October’s issue of AutomatedBuildings.com republished the Executive Summary with connection to supporting documentation of the valuable research that Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory has been doing for the California Energy Commission’s PIER Group. www.automatedbuildings.com/news/oct05/articles/lbl/lbl.htm

On September 7, 2005 Mary Ann Piette and her team of David S. Watson, Naoya Motegi and Norman Bourassa from Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory prepared a report on their findings of last year’s Automated Demand Response Tests. Report is entitled;

Findings from the 2004 Fully Automated Demand Response Tests in Large Facilities

I have extracted highlights from this report to make our readers aware of ADR and LBL’s research.

This report describes the results of the second season of research to develop and evaluate the performance of new Automated Demand Response (Auto-DR) hardware and software technology in large facilities. Demand Response (DR) is a set of time dependant activities that reduce or shift electricity use to improve electric grid reliability, manage electricity costs, and provide systems that encourage load shifting or shedding during times when the electric grid is near its capacity or electric prices are high.  Demand Response is a subset of demand side management, which also includes energy efficiency and conservation. The overall goal of this research project was to support increased penetration of DR in large facilities through the use of automation and better understanding of DR technologies and strategies in large facilities.

The participants included 18 geographically distributed sites, covering 36 buildings.  The participants include several office buildings, plus a supermarket, cafeteria, industrial process sites, university library, and a postal processing and distribution center. New technology was developed to explore and evaluate the capabilities of current controls and communications for Auto-DR with EMCS and XML.  The project involved extensive outreach and recruitment efforts, and general publicity to audiences such as building engineers, utilities, property management companies, commissioning providers, and energy policy community. 

The maximum aggregate savings over the three-hour shed was 1453 kW, or about 24% of the total aggregated demand for all five sites. 

This research has demonstrated that fully automated demand response systems are technically feasible for buildings with a wide range of control systems from highly sophisticated EMCS with telemetry communication to conventional EMCS.  We demonstrated the features of Automated DR with EMCS and XML (eXtensible Markup Language).

In December there is a convention occurring to discuss and ratify an Interoperability Constitution for electric system components.

The GridWise Architecture Council will hold a Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, on December 6‑7, 2005.  The purpose of this convention is to discuss and ratify an Interoperability Constitution with a set of fundamental, strategic statements that will facilitate the interoperation of electric system components. The Convention will provide visibility, an opportunity for stakeholder buy-in, establishment of GridWise champions, and ratified constitutional statements.

The GridWise Architecture Council was created in 2004 following the August, 2003 Northeast Blackout and in response to Congress and the Department of Energy’s call for a next-generation electric system.  This Architecture Council brings the advancements occurring in information technology to electric system operations by establishing broad industry consensus in support of the technical principles that enable the interoperability necessary to transform electric power operations into a system that enhances our socio-economic well-being and security, while optimizing energy cost

Can you feel the energy and the opportunity for our industry’s support?

Our large building automation industry is being swept into an active part of the national electrical energy grid. Load interaction in lieu of increased generation and grid expansion is the new reality, not just a radical thought. It is a logical approach of using existing installed technologies to solve real problems. Could we be in a better place and time as an industry? This is an opportunity beyond our greatest dreams and elevates our industry out of the weeds and very much into the public view. Are we ready? Can we give ADR and GridWise’s Interoperability Constitution our full support? This is the killer application we have all been looking for so let’s not let these opportunities go unchecked.

Find out how we can best support this opportunity for our Building Automation Industry to become a part of a much larger plan. Let’s show the GridWise folks and their public how we can breath interactive life into the energy gobbling buildings we have created in the past. We may not make these building totally green but we can make them tolerable identities on the national electrical grid.

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