Appliance Makers are the Good Guys

Toby Considine calls himself an "integrator of the un-integratable." He works as an infrastructure analyst, an in-house consulting resource to the Facilities Services group at the University of North Carolina and occasionally advises building owners and engineering companies on business strategies.

In a recent blog, Energy Collisions and Autonomous Appliances, he points out that appliance makers, "are starved for information," particularly when it comes to pricing energy in applicances that work in a smart grid. As Toby sees it, the appliance makers are the good guys and the energy suppliers the curmudgeon defenders of old world, fixed-price electricity. The energy suppliers need to give it up, and provide the price signal information the appliance makers crave.

Imagine these scenarios conjured by Toby and the Appliance Makers:

• Do you want that shirt clean and ready in 30 minutes [high energy mode]? Is it OK if it takes 90 minutes [low energy mode]? Is it OK to wait for 10 minutes until the energy price drops? How about 45 minutes? How about seven hours to get the overnight energy prices—or the wind-sourced energy?
• [The] washing machine may use no energy while filling, and then plenty while agitating the clothes. If an appliance understands its own energy profile, it may start filling its tank five minutes before the price drops—and time its final spin to complete before energy prices step up.
• [Appliances] comparing energy profiles [to] avoid the [washing machine] spin cycle and the refrigerator’s compressor cycle from running at the same time. With almost no degradation of performance, these autonomous systems can begin to shape the overall load profile of a building.
• Systems working together to avoid energy spikes.

Swaths of interconnected appliances working all the little pockets of time, on their own, together, to smooth demand on the electrical supply system. Continuous autonomous load shaping.

Photo: panduh on flickr