What does this sync up mean for the end users.. commercial and large industrial end users of electricity and what does this partnership provide the utilities?  What are the resources and services available in the market for businesses to analyze and implement such a program?

EE and DR are kinds of demand side energy management techniques. EE is permanent while DR is temporary based on time, season, price and load conditions on the grid. Utilities benefit from EE as they are able to reduce their base load. Energy efficiency is a kind of permanent demand side energy management slightly different from temporary load based demand response. Utilities need both kinds of demand side energy management . They embrace EE for long term load curtailment and DR for active load management.

As for the business customer of the utility, demand response until now was an option which the Facilities/Operations/ Management decided to participate in or opt out under various kinds of programs offered by the utility. However, the stage is being set for automated demand response (ADR), due to the communication upgrade by the utility in terms of smart meter and automated servers (the whole AMI infrastructure). If utility’s infrastructure becomes capable of sending price signals to the business customer  via smart meter/server in near real time, demand response gets a higher value and attention as a demand side management tool. This is because of real time based pricing instead of negotiated flat rate, DR has the capability to provide potential monetization for the customer.

The big question is are businesses ready for that kind of scenario. Based on my experience, very few commercial/ industrial customers have the tools, resources or management approval for DR, leave aside ADR. DR impacts business operations and reliability in most energy intensive enterprises. Hence it has always been an item with pending decision.

What are the resources available for large business customers to analyze and explore the combination of EE and DR. EE is being implemented in almost all companies where the ROI is less than one year. In addition where incentives and subsidies bring ROI to a palatable level such as solar, the projects get funded. Most utilities provide DR programs. If the in-house demand side management resources are tight and a company needs outside help in analyzing and managing DR there is help in the marketplace.

Based on my research I have found consulting and DR service providers who offer help in understanding all the variables in EE/DR/ADR . Some firms are pure consulting firms that help the companies understand the energy market holistically from supply and demand side and optimize an energy strategy for them, which includes EE/DR planning and implementation. Such as KEMA (http://www.kema.com/services/consulting/utility-future/smart-grid/demand-response-market.aspx), Navigant Consulting (http://www.navigantconsulting.com/industries/energy/energy_efficiency/) and many more. Typically you would also need in house resources for implementation. There are others that operate as pure DR providers. They are regional or national aggregators who work with end users, utilities and RTO/ISO’s to solve the problem of oversized demand. Companies such as CPower http://www.cpowered.com/about.php; EnerNOC http://www.enernoc.com/index.php; Ziphany http://www.ziphany.com/drp.html; Eisenbach Consulting http://www.eisenbachconsulting.com/demand-response.php .

Below are few details on offerings from different providers.

EnerNOC: offers both DR and EE. EE uses Monitoring based commissioning for uncovering savings. They monitor all the systems of the building after integrating the systems with their central control panel. Based on monitoring and analysis they offer EE opportunities.

Ziphany: offers mainly DR along-with meter data management platform. They do not provide integration service with building systems and equipment such as EnerNOC.

Eisenbach Consulting: offers mainly DR along-with energy procurement services.

CPower: offers both DR and EE. However, the target market for EE is Utilities and not business owners.

I am not advocating any provider over the other. I am sure there are more DR providers that provide load management solutions and consulting firms that can help companies analyze their business needs and align the energy strategy with the company’s goals. My aim to let the business managers, operation managers know that if DR is getting ignored due to other priorities they can seek help. The best way to address EE and DR is to define a comprehensive energy strategy for the company- both from the supply and demand side. If the supply side is the constant, then they can focus their resources on demand side management. Defining overall strategy should be the first goal and action plans & resource allocation should be developed later. This is crucial since in the future companies will have to factor in cost of carbon in their energy strategy from procurement to end use.

This article is not intended as a technical  resource but my attempt at defining the constraints, barriers for widespread adoption of demand response by end users. Hope you enjoy reading.

For those readers interested in checking out what areas will be covered by the Standard to bring consistency and transparency in the real estate transactional disclosure please check out the link below.

http://www.astmnewsroom.org/default.aspx?pageid=1847

I listened a few hours ago to a Lexis/Nexis (premier law content provider) podcast on the ASTM standards under development. Please click on the link below for the podcast and learn about the potential influence of this upcoming standard!

http://law.lexisnexis.com/practiceareas/Environmental-Law–Climate-Change-Podcast/Environment-Climate/

I am very happy with the development in this sphere, especially since the disclosure will bring in rigor and financial motivation for prospective sellers to make energy efficiency upgrades a priority. It is a kind of economic/financial push to force ambivalent owners/sellers of existing buildings towards greening their buildings. A feather in the hat would have been the inclusion of mandatory Energy Use Label from EPA for existing old buildings under Waxman -Markey Bill. However, real estate industry has used influence to eliminate the mandatory label on existing buildings. At least AB1103/ASTM standard will provide the market based incentives for energy efficiency investments.

http://www.nytimes.com/cwire/2009/08/04/04climatewire-the-real-estate-industry-quietly-removes-a-la-8072.html?pagewanted=2

Another added attraction is the kids entertainment program organized alongside GreenBuild. That is a great concept and will go a long way towards bringing the female LEED proponents to the conference!!

Keep reading.

Just found out that Al Gore is delivering keynote address at Greenbuild 2009. I remember watching ” An Inconvenient Truth” sitting at the edge of my seat.. For me it was the first quantified and visual depiction of climate change in media.  I am sure he will make a compelling and awe inspiring keynote address.

Key takeaways for me from the conference:

There is a lot of potential to innovate products, solutions and standards for the next generation of Smart grids.

Vast array of products and solutions have been developed using wireless mesh networking technologies to address the energy management needs in   portfolio of commercial and office buildings. However, we need to exercise caution and engineering and business case judgment before investing in them. Having said that, I do want to let existing building owners, managers and facility professionals know that it is a GREAT opportunity. I plan to do a thorough technical and financial comparison of these products for my own reference.

The conference was full of representatives from Energy, BAS, research and IT world. The average age was I believe >50. We need young Engineers, Architects, Building professionals to shoulder this paradigm shift. I am one of them…

Keep reading. I need to take a tea break.

I would like my audience to check out these wireless energy management product companies listed in alphabetical order.

ARCH Rock:

http://www.archrock.com/products/

Convergence Wireless:

http://www.convergencewireless.com/

Cypress Envirosystems:

http://www.cypressenvirosystems.com/

MillennialNet:

http://www.millennialnet.com/greenrevolution/

Regen Energy:

http://www.regenenergy.com/

BTW, There is a conference organized by UCLA’s WINMEC called  UCLA Smart Grid Leadership Forum. Check out the link below. This roundtable conference will host several leaders from government, industry, and academia.

http://winmec.ucla.edu/smartgrid/2009,

1. Energy Summit 2009 hosted by Stanford University in collaboration with Silicon Valley Leadership Group. Condoleezza Rice is the keynote speaker for this event.

2. Northern California Facilities Expo (June 3 &4, 2009)

Below are the links if you would like to explore them.

http://bayarea.sustainableexpos.com

http://svlg.net/energysummit/

Hope to see you all at these events. You will be hearing about more learning opportunities… I have more time to write the blog.

Happy reading!

I attended the Bay Area Sustainable Expo for a few hours on the opening day. The opening session speaker was Panama Bartholomy, a gifted speaker, bureaucrat. He gave an enthralling speech on current energy issues in California, how much money is flowing into the State, counties and Cities under the ARRA American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. He suggested we check out the website below:

www.energy.ca.gov/recovery

Another important thing that stuck my memory- How in China,  Solar water heating has become so popular. He showed a photo, with multiple high rise residential towers in China with solar hot water installation. I believe they are available for $120 only.. It is one of the status symbols.

Another session I attended was on Corporate Sustainability Initiatives. A panel discussion by Cisco, Roche, Symantec and JDS. Companies have implemented varied programs and efforts under this umbrella and they are all commendable. Cisco- will reduce 30% GHG emissions by 2012, Symantec will take all its owned buildings through LEED certification besides 3% GHG reduction target. Roche on the other hand has come far along in Corporate Sustainability learning curve- electrical, water, waste conservation. They now have full employee participation. They enjoy behavioral level savings in resource.

http://www.symantec.com/connect/blogs/dow-jones-adds-symantec-sustainability-indexes

http://www.cisco.com/web/about/index.html

http://www.roche.com/principles.htm

Just read about the schedule for the Virtual Energy Forum 2009 (June 24, 25 2009). I attended this Forum last year and was amazed by the depth and knowledge and breadth of the subject matter covered in the conference. Please check this out. You can watch this from your desk, home, coffee shop. It is free and virtual and a great congregation of great minds.

http://www.virtualenergyforum.com/about_us.php

Yes, it was a huge gathering of people from the world of architecture, construction, policy and building marketplace. The venue was beautiful with grand views, short queues for food and amenties, green recycling, great key note speakers and spectacular expo. I especially liked the expo for its breadth and cutting edge display of products and services. I have made a short list of some things that caught my attention. I will share it with my readers later.

Overall, I enjoyed the conference. However, I felt there were too many sessions and conflicting schedules. I wish I had 3 more replicas of me to attend other sessions which were pertinent to my world. I restricted myself to the free sessions. I had no time for the  half day tours, outside the venue sessions and educational paid workshops. I also could not brace myself to face the cold chilly weather! I like warm weather and cold is not for me. However, for those who did not mind the walk in cold, with frost bites did venture out. Incidentally, I met someone at the local USGBC gala dinner, who mentioned about her adventurous frost bit walk back to the downtown.

I will keep writing more about the trip. For now, I will take a break.

Tidbit: next GreenBuild is in Phoenix !!!

Below are the links if you would like to explore them. The keynote address is by Al Gore on Saturday, Sept 27, 2008 at the West Coast Green.

http://www.westcoastgreen.com/

Unfortunately, I could not visit the conference. I do not have any updates, except that my friend who visited the conference liked it. Another remark I got was that some of the sessions were not so full and attendance was less compared to Eco City World Conference in SFO..

While the Facilities Expo is the free for all expo showcasing the latest products in engineering, facilities management and LEED certification across the landscaping, electrical, mechanical and controls spectrum. The link is below:

http://www.facilitiesexpo.com/fenc/index.po;jsessionid=IQbNm7EdguBPc163w2w__Epj

I visited the Facilities expo for a couple of hours on Wednesday. There was nothing very profound, or outstanding. One thing came to my mind, there were too many cool roofing products and roof installers in the expo. Seems like the cool roof, is catching up. I expect the price competition to intensify to customers can get better products for affordable price. It seems over priced right now.

I recall from one of the conferences I attended, Adobe was embarking on their goal of becoming carbon neutral. I would buy their argument since they have already certified all their office buildings as Platinum ( highest rating) as per LEED.

Read the article by clicking on the link and let me know your thoughts!

http://biz.yahoo.com/ap/080806/techbit_greening_dell.html?.v=2

I found out something interesting which I wanted to share with my readers. One of the MR credits under LEED EBOM require reduction in mercury content of the light bulbs. The manufacturers data usually gives mg/bulb and not the metric which LEED looks for which is Hg in picograms per lumen hour. There is an LEED EB online calculator available from Philips which can help people calculate the metric and compare across various models and manufacturers. I have not tried this tool but would recommend if you are trying to make a policy or selection.

The link below will take you to the calculator.

http://www.nam.lighting.philips.com/us/pro_lighting/sustain_calc.php

Keep coming back! I will write more stuff as time permits.

Time is really becoming precious now. As I get neck deep in LEED EBOM, I have more stuff to write and less time to write. Strange paradox! So today, I wanted to share with my readers the frustration I experience at work because USGBC has not come out with the latest reference guide for LEED EB O&M. We often put items on hold and say we will revisit this when the reference guide is out. I do not find that situation very productive.

I was amazed at the huge gathering that day in PEC center. It echoed the fact that I live in Silicon valley. There were so many data center designers, MEP consultants, data center operations guys, facilities managers, data center maintenance folks along with 6 vendors selling the cutting edge products in Data processing HVAC. This lecture did not talk about what is hot in data centers in terms of virtualization, server technologies etc. It focussed more on the latest products from HVAC manufacturers. Most of those were on liquid cooling technologies for data center cooling issues. The six vendors with products and booths were

RITTAL: Liquid cooling package systems

http://www.rittal.com/products/katalog.asp?ViewAt=5-5&Dom=com〈=GB&NavName=IT%20cooling

STULZ AIR Technology systems Inc: talked about EC fan technology: variable speed fan.

http://ats.stulz.com/products/precision-ac/index_en.html?gclid=CISH2-jjlZQCFSUqagodnl83tg

APC cooling solutions: In-row cooling technologies

http://www.apc.com/products/category.cfm?id=9

VETTE: rear door heat exchanger, a technology solution which IBM has licensed to Vette.

http://www.vettecorp.com/products_services/datacom_facilities_cooling_products/ps_dfcp_rdhx.php

http://www-03.ibm.com/press/us/en/pressrelease/22860.wss

IBM: Data center thermal measurement and analysis tool utilizing IBM’s mobile measurement technology

EMERSON: Liebert cooling technologies

http://www.liebert.com/product_pages/SecondaryCategory.aspx?id=33&hz=60

A lot of these presentations were about product lineup and HVAC issues in data centers such as hot/cool aisle. A lot of that info I did not understand completely. I will not try to give any recommendations or suggestions on energy efficiency. I want to share that this was a great lineup of vendors offering best products. This was a great lecture series for those data center executives and managers. It was FREE.

I also found out about the new benchmarking tool EPA is developing similar to EPA’s Energy star Portfolio Manager for the data center buildings energy efficiency measures. They have asked companies to submit their energy use data to create the data build for benchmarking data centers in the future.

I hope you enjoyed this brief synopsis!

I just read about the modular data center offerings from IBM that can be used to retrofit existing data centers or shipped to start in a totally new location.

http://www-03.ibm.com/press/us/en/pressrelease/24395.wss

I also came to know of industry consortium for energy efficiency in data centers. Green Grid, is the industry consortium promoting energy efficiency in data centers and business computing ecosystems. If you are a tech buff and want to read more about these latest products and industry groups . Check the link below.

http://www.thegreengrid.org/home