IEEE AFRICON 2009

23 - 25 September 2009, Nairobi, Kenya

Electric load management and information technology

Peter Palensky
Envidatec GmbH Hamburg, Germany Email: palensky@ieee.org

Abstract-Load management can be an important contribution to the electricity grid. Its main usage is improving grid stability (physical optimization) and optimize consumption patterns (financial optimization). In recent years, load management developed towards a more "global" scale. Wide area load management tries to translate the experiences of local load management to entire regions. It is Information Technology that enables this. This paper describes the various flavors of load management and names the open points before this idea can be deployed in a larger scale.
I. INTRODUCTION

Peak-demand tariffs e.g. exceeding a certain limit is expensive. Real-time pricing (RTP) tariffs (end-customer pays whole-sale prices + service charge). Flexible tariffs usually already work by themselves. The customers try to avoid expensive operation of their processes and thus reduce demand at in desired situations or times. Even better is, however, the usage of supporting technology: automation. Depending on the level of sophistication, the customer installs (or lets install) new equipment or devices that alter the behavior of his energy using equipment: Replacing equipment (e.g. old machine with new, more efficient machine). Improving infrastructure (e.g. adding insulation to a building). Demand shifting (e.g. the processes of the customer are changed in a way that they are more uniformly distributed over the day). Demand limiting (a device monitors the demand trend and switches of consumers if the trend exceeds a certain limit). Load shedding (a more brutal version of demand limiting. Entire customers are disconnected if the situation demands it). Wide area load management (a DSM signal comes from a remote management entity like the grid operator). An additional motivation for flexible load management is the rising share of renewable energies in electricity generation (see Figure 1, a simplified chart based on [2]). Several renewable electricity sources (e.g. wind, photovoltaic) have stochastic behavior. They can not be planned (although sophisticated local weather forecast can help) or be influenced in their generation capacity. This, however, is a major feature that all power plants offer for an attractive price: balancing energy and other ancillary services. Renewable energies typically generate whenever "they want" and want to feed as much as possible into the grid. An increased share of such inflexible sources raises the need for another possibility of ancillary services: The load. The well known phrase "for every wind park you need a caloric power plant right beside it" can be changed into "for every wind park you need a set of intelligent consumers around it". Consumers with sophisticated load management can offer the

The electricity system (generation, transport, distribution and consumption) is facing serious capacity problems. Due to a number of reasons, several parts of the system do not keep up with the ever growing demand. Deregulation stopped investments in the grid, environmental regulations prohibit new power stations at certain locations and carbon costs (Le. C02 emissions) makes business more difficult. The demand side on the other hand experiences a dramatic rise in consumption. Although electric appliances are more efficient than ever before, the increased electrification of the world and the constantly rising market penetration with consumer electronics results in a steady grow of approximately 2%. Generation luckily keeps up with this (2.9% according to the EIA Energy Outlook 2008 [1]), but transport, distribution and balance management is still a challenge. There are new trends and ideas for transnational and transcontinental "supergrids" 1 fueled by new transportation technologies like high-voltage direct current transmission (HVDC), but an important contribution to grid stability is and will be demand side management. Demand side management (DSM) includes everything that can be done on the demand side and ranges from design considerations, over infrastructure changes via non-flat-rate energy tariffs to sophisticated automation systems. The incentive for changing something (behavior, equipment, etc.) is usually money: Increased energy price (money per kWh is increased). Charging for maximum demand (capacity of connection [line, transformers, etc.] in kW determines the price). Time-of-Use (TOU) tariffs (e.g. energy is cheaper in the night).
1See for instance http://www.desertec.org/ for a grid between northern Africa and Europe

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23 - 25 September 2009 , Nairobi , Kenya

Electr. generalion/PWh

5
4 renewables gas solids

E/EGoal
Goal@T p

3
2

2000

2050

Fig. I.

A significant rise of renewable energy generation is expected.

desired flexibility that renewable energy sources (RES) lack of. This paper gives an overview of the various levels of load management and shows newest developments in wide area OSM.

Max

II.

FIXED RULE LOCKING

Prio

The easiest way of limiting the demand of a certain customer installation is locking of individual devices. A programmable logic controller (PLC) can decide that "if A is running, B is switched off'. This however relies on increased customer involvement and a process that allows these rules. The PLC can even be replace by a simple relay circuit if the rules are not too complicated and do not change over time. This method is low-cost and only used in simple installations like small businesses or private installations. A larger factory needs a more flexible method (see next section). Another flavor of such simple rule based systems is the well-known night-tariff. Electric storage heating is a classical candidate for this. A thermal mass is electrically charged with heat during the night. The heating system is switched on by a clock or even by a signal from the utility (e.g. via power line audio frequency ripple control signals or via FM broadcast signals). It is clear that in a modern, networked environment this method is outdated. The available means of communication must be used to improve the performance of OSM systems.

3,2

Fig. 2.

Priority selection of a typical maximum demand monitor

III.

PRIORITY BASED SCHEDULING

A typically locally used method of priority-based scheduling is called a "maximum demand monitor" (MOM). A central device, located at the energy counter, predicts the energy demand in an on-line fashion (the "trend", see Figure 2). The decision method of the MOM is based on the fact that the utility has measurement periods (e.g. 15 or 30 minutes). If a customer has a non-flat rate, the utility charges the customer according to his consumption "curve" . In the case of a 15 minute measurement period, this curve consists of 96 values per day, each value is an energy value in kWh (or a power value which denominates the average power within this particular measurement period). The consumption behavior

within such a measurement period (i.e. the curve within 15 minutes) is of no relevance, as long as the power values do not exceed the maximum connection limits (i.e, burn the fuse). It is only the 96 values that count, so the MOM has 96 goals to reach. The most simple case is that there is one maximum value for all 96 periods. The MOM has then the goal to keep each individual measurement period below this value. Each period, the MOM starts with zero energy (consumed in this period) and counts up according to the real consumption (see also Figure 2. If the "trend" (the extrapolation of the current situation) points above the goal for this period, the MOM gradually sheds loads, according to priorities. This shedding is done by reducing the maximum allowed priority of the system. When the fist upper boundary is crossed by the consumption curve the least important devices are shed (maximum priority reduced from 3=ALL to 2 in the example). If this was not enough, the curve will cross further boundaries and further reduce the maximum priority to 1 and maybe to 0 (all oft). If the curve hits a lower boundary, the consumption is lower than necessary and the maximum priority is increased (if it was decreased previously) step by step. First the important devices are enabled again (from priority 0 to 1), later the others follow. Please note that a traditional MOM only does a financial optimization. It acts upon rules that are derived out of the en-

978-1-4244-3919-5/09/$25.00 2009 IEEE

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23 - 25 September 2009 , Nairobi , Kenya

ergy delivery contract. There is no way of receiving emergency signals from the grid operator or something similar. Another disadvantage of the classical MDM is that the selection of devices within a priority (if implemented at all) is typically a static one. This can lead to unfairness. It is therefore necessary to shuffle the intra-priority order of devices and maybe even move devices between priorities .
IV. INTELLIGENT DEVICES

offer.

--.
offer Grid operator result
1 - -

OpenADR server and market place

~
offer

Customer A

~
accept

Customer B

The MDM is a rather course method . The devices themselves have no possibility to "offer" shed potential if they can (e.g. thermal inertia typically allows for pre-cooling/heating so that a longer off-period is perfectly possible) or to tell that they do not want to be shed right now. The solution to this is equipping the devices with a certain portion of "intelligence" . An embedded node, placed to each MDM-connected consumer, takes care of this. It is how the rules and possibilities of the individual devices are defined, where the problems arise: Parameters configured by operator Parameters derived from device behavior The first case means that a system engineer types in the rules: Maximum switch off time = 5min, Duty cycle = 70%100%, minimum switch off time = 1 min, etc. If the installation contains several dozens or even hundreds of nodes, this way is a very cumbersome one. An alternative is to derive a load model out of the behavior during run-time. This is only possible for very simple devices that count as "white box" (i.e. the engineer knows what is inside the process) . One example is thermal processes. The engineer knows that the device follows a PTI behavior and simply defines that the thermal capacity (the "virtually" stored energy) must not go below 60%. The rest - the time constant and the maximum and minimum value - can be derive during run-time. The Envidatec Load Management Systenr' is based on this principle and therefore reduces engineering time in the field.
V . WIDE AREA LOAD MANAGEMENT

Fig. 3.

A simple bid procedure managed by the openADR market place.

The last requirement is true for all (automatic) energy management systems. In the case of wide area (or global) control, it is also the diversity of degrees of freedom that counts . It is of no help if all members of a wide area load management show the same behavior (e.g. can only shed between 14:00 and 16:00). The more diverse the members are the better the optimization potential. The market for wide area load management is not yet established. Customers have no access to whole sale prices and ancillary services have huge entry barriers (e.g. 20MW to participate in the regulation energy market). The situation is, however, moving, and it is technology that moves the society. The more technological possibilities are out there, the more legislation and regulation is forced to move. It is the IT infrastructure that fuels this movement currently. A wide area load management system needs the following IT support: An electronic market place to settle bids, offers, prices, etc. Wide are control networks with a certain quality of service A networked source of incentive and information (grid manager, utility, energy stock market, forecast providers) Local MDMs and control nodes at the customer's sites that interact with other members of the system Control/information nodes at the generation side (e.g. at wind power stations) Distributed algorithms that execute the optimization Figure 3 shows a simplified case of a l-stage bid. The openADR Project at the Lawrence Berkeley National Lab, California", developed an open specification for wide area load management information exchange. All interfaces between customer nodes, the market place, etc. are based on web services (WS) and use XML to exchange information. Figure 3 displays a source of information (in this case the grid operator) that sends a stimulus into the system . It offers a certain incentive if one (or more) members of the load management community can shed a specific amount of load for a certain time. The openADR server receives this offer and forwards it to all customers that subscribed to this type
3http://drrc.lbl.gov/openadr/

Maximum demand monitors typically act on a local basis. They optimize the energy bill of one customer by avoiding energy peaks that exceed a limit given in the energy delivery contract. This is a very narrow view. The electricity system does not supply one customer alone. Every price or incentive is derived out of collective behavior and system limits. If customers would cooperate with each other and with the utility and the grid operator, the behavior would be much better and costs could be further reduced. The prerequisites for such a joint energy management are A market that rewards collective control IT infrastructure used for coordination Consumers with certain degrees of freedom for shifting, shedding, etc.
2http://www.envidatec.com

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IEEE AFRICON 2009

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of business. Customers might participate in several programs like grid emergency programs, peak load programs, carbon reduction programs, etc. even if the individual programs might demand contradicting things from time to time. The customers receive the offer and decide if they can fulfill it or not. In the example customer A and customer B can satisfy the requested offer and bid for it. The openADR market place then has to decide which bid to take. This can be done in a first-come first-served manner or in a way that every subscriber gets a fair share of all the offers over the month. In our case customer B made it and gets the acceptance message. The grid operator get a confirmation that the offer was successfully "sold" and the business transaction is finished. The KNIVES project [3] is another example of wide area load control. Embedded nodes are connected to the Internet and listen to utility signals. It uses a hierarchical topology that shows good scalability. Similar to the KNIVES project, the IRON project [4] defines a community of distributed peer-to-peer nodes (software agents, hosted on embedded platforms). The nodes represent consumers and aggregate their DSM potential to a "virtual storage power plant". IRON uses the GSM network or the Internet for communication. The nodes measure the local grid frequency and power consumption and base their decisions on this information plus signals from the IRON community. VI. TIMING OFLOAD MANAGEMENT The above mentioned systems can be used for a variety of applications. An MDM-like financial optimization is the easiest case. Nodes (Le. customers) can form a community in the Internet and appear as one customer to the utility. Any energy delivery contract that is based on measurement periods would lead to a certain schedule that the community will try to follow. The financial gain of course must be distributed fairly, e.g. those who contribute more to the goal get more. The situation gets much more critical the faster the optimization has to react. If the community wants to participate in the market of "spinning reserves" or balance energy, the reaction times are way below the mentioned 15 minutes. There is not much time for negotiations in the case of an instantaneous grid emergency. On February 26, 2008, Texas experienced an unexpected drop in wind generation from 1700 MW to 300 MW. This lead to a "Stage 2 emergency" (the reserves were below 1750 MW). The spinning reserve market solved that problem and supported the grid until additional resources were brought active. It Texas, unbelievable 50% of its spinning reserves come from load (Typically the pumps of its petrol industry can be shed for some time). So the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) called 1000 MW load response via IT (2.8% out of its total 36 GW). The load reduction was successful and no "ordinary" customer was shed. After 90 minutes the situation was cleared and grid stability was restored. Ordinary communication links (e.g. Internet) often do not offer the required quality of service (QoS) in terms of availability and latency. Therefore hybrid channels (diverse

physical media) are used. The programmable communicating thermostat (PCT)proposed by the California Energy Commission has an FM radio interface that allows for rapid broadcasts in the case of urgent emergencies. Similarly, the IRON system uses the grid frequency as an additional (, reliable and quick) source of information. VII. CHALLENGES FOR DISTRIBUTED LOAD MANAGEMENT There are still some unresolved issues for the deployment of large area load management. Beside missing markets and incentives, it is mainly the fear of unreliable electronics and software that prevents utilities from introducing these new ideas in a broader scope. The reliability of the equipment must, however, not be compared to the quality of ordinary consumer electronics of our daily lives. Automation technology is used in avionics and automotive applications where lives depend on their proper function. Unlike electric protection, load management, does not even have a direct influence on human safety, so the requirements are more relaxed. The availability requirements are also relaxed. Think of a community of intelligent loads with a statistic availability of 90%. This is absolutely fine, as long as the promised load shed can be covered by this 90%. The challenge is to guarantee the 90% availability. The Internet has the disadvantage to hide its transport layers. One does not know if a packet is routed over a satellite (where one will always have a minimum latency due to the speed of the radiowaves to and from the satellite) or over cable A via the USA or cable B via India. Even if statistical experience is collected, the situation tomorrow is different from the situation of today. IPv6, the new generation of the Internet protocol, does put more emphasis of QoS than its predecessor. Compared to ATM or local real-time networks it is, unfortunately, still only half-hearted. Another aspect that is often ignored is information security. It might not be critical if some foreign cyber-attacker hacks my air conditioning (AlC), but if this is done with thousands of AlCs the grid might be brought into serious troubles. The basic security need for wide area load management is message integrity, and message authenticity. There is no need for confidentiality (done via encryption), as long as publicly available energy prices or grid emergencies are communicated. The integrity of the message (it was not manipulated during transmission) and the authenticity (the message does come from the energy stock market and from nowhere else) are, however, essential requirements. Both can be satisfied with a digital signature. Using digital signatures in large area networked embedded systems (that's what our global load management is) asymmetric cryptography is needed. This eases security (key) management but requires the end nodes to have a certain amount of computational capabilities. Time is on our side in this aspect and there are several micro controllers on the market that incorporate cryptographic routines on chip.

978-1-4244-3919-5/09/$25.00 2009 IEEE

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VIII. CONCLUSION The time has come for global energy management. The necessary IT infrastructure, methods and components are available, which was not the case some years ago. This information technology can be reliable enough, secure and affordable. The market is, however, still not prepared for this. It is the role of IT to fuel this development, by setting up digital market places in model regions. The optimization algorithms are another white spot that need more research. Project DAVIC [5] tries to simulate large numbers of consumers, their physical processes and the IT infrastructure in order to test and investigate a variety of optimization algorithms. The main questions are stability, scalability and performance of the algorithms. REFERENCES [1] Energy Information Administration, International Energy Outlook 2008, Chapter 5 Electricity, www.eia.doe.gov. [2] Union of the Electricity Industry - EURELECTRIC: The Role of Electricity, 2007 [3] Handa,T.; Oda, A.; Tachikawa, T.; Ichimura, J.; Watanabe, Y.; Nishi, H.: KNIVES: A distributed demand side management system - Integration with ZigBeewirelesssensor network and application. Proceedings of 6th IEEE Conference on Industrial Informatics INDIN08, 2008 [4] Stadler, M., Kupzog, E, Palensky, P.: Distributed Energy Resource Allocation and Dispatch: an Economic and Technological Perception,International Journal of Electronic Business Management, Volume 5, Number 3, page 182 196, ISSN 1728-2047, 2007 [5] Palensky, P., Kupzog, E, Zaidi, A. A., Zhou, K.: A simulation platform for distributed energy optimization algorithms, Proceedings of the 6th IEEE Conference on Industrial Informatics INDIN08, 2008

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