary gain a hacker would reap from modifying this data, they could certainly stress me out if my next utility bill was in the stratosphere.  Ditto if they messed with my microgrid data, depriving me of that cash that I was expecting from the utility based on their purchase of my microgrid’s generating capacity. 

So usage data may not be the most important data to secure in a HEMS application.  However, financial data and personal identification data like Social Security Numbers might be connected somewhere in a HEMS application to a utility, and therefore may be vulnerable to unauthorized access or compromised integrity.  That could be a problem.  We read stories all too often of the global criminal networks engaged in buying and selling credit cards and identification information.  This is a potentially huge liability for utilities, but they are working to address it through groups like the UtilityAMI OpenHAN Task Force.   

The UtilityAMI OpenHAN (Home Area Network) Task Force has defined 4 sections under the security category for guidelines that promote open, standards-based interoperable HANs.  Any HEMS application would be part of the HAN, and governed by the security guidelines under development by this group and other knowledgeable organizations.  The OpenHAN Task Force defines the following four subcategories: Access – the control and confidentiality of data and information; integrity – the ability to ensure protection of data (in storage and in transit) from unauthorized users; accountability – the date/time/user event info to audit a system; and, registration – the authentication of identities that are established within a HAN and known to a utility.   This is a great construct for utilities and vendors to ensure that all software is designed and deployed to ensure security as well as interoperability.

This Task Force takes a utility-centric view, which is perfectly reasonable considering that utilities have a great deal at stake in getting the right specifications defined for future Smart Grid operations.   The work that this Task Force has been doing is also shared with the ongoing work that NIST is taking in conjunction with EPRI to develop interoperability and security standards. 

I’ll lead a discussion about software characteristics – especially at the user interface in HEMS applications – for the Smart Grid at the Green Software Unconference on August 19^th in Mountain View, CA.   .   Join me there – click here to learn more about the agenda and how to register.