Energy Management: November 2014

Active Demand / Demand response in short ; "buy now to beat the rush"

Hi - Very brief update

I am off to Rome later this week to a briefing by (Nov 2014)

at Enel Head Offices, who describe their mission as follows:

MISSION
Leveraging on the empirical data and lessons learnt in real Active Demand (AD) experiences, the overall objective of the 24 months project is to develop actionable frameworks enabling residential, commercial and industrial consumers to participate in AD.
Furthermore, the benefits of AD for the key stakeholders and the inherent impacts on the electricity systems considering its potential contribution to system stability and efficiency are to be quantified taking different scenarios into account.
This will be achieved through comparing the different AD solutions applied in Europe and enhancing them by the investigation of socio-economic and behavioural factors with direct involvement of real consumers.
On this basis, key success factors of AD and recommendations for the future design of AD programmes will be derived.

Equilibrium price under demand inelastaic and elastic demand (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

In short it is about buying when demand is low for later usage - it helps the grid, the utilities, the clients (lower prices) and it helps the planet because it allows more efficient generating resources to be applied.

The notion is all about the micro-economics of the market:

I'm looking forward to conversations with some of the interesting attendees, both guests and from amongst the partner organisations:

So if you happen to be in Rome this week and want to talk about Active Damand / Demand Response and/or how kWIQly can uncover load rescheduling opportunities from energy data (whether attending or not) do drop me a line to james @ kwiqly.com and we will see if we can catch up.

Best James

The easy way to accept Bitcoin micropayments on your blogger account

I was at AVC today (a great entrepreneurs blog) and read this http://avc.com/2014/11/coinbase-tip-widget about a new way of exchanging funds legally and securely at VERY low overhead.

The Concept of Bitcoin Micro-payments

The bitcoin tipping button by Coinbase

This "tip button" allows you take micro donations in Bitcoin if people appreciate your posts. (You will see I have already "harvested" 550 bits at the time of writing).

So pressing on the Bitcoin "Tip" as shown ( top right of my blog ) will donate an small amount of Bitcoins to me.

It is only set to "300" bits or 0.0003 bitcoins by default and at the time of writing that's about 10 cents US as a "bit" is 1 millionth of a Bitcoin

This all supposes the reader/donor has an account set up to pay bitcoins, because they are very secure - you cant give what you haven't got. (If not https://www.coinbase.com/ is a good place to get informed)

Note: Neither kWIQly nor I have any commercial interest in coinbase (other than curiosity)

This can be used to fund pretty much any product or service (but keep it clean - it is your choice how you spend your life). But as an "early adopter" - I thought this would be useful to lots of potential bloggers, musicians etc (so I thought I would help spread the word - It could also be a way of driving down global transaction payments so for example more of charitable spend can be applied to the cause).

How to put it on your site :

Visit http://blog.coinbase.com/post/102957332182/introducing-the-coinbase-tip-button - it really explains everything you need to know.

For me (my blog sits on the blogger platform kwiqly.com is hosted elsewhere) this meant:

1) opening up my browser at https://www.coinbase.com/tip (logged into my account) and clicking

2) Selecting defaults in my case (and when logged in) and then copying the javascript (below)

3) Going to my blog layout editor (this for blogger) YMMV and selecting layout (below in orange)

4) Select add a HTML/Javascript widget

Pasting the script in the box and job done -

Then all you do is save the changes and watch the money mount up.

(To be honest this is an experiment for me and if the box top right never again changes I wont mind (and thanks to the coinbase team for donating my first receipt !)

Engerati Interviews kWIQly at European Utility Week

Adam Malik of Engerati interviews kWIQly at European Utility Week

This 10 minute video does a great job (Thanks Adam ! ) of covering the stamping ground where kWIQly works in laymans terms.

The chat ranges from Energy Management to Demand Response (which was definitely flavour of the week at the show, but which must carefully distinguish shifting waste from eliminating waste - both have a role to play), from the problems of utilities finding candidates who can switch off chillers, to the pub owner who has left his heating on while the drinkers are propping the door open, through hospitals who have their time-clocks 12 hours out of sync !

We had a great series of meetings at the show - and will be there again next year. After shouting out a special thanks to @Engerati and Stuart Neumman @Verdantix for his kind words (and fascinating viewpoints), its worth mentioning a few companies we spoke to who are up to some really interesting things in the fields of Grid Optimisation & Resilience, Demand Response, Metering and Meter Asset Management and moving into the energy management analytic's sphere where we work - They are (alphabetically - no particular order)

ABB

IBM

Itron

Landis+Gyr

Schneider

Tata

Trilliant

With a special mention to Engineering.it from Italy who had a very cool demo of virtual viewers for looking down meter holes to see connections and plate data, and a really cool pattern recognition drone solution (in the field in South America where regulation is a little freer) for first responders to gas and water leak which integrates with their GEOCALL solution. I should mention extensively enjoying their local artisanal products (Parma Ham, Parmesan and Bubbly - What's not to like ? :)

We were also interested to talk to a number of companies who have energy analytics platforms but who focus more on behaviours and customer engagement than we do. A brief list must include (again alphabetically) and don't be surprised to see products partnerships appear on these platforms in this still new and fast growing industry.

Dexma

OPower

SimpleEnergy

Oh - and finally we are off to see Enoro AG next week who have an office just down the road in Zurich and are using some of the same great technologies we use, but who really help Grid Operators see data more effectively

For me the highlight of the week was to have our team together doing business and feel that the industry is rapidly waking up to opportunity. The watchwords of the week were Demand Response, Grid Analytics, Energy Analytic Platform Solutions. See you next year !