1 00:00:00,080 --> 00:00:02,323 This video will be a little different. 2 00:00:02,323 --> 00:00:06,241 I’m not sure if it’s exactly correct to call this an opinion piece, 3 00:00:06,241 --> 00:00:10,755 but this is largely a story about my personal energy management techniques, 4 00:00:10,755 --> 00:00:13,028 the lessons I’ve learned from them, 5 00:00:13,028 --> 00:00:15,654 and how we might apply them in the near future. 6 00:00:15,654 --> 00:00:21,775 I’ve also been motivated to make this video by headlines that paint the technique in a pretty bad light, 7 00:00:21,775 --> 00:00:26,750 when in fact the horror stories have everything to do with bad management decisions, 8 00:00:26,750 --> 00:00:29,565 and nothing to do with the idea itself. 9 00:00:29,565 --> 00:00:33,337 That idea is load-side energy management. 10 00:00:33,337 --> 00:00:40,875 It’s gotten some nasty press lately because the way it’s used today is usually reactive and rarely proactive. 11 00:00:40,875 --> 00:00:44,043 As the frequency of extreme weather events goes up, 12 00:00:44,043 --> 00:00:51,031 we’re finding more and more instances of energy demand on the grid outstripping its ability to supply it. 13 00:00:51,031 --> 00:00:56,019 In those cases, grid operators often have no choice but to shed load, 14 00:00:56,019 --> 00:01:01,080 or shut off the power to certain areas to prevent the grid from being overloaded 15 00:01:01,080 --> 00:01:05,471 or in particularly extreme cases, collapsing altogether. 16 00:01:05,471 --> 00:01:09,921 That nearly happened in Texas in the winter storm of 2021. 17 00:01:09,921 --> 00:01:14,294 But shedding load by disconnecting customers in rolling blackouts 18 00:01:14,294 --> 00:01:16,540 is a rather blunt instrument. 19 00:01:16,540 --> 00:01:18,062 It sucks. 20 00:01:18,062 --> 00:01:24,116 For a long while electric utilities have been flirting with more precise and less disruptive load-shedding techniques 21 00:01:24,116 --> 00:01:26,414 called demand response. 22 00:01:26,414 --> 00:01:30,292 Even before internet-connected smart thermostats were widespread, 23 00:01:30,292 --> 00:01:36,486 some utilities including mine offered discounts if you allowed them to remotely disable your air conditioning 24 00:01:36,486 --> 00:01:42,087 or perhaps clothes dryer using a lockout device during peak consumption periods. 25 00:01:42,087 --> 00:01:46,228 That could of course lead to some mild discomfort and annoyance occasionally, 26 00:01:46,228 --> 00:01:48,288 but at least you still had power. 27 00:01:48,288 --> 00:01:50,032 And so did your neighbors. 28 00:01:50,032 --> 00:01:55,822 See, heating and cooling is by far the biggest energy consumer of a home or building in general. 29 00:01:55,822 --> 00:02:02,762 And on hot days demand can suddenly explode when everyone’s air conditioners start running at the same time, 30 00:02:02,762 --> 00:02:05,676 so being able to ease the total demand on the grid 31 00:02:05,676 --> 00:02:11,520 by temporarily shutting off a few thousand air conditioners is a very useful tool for utilities. 32 00:02:11,520 --> 00:02:13,320 Now I know what some of you are thinking - 33 00:02:13,320 --> 00:02:16,534 "that sounds terrible and I would never, ever want that!" 34 00:02:16,534 --> 00:02:21,028 But these days, we have more flexibility than we ever have. 35 00:02:21,028 --> 00:02:27,108 What if the utility could turn your air conditioner ON before there was a supply problem? 36 00:02:27,108 --> 00:02:29,459 Now that smart thermostats are so common, 37 00:02:29,459 --> 00:02:32,497 utilities have plenty of customers who have installed 38 00:02:32,497 --> 00:02:37,274 much more sophisticated equipment than the air conditioner lock-outs of the past. 39 00:02:37,274 --> 00:02:43,010 And if done correctly, we can tap into a huge source of energy storage 40 00:02:43,010 --> 00:02:45,898 that you may have never realized we had. 41 00:02:45,898 --> 00:02:49,212 We often talk about the need for energy storage on the grid. 42 00:02:49,212 --> 00:02:54,350 Whether that’s to increase the viability of renewable sources of energy like wind and solar power 43 00:02:54,350 --> 00:02:57,061 or to help meet intermittent peak loads, 44 00:02:57,061 --> 00:03:00,847 having a reserve of energy on hand is a very good thing. 45 00:03:00,847 --> 00:03:05,936 In fact the idea of temporary energy storage isn’t new at all. 46 00:03:05,936 --> 00:03:10,359 Of course the trendy thing now is to talk about huge banks of batteries 47 00:03:10,359 --> 00:03:16,709 that are charged up when there’s lots of energy available, and discharged when that energy is needed later. 48 00:03:16,709 --> 00:03:21,899 Electric vehicles are likely to become a big piece of this strategy as time goes on. 49 00:03:21,899 --> 00:03:27,642 But we’ve actually been doing this for a very long time, just more crudely. 50 00:03:27,642 --> 00:03:31,669 For the most part we’re doing this because the load on the grid is variable 51 00:03:31,669 --> 00:03:34,332 and tends to peak in the afternoon. 52 00:03:34,332 --> 00:03:38,134 You may have heard this before but the trickiest thing about electrical generation 53 00:03:38,134 --> 00:03:42,678 is that supply and demand have to be equal all the time. 54 00:03:42,678 --> 00:03:46,572 Whenever demand goes up supply must increase to meet it. 55 00:03:46,572 --> 00:03:49,893 And when that’s not possible things start breaking. 56 00:03:49,893 --> 00:03:52,205 That’s been a challenge for the grid since the beginning, 57 00:03:52,205 --> 00:03:58,523 and is the reason pumped hydroelectric storage facilities exist and have for many decades. 58 00:03:58,523 --> 00:04:02,820 These facilities consist of two water reservoirs at different elevations. 59 00:04:02,820 --> 00:04:06,092 Sometimes they’re natural and other times they’re engineered. 60 00:04:06,092 --> 00:04:08,538 When supply is greater than demand, 61 00:04:08,538 --> 00:04:12,812 we use that spare supply to pump water to the higher reservoir. 62 00:04:12,812 --> 00:04:16,139 That makes a store of gravitational potential energy. 63 00:04:16,139 --> 00:04:19,180 Then, when demand starts to outpace supply, 64 00:04:19,180 --> 00:04:23,675 we just let the water fall back down and capture its kinetic energy as it does so 65 00:04:23,675 --> 00:04:28,659 in turbines which generate electricity, thereby helping to meet the new demand. 66 00:04:28,659 --> 00:04:31,240 It’s just like charging and discharging a battery, 67 00:04:31,240 --> 00:04:34,222 except the battery is made of water and gravity. 68 00:04:34,222 --> 00:04:38,351 The biggest problem with this technique is that it is very geography dependent 69 00:04:38,351 --> 00:04:40,823 and tends to be ecologically destructive 70 00:04:40,823 --> 00:04:45,121 unless you get a really lucky pair of lakes on a mountainside or something. 71 00:04:45,121 --> 00:04:47,909 In the case of pumped hydro and other storage, 72 00:04:47,909 --> 00:04:52,954 we’re taking care of demand fluctuations entirely on the supply side. 73 00:04:52,954 --> 00:04:54,871 That’s pretty much how it’s always been done, 74 00:04:54,871 --> 00:04:59,282 and that seems to be the framework that many people are still thinking in. 75 00:04:59,282 --> 00:05:04,669 There are lots of clever ideas floating around to make energy storage more viable and scalable, 76 00:05:04,669 --> 00:05:07,556 from towers stacking concrete blocks, 77 00:05:07,556 --> 00:05:10,102 to molten-salt and flow batteries, 78 00:05:10,102 --> 00:05:12,759 to massive spinning flywheels. 79 00:05:12,759 --> 00:05:19,760 All of these strive to be a place to put excess energy when we have more or perhaps cleaner generation available 80 00:05:19,760 --> 00:05:22,631 so that it can be used later when we don’t. 81 00:05:22,631 --> 00:05:26,930 Now of course we don’t have as much storage on the grid as we’d perhaps like, 82 00:05:26,930 --> 00:05:33,440 so many utilities offer (or in some cases require the use of) tiered rate-structures. 83 00:05:33,440 --> 00:05:35,959 Again, that’s not a new idea. 84 00:05:35,959 --> 00:05:37,956 Just ask any British person. 85 00:05:37,956 --> 00:05:41,941 But in my particular case, I’ve volunteered for an hourly rate 86 00:05:41,941 --> 00:05:46,543 that’s set based on the cost my utility pays for energy in real-time. 87 00:05:46,543 --> 00:05:52,380 They offer this to encourage shifting demand away from high-stress periods which cost them more, 88 00:05:52,380 --> 00:05:57,360 and you could argue they’ve almost gamified it which, honestly, is kinda fun. 89 00:05:57,360 --> 00:06:00,919 This is what a typical summer day looks like on this rate schedule. 90 00:06:00,919 --> 00:06:07,028 This varies from day to day, and on milder days it often doesn’t even go above 6 cents per kilowatt-hour. 91 00:06:07,028 --> 00:06:10,485 You can actually see, too, that on particularly windy days 92 00:06:10,485 --> 00:06:12,737 the rate’s pretty cheap all day. 93 00:06:12,737 --> 00:06:14,866 We’ve got a lot of wind power around here. 94 00:06:14,866 --> 00:06:17,851 Now, this isn’t the actual rate I end up paying - 95 00:06:17,851 --> 00:06:22,065 there is a fixed cost of about 4 cents per kilowatt hour so realistically 96 00:06:22,065 --> 00:06:25,980 this bottoms out at about between 5 and 7 cents, something like that. 97 00:06:25,980 --> 00:06:31,768 But that’s still a lot cheaper than in the afternoon where the cost can easily be more than double that. 98 00:06:31,768 --> 00:06:34,846 Anyway, demand is lowest in the middle of the night 99 00:06:34,846 --> 00:06:41,897 and at least with today’s energy mix that’s when it costs the utility the least to purchase electricity from its suppliers. 100 00:06:41,897 --> 00:06:43,865 That’s because with this low demand 101 00:06:43,865 --> 00:06:48,513 cheap and efficient baseload generation is the only supply that’s needed. 102 00:06:48,513 --> 00:06:52,309 And, so that I can take advantage of these low rates at night, 103 00:06:52,309 --> 00:06:58,069 I use a roughly 16 kilowatt-hour battery that I just happen to have lying around. 104 00:06:58,373 --> 00:07:01,560 I charge it up overnight starting at 10 PM on the dot 105 00:07:01,560 --> 00:07:04,690 and it’s done charging usually by 3 or 4 in the morning. 106 00:07:04,690 --> 00:07:07,341 I keep it topped off until around 7:00 107 00:07:07,341 --> 00:07:09,247 and then I start using it during the day 108 00:07:09,247 --> 00:07:12,675 and it doesn’t need to be recharged again until the evening. 109 00:07:12,675 --> 00:07:16,547 Now, the reason I just happen to have that battery lying around 110 00:07:16,547 --> 00:07:19,833 is because that battery is my house. 111 00:07:19,833 --> 00:07:21,375 Confused? 112 00:07:21,375 --> 00:07:26,429 Well, who’s to say a battery needs to store electricity? 113 00:07:26,429 --> 00:07:28,349 Now, before I explain this, 114 00:07:28,349 --> 00:07:32,259 let me acknowledge that this is somewhat situational and I get that. 115 00:07:32,259 --> 00:07:34,560 Not every building will be able to do this, 116 00:07:34,560 --> 00:07:37,376 but efforts to make this possible for more people 117 00:07:37,376 --> 00:07:44,341 could go a long way to providing a massive source of energy storage right now. 118 00:07:44,341 --> 00:07:46,100 This house is about 10 years old, 119 00:07:46,100 --> 00:07:49,021 is well-insulated, features low-E windows, 120 00:07:49,021 --> 00:07:51,840 and is shaded by trees in the morning and evening. 121 00:07:51,840 --> 00:07:54,931 All that means that even on sweltering hot days, 122 00:07:54,931 --> 00:07:59,024 it takes many hours for the indoor air temperature to rise. 123 00:07:59,024 --> 00:08:02,446 On a typical summer day, between 6 AM and 10 PM 124 00:08:02,446 --> 00:08:06,065 the air temperature only goes up by 7 or 8 degrees Fahrenheit, 125 00:08:06,065 --> 00:08:08,307 or about 4.5 Celsius. 126 00:08:08,307 --> 00:08:11,727 So, I just don’t cool my home during the day. 127 00:08:11,727 --> 00:08:13,056 At all. 128 00:08:13,056 --> 00:08:20,053 I don’t need to, because I charged the battery that is my house by overcooling it at night. 129 00:08:20,053 --> 00:08:24,684 Sure that might sound odd, but it’s not like I’m living uncomfortably. 130 00:08:24,684 --> 00:08:26,601 Quite the opposite, in fact. 131 00:08:26,601 --> 00:08:29,887 For how I like to sleep, which is nice and cool, 132 00:08:29,887 --> 00:08:32,085 this works out perfectly. 133 00:08:32,085 --> 00:08:36,005 And even with no cooling from 6:30 AM to 10:00 PM, 134 00:08:36,005 --> 00:08:39,743 it’s rare that it ever gets above 74 degrees in here. 135 00:08:39,743 --> 00:08:42,003 That’s 23.3 Celsius. 136 00:08:42,003 --> 00:08:47,507 This is even on sunny days and with heat from using the stove and oven for cooking. 137 00:08:47,507 --> 00:08:49,737 If I cool the house off at night, 138 00:08:49,737 --> 00:08:53,867 I simply don’t need any cooling again until the following evening. 139 00:08:53,867 --> 00:09:00,000 The worst it has ever gotten in the nearly two years I’ve been doing this is 76 degrees. 140 00:09:00,610 --> 00:09:03,064 Here’s what my thermostat schedule looks like. 141 00:09:03,064 --> 00:09:04,190 And before I go on, 142 00:09:04,190 --> 00:09:09,358 I want to be clear that I’m not suggesting everybody should have this particular strategy. 143 00:09:09,358 --> 00:09:12,901 I’m just explaining my tactic which is based on pricing. 144 00:09:12,901 --> 00:09:16,825 However, if you’re in an area that is prone to rolling blackouts, 145 00:09:16,825 --> 00:09:22,580 you might consider being similarly strategic with when your air conditioner runs during heatwaves. 146 00:09:22,580 --> 00:09:28,367 Anyway, at 10 PM the set point drops to 70 degrees and the air conditioner comes on. 147 00:09:28,367 --> 00:09:32,897 On a milder day the air conditioner may be able to satisfy that within three hours, 148 00:09:32,897 --> 00:09:34,307 giving it a short break. 149 00:09:34,307 --> 00:09:37,388 But at 1:00AM (which is technically the next day) 150 00:09:37,388 --> 00:09:42,207 the set point drops again to 66 degrees or 19 Celsius. 151 00:09:42,207 --> 00:09:43,894 That may seem excessively cold 152 00:09:43,894 --> 00:09:49,281 but remember my goal here is to offset my entire cooling need of the day. 153 00:09:49,281 --> 00:09:50,560 And this works! 154 00:09:50,560 --> 00:09:54,572 I’ve turned this house into a battery, a thermal battery. 155 00:09:54,572 --> 00:09:57,904 Although since it’s cooler than the outside it’s a negative battery 156 00:09:57,904 --> 00:09:59,720 but the concept is the same. 157 00:09:59,720 --> 00:10:03,072 Because my utility has provided me with an incentive to do so, 158 00:10:03,072 --> 00:10:06,945 and since my home is designed and sited well enough to make it possible, 159 00:10:06,945 --> 00:10:14,255 I’ve successfully shifted all of my cooling demand exclusively to off-peak hours in the middle of the night. 160 00:10:14,255 --> 00:10:16,700 And I do mean all. 161 00:10:16,700 --> 00:10:24,000 At 6:30 in the morning the set point goes to 70 before going up to 77 (that’s 25 celsius) at 11. 162 00:10:24,000 --> 00:10:27,213 I’ve done that just in case there’s an unusually hot evening 163 00:10:27,213 --> 00:10:29,699 and the temperature rises quickly in the morning, 164 00:10:29,699 --> 00:10:35,630 but I’ve yet to encounter a day where the AC actually comes back on between 6:30 and 11:00. 165 00:10:35,630 --> 00:10:38,582 The indoor temperature just doesn’t rise that fast, 166 00:10:38,582 --> 00:10:43,700 meaning that all my cooling happens between the hours of 10:00 PM and 6:30 AM. 167 00:10:43,700 --> 00:10:48,553 Here’s what that usage looks like according to my thermostat over a variety of days. 168 00:10:48,553 --> 00:10:53,488 On July 6 and 7 the temperatures were near 90, or 32 Celsius 169 00:10:53,488 --> 00:10:57,313 and didn’t drop below 70 or 21 Celsius at night, 170 00:10:57,313 --> 00:11:00,901 yet just over 7 hours of cooling in the middle of the night 171 00:11:00,901 --> 00:11:07,284 kept the indoor temperature from ever getting above a comfortable 75. (24 C). 172 00:11:07,284 --> 00:11:10,472 Of course, it’s not like this doesn’t have any downsides. 173 00:11:10,472 --> 00:11:13,369 Mornings are pretty chilly in here, 174 00:11:13,369 --> 00:11:18,801 and when it’s humid enough outside I wake up to windows that I can’t see out of 175 00:11:18,801 --> 00:11:21,558 because they’re all fogged up on the outside surface. 176 00:11:21,558 --> 00:11:25,900 This also means I don’t get any dehumidification except overnight, 177 00:11:25,900 --> 00:11:29,966 although I’ve always needed to run a separate dehumidifier in the basement 178 00:11:29,966 --> 00:11:32,903 because it’s just so forking humid here. 179 00:11:32,903 --> 00:11:36,571 And although my HVAC system won’t cool during the day, 180 00:11:36,571 --> 00:11:42,471 I do have it run a fan schedule so it circulates the air around for 15 minutes every hour. 181 00:11:42,471 --> 00:11:49,240 That, combined with the dehumidifier, keeps indoor humidity below 60% even on rainy days. 182 00:11:49,240 --> 00:11:52,481 And because I’m a Midwesterner through and through, 183 00:11:52,481 --> 00:11:57,413 the dehumidifier is on a timer which will disable it during the worst of the peak hours, 184 00:11:57,413 --> 00:11:59,700 between 1 PM and 8 PM. 185 00:11:59,700 --> 00:12:03,282 I mean the pulls 500 watts and that’s not nothing! 186 00:12:03,282 --> 00:12:06,932 That timer probably saves me $0.40 a day. 187 00:12:06,932 --> 00:12:11,169 But honestly, it’s not just the cost savings that motivate me to do this. 188 00:12:11,169 --> 00:12:16,909 I mean, it’s certainly fantastic that even with an electric car and plenty of cooling 189 00:12:16,909 --> 00:12:20,121 my power bills rarely go over $150. 190 00:12:20,121 --> 00:12:24,436 And that’s also with a conventional electric water heater and clothes dryer 191 00:12:24,436 --> 00:12:26,497 (heat pump units coming soon). 192 00:12:26,497 --> 00:12:31,847 But sentimental me simply enjoys the knowledge that when the power grid is working its guts out 193 00:12:31,847 --> 00:12:36,089 to meet the demand of my neighbors, I’m not making that any worse. 194 00:12:36,089 --> 00:12:41,147 For most of the day the biggest consumer of power in this house is the fridge. 195 00:12:41,147 --> 00:12:43,201 And the dehumidifier... 196 00:12:43,201 --> 00:12:45,296 But not between one and eight! 197 00:12:45,296 --> 00:12:50,286 Now I know that one idle air conditioner among millions isn’t doing anything. 198 00:12:50,286 --> 00:12:53,852 But that’s why the utility offers this rate plan. 199 00:12:53,852 --> 00:12:57,505 They hope they can get some of the more adventurous people to sign up for it, 200 00:12:57,505 --> 00:13:01,195 shifting demand away from the times it can be hard to meet. 201 00:13:01,195 --> 00:13:05,206 If you do it like I’m doing it, you're creating energy storage! 202 00:13:05,206 --> 00:13:07,836 I said my house is a 16 kilowatt-hour battery. 203 00:13:07,836 --> 00:13:13,874 Here’s how - my 2.5 ton air conditioner consumes about 2.2 kilowatts when it's running. 204 00:13:13,874 --> 00:13:18,469 Over 7 and a half hours that’s just shy of 16 kilowatt hours. 205 00:13:18,469 --> 00:13:23,706 I used all of that energy in the middle of the night so that I wouldn’t need it during the day, 206 00:13:23,706 --> 00:13:28,188 and as far as I’m concerned that’s the same exact idea as energy storage. 207 00:13:28,188 --> 00:13:32,276 Pulling energy now when you have it so that you don’t need it later. 208 00:13:32,276 --> 00:13:36,963 So now let’s tie this back to the idea of load-side energy management. 209 00:13:36,963 --> 00:13:42,097 Utilities are increasingly offering schemes similar to the AC lockouts of the past, 210 00:13:42,097 --> 00:13:44,470 but utilizing smart thermostats. 211 00:13:44,470 --> 00:13:46,984 For some sort of discount or other incentive, 212 00:13:46,984 --> 00:13:52,973 you can grant your utility access to your thermostat remotely so they can shed load when necessary 213 00:13:52,973 --> 00:13:56,703 without entirely shutting off the power to your neighborhood. 214 00:13:56,703 --> 00:13:58,976 I mean that alone is good, 215 00:13:58,976 --> 00:14:02,032 but the trouble is that’s a reactive approach. 216 00:14:02,032 --> 00:14:08,720 And when you see headlines like this, loudly shouting that the utility raised your thermostat temperature ohmigod, 217 00:14:08,720 --> 00:14:12,134 well of course that’s gonna make people leery of the idea. 218 00:14:12,134 --> 00:14:13,859 But here’s the thing. 219 00:14:13,859 --> 00:14:19,040 We can forecast electrical demand because we can forecast the weather. 220 00:14:19,040 --> 00:14:24,030 That also means we can forecast generation output of renewable sources. 221 00:14:24,030 --> 00:14:26,661 I mean, this flexible rate structure that I’m on? 222 00:14:26,661 --> 00:14:29,799 Those prices are determined a day ahead. 223 00:14:29,799 --> 00:14:33,338 We like to make fun of meteorologists for getting stuff wrong 224 00:14:33,338 --> 00:14:38,476 but you gotta admit we’ve got the next day pretty well figured out at this point. 225 00:14:38,476 --> 00:14:42,932 And rather than simply shedding load when the grid gets close to capacity, 226 00:14:42,932 --> 00:14:48,890 a smarter idea is to proactively take on loads before that even happens. 227 00:14:48,890 --> 00:14:55,805 What these energy management programs should do is recognize when there will be a lack of supply in the afternoon, 228 00:14:55,805 --> 00:14:57,692 and in the time leading up to that, 229 00:14:57,692 --> 00:15:02,610 they should remotely *lower* the thermostats of the people who are signed up for them. 230 00:15:02,787 --> 00:15:06,876 That will store some energy exactly how I’m doing it now. 231 00:15:06,876 --> 00:15:10,328 I’m not saying they should set the thermostat as far down as I do, 232 00:15:10,328 --> 00:15:12,959 and besides that won’t make cooling happen faster - 233 00:15:12,959 --> 00:15:15,302 you’re limited to the system’s capacity. 234 00:15:15,302 --> 00:15:20,445 But lowering it a few degrees in the hours leading up to a forecasted energy shortfall 235 00:15:20,445 --> 00:15:26,183 can buy a few hours of time where no cooling is needed by those customers, 236 00:15:26,183 --> 00:15:31,179 or at the very least lessen the felt impact of a period with restricted cooling. 237 00:15:31,179 --> 00:15:34,011 And of course we can apply this tactic to heating as well, 238 00:15:34,011 --> 00:15:36,186 assuming your heat source is electric. 239 00:15:36,186 --> 00:15:37,872 Heat pumps for the win. 240 00:15:37,872 --> 00:15:40,450 If it’s looking like there’s gonna be an energy dry spell 241 00:15:40,450 --> 00:15:42,074 thanks to lack of wind output 242 00:15:42,074 --> 00:15:47,537 or even something as simple as everyone getting home and starting to cook dinner in the same three hour window 243 00:15:47,537 --> 00:15:50,661 (that’s a large part of why this time is so expensive), 244 00:15:50,661 --> 00:15:54,891 well just bump the thermostat up a few degrees an hour or two beforehand, 245 00:15:54,891 --> 00:15:58,759 and store that energy in the form of deferred need. 246 00:15:58,759 --> 00:16:03,240 And now that is literal energy storage - in the form of heat energy. 247 00:16:03,240 --> 00:16:07,389 This could be a lot smarter than how we manage energy right now. 248 00:16:07,389 --> 00:16:12,070 Take for example the very idea of programmable thermostats. 249 00:16:12,070 --> 00:16:14,963 They’re great at saving energy for the individual 250 00:16:14,963 --> 00:16:18,983 by altering the setpoints when nobody’s at home or in the office. 251 00:16:18,983 --> 00:16:23,645 But a huge portion of us all leave home and return at similar times, 252 00:16:23,645 --> 00:16:30,610 so utilities have to deal with millions of air conditioners all starting back up in the same hour. 253 00:16:30,610 --> 00:16:34,319 Actively tweaking the set points based upon available energy 254 00:16:34,319 --> 00:16:38,029 could do an awful lot to ease these challenges of the grid. 255 00:16:38,029 --> 00:16:42,871 And, in case you haven’t already realized it, this is a great way to take advantage 256 00:16:42,871 --> 00:16:46,598 and increase the practicality of wind and solar power. 257 00:16:46,598 --> 00:16:50,370 One particular issue with solar power is the duck curve. 258 00:16:50,370 --> 00:16:53,965 This is what we call the challenge of solar output falling to zero 259 00:16:53,965 --> 00:16:56,779 right as energy demand starts to peak. 260 00:16:56,779 --> 00:17:00,269 A large criticism of solar power is this very problem - 261 00:17:00,269 --> 00:17:04,437 without storage other plants will need to start up to take on this load, 262 00:17:04,437 --> 00:17:06,663 many of which are natural gas. 263 00:17:06,663 --> 00:17:11,372 But what if we simply ran everybody’s AC when the sun was abundant? 264 00:17:11,372 --> 00:17:15,679 Assuming the buildings are somewhat modern, well-insulated, and have good windows, 265 00:17:15,679 --> 00:17:18,324 there’s some energy storage right there. 266 00:17:18,324 --> 00:17:20,940 Cool it now so that when people get home, 267 00:17:20,940 --> 00:17:23,418 it’s a few degrees colder than what they set it to, 268 00:17:23,418 --> 00:17:26,933 and they won’t need to run the air conditioner for a few hours. 269 00:17:26,933 --> 00:17:32,408 And in fact some utilities are already doing this sort of planning ahead and not simply reacting to 270 00:17:32,408 --> 00:17:34,602 "oops we’re running out of juice!" 271 00:17:34,602 --> 00:17:36,223 And good for them. 272 00:17:36,223 --> 00:17:38,294 And here’s the best thing. 273 00:17:38,294 --> 00:17:42,825 Because so many of us have already installed smart thermostats of our own accord, 274 00:17:42,825 --> 00:17:46,178 this is possible at scale NOW. 275 00:17:46,178 --> 00:17:50,399 Sure, some people aren’t gonna be thrilled with the idea for various reasons, but 276 00:17:50,399 --> 00:17:52,945 they don’t have to participate if they don’t want to. 277 00:17:52,945 --> 00:17:55,761 And besides, if this is managed well-enough, 278 00:17:55,761 --> 00:17:58,225 you might not even be able to notice it. 279 00:17:58,225 --> 00:18:02,712 If my utility offered something like this I would definitely sign up for it, 280 00:18:02,712 --> 00:18:07,828 but as it is I’m able to offset the entire day’s cooling need to off-peak hours 281 00:18:07,828 --> 00:18:10,389 and I’m very pleased to continue doing that. 282 00:18:10,389 --> 00:18:14,796 Our local energy mix still favors shifting demand to the middle of the night, 283 00:18:14,796 --> 00:18:22,105 and that ends up utilizing a fair bit of nuclear power so in theory the carbon emissions from my air conditioning are fairly low. 284 00:18:22,105 --> 00:18:23,797 Which feels nice. 285 00:18:23,797 --> 00:18:28,390 Now of course, this is not “The One Thing That'll Fix the Grid!” 286 00:18:28,390 --> 00:18:31,884 A heatwave like the pacific northwest just experienced 287 00:18:31,884 --> 00:18:35,298 is gonna make everybody’s air conditioners run constantly. 288 00:18:35,298 --> 00:18:39,598 Well, the people who are fortunate enough to have one in the first place. 289 00:18:39,877 --> 00:18:43,492 And we’ll run into the same problems in extreme cold. 290 00:18:43,492 --> 00:18:48,315 But I think this idea has a lot of potential and that we should be using it. 291 00:18:48,315 --> 00:18:53,479 With such granular control over some of the largest loads present on a power system, 292 00:18:53,479 --> 00:19:00,625 we can optimize for just about any situation all without impacting individual comfort beyond a few degrees. 293 00:19:00,625 --> 00:19:07,177 And frankly if you can’t tolerate your thermostat being bumped up or down a couple of degrees for the benefit of your neighbors, 294 00:19:07,177 --> 00:19:10,104 well I don’t think we’d be very good friends. 295 00:19:10,104 --> 00:19:15,244 It’s worth pointing out that although this idea may not work in many older homes and buildings 296 00:19:15,244 --> 00:19:19,317 (for example it certainly would not have worked where I used to live) 297 00:19:19,317 --> 00:19:23,219 retrofitting these structures with better windows and more insulation 298 00:19:23,219 --> 00:19:27,559 will do a heckuva lot to reduce our energy needs in the first place 299 00:19:27,559 --> 00:19:31,799 in addition to making them better candidates for this energy storage idea. 300 00:19:31,799 --> 00:19:36,477 I’d also like to point out that my parents are utilizing the same strategy that I am, 301 00:19:36,477 --> 00:19:39,530 in fact they’ve been doing it for nearly a decade, 302 00:19:39,530 --> 00:19:42,521 and their house isn’t nearly as shaded as mine. 303 00:19:42,521 --> 00:19:44,076 Plus it’s a little older. 304 00:19:44,076 --> 00:19:46,875 Yet the idea still works for them. 305 00:19:46,875 --> 00:19:52,639 They’re only limited by the fact that their home’s air conditioner is a little bit undersized, 306 00:19:52,639 --> 00:19:59,066 so even starting at 8 PM it sometimes can’t get the house down to even 68 by the next morning. 307 00:19:59,066 --> 00:20:03,904 But the time it takes to rise back up is pretty much the same as in my home, 308 00:20:03,904 --> 00:20:07,871 even though their house is in direct sunlight for many hours daily. 309 00:20:07,871 --> 00:20:10,533 Insulation is pretty neat stuff. 310 00:20:10,533 --> 00:20:17,321 In fact better building design with concepts like the passive house are also great areas of interest. 311 00:20:17,321 --> 00:20:19,854 However, that’s a different topic altogether. 312 00:20:19,854 --> 00:20:23,618 This is about more wisely using what we have now. 313 00:20:23,618 --> 00:20:28,451 I also want to touch on the fact that if we decide this idea is worth pursuing, 314 00:20:28,451 --> 00:20:34,199 we probably should reevaluate how we determine HVAC system capacity. 315 00:20:34,199 --> 00:20:39,609 An ideally-sized system won’t be able to drop or raise the temperature quickly. 316 00:20:39,609 --> 00:20:42,297 In the case of air conditioning this is on purpose 317 00:20:42,297 --> 00:20:48,502 because short-cycling can reduce the life of components and doesn’t provide much dehumidification. 318 00:20:48,502 --> 00:20:54,331 But these sizing guidelines are all based on more-or-less constant thermostat set points, 319 00:20:54,331 --> 00:21:00,684 so 3 hours of continuous cooling may only drop the temperature by 3 or 4 degrees. 320 00:21:00,684 --> 00:21:04,360 With the advent of multi-stage and variable capacity systems, 321 00:21:04,360 --> 00:21:07,362 we can have the best of both worlds these days, 322 00:21:07,362 --> 00:21:13,883 and so if we are going to start using a building’s thermal mass as a source of energy storage at a large scale, 323 00:21:13,883 --> 00:21:17,563 oversizing HVAC systems might be wise. 324 00:21:17,563 --> 00:21:21,170 We’re probably going to want to do that anyway with these deadly heat waves we’re getting 325 00:21:21,398 --> 00:21:22,724 for some reason. 326 00:21:23,332 --> 00:21:26,862 We should also discuss, because I’m sure I’d never hear the end of it if I didn’t, 327 00:21:26,862 --> 00:21:31,182 ideas such as storage heaters and ice storage air conditioning. 328 00:21:31,182 --> 00:21:36,822 These are technologies that allow us to store heating and cooling energy but with a bit more control. 329 00:21:36,822 --> 00:21:42,959 Ice storage air conditioning involves freezing a large volume of water into a giant block of ice 330 00:21:42,959 --> 00:21:45,745 when electricity is cheap and/or available, 331 00:21:45,745 --> 00:21:55,372 and a series of pipes traveling through this ice block slash water bath reject heat picked up in a building’s air handlers and put it into the ice. 332 00:21:55,372 --> 00:22:01,230 Over the course of a day it melts providing active cooling while using very little energy. 333 00:22:01,230 --> 00:22:06,477 The biggest benefit, of course, is that you retain most or all of the temperature control 334 00:22:06,477 --> 00:22:08,575 while using minimal energy. 335 00:22:08,575 --> 00:22:13,202 Typically these systems are only found in large commercial buildings, however. 336 00:22:13,202 --> 00:22:15,205 Then there are storage heaters. 337 00:22:15,205 --> 00:22:17,239 These have been around for a long time, 338 00:22:17,239 --> 00:22:22,030 with notable use in Britain during the Economy 7 energy tariff period. 339 00:22:22,030 --> 00:22:24,725 During overnight hours when electricity is cheaper, 340 00:22:24,725 --> 00:22:29,950 electric heating elements heat up something like a stack of bricks in an insulated box. 341 00:22:29,950 --> 00:22:36,110 Then during the day, the box is opened allowing the heat from the hot bricks or whatever to escape. 342 00:22:36,110 --> 00:22:38,726 Stupidly simple yet very effective. 343 00:22:38,726 --> 00:22:41,396 Though some may say inelegant. 344 00:22:41,396 --> 00:22:46,570 But anyway, the point is there are a lot of ways we could be implementing energy storage 345 00:22:46,570 --> 00:22:52,230 on the grid that don’t actually involve storing energy on the grid itself. 346 00:22:52,230 --> 00:22:56,482 The biggest consumers of electrical energy will always be pretty predictable, 347 00:22:56,482 --> 00:23:02,720 and although some of the energy technologies we’re likely to rely on as the decade progresses are intermittent, 348 00:23:02,720 --> 00:23:05,280 they are pretty predictable, too. 349 00:23:05,280 --> 00:23:08,369 While I certainly think there’s a lot more work to be done, 350 00:23:08,369 --> 00:23:12,780 I hope that this video has made you a little more optimistic about the future. 351 00:23:12,780 --> 00:23:17,414 There’s more we can do right now than perhaps you ever thought. 352 00:23:17,693 --> 00:23:19,232 Thanks for watching. 353 00:23:20,034 --> 00:23:22,777 ♫ proactively smooth jazz ♫ 354 00:23:24,374 --> 00:23:26,104 (weird mouth noises) 355 00:23:26,104 --> 00:23:27,443 This is going pretty well. 356 00:23:27,443 --> 00:23:32,400 This is what happens when you actually rehearse by reading the script beforehand. 357 00:23:32,400 --> 00:23:36,527 And if done correctly, we can tap into a huge amoun... 358 00:23:36,527 --> 00:23:37,817 shoot! 359 00:23:37,817 --> 00:23:40,473 That probably wasn't audible, but whatever. 360 00:23:40,473 --> 00:23:43,023 My.. my toe, it clicked. 361 00:23:43,023 --> 00:23:44,968 ...doing this for a very long time. 362 00:23:44,968 --> 00:23:47,034 Just more crudely. 363 00:23:47,440 --> 00:23:48,230 Crood-i-lee. 364 00:23:48,610 --> 00:23:49,157 Crood-i-lee. 365 00:23:49,157 --> 00:23:50,724 Did I say it like that? 366 00:23:50,724 --> 00:23:54,044 Well I'm not sure so I'm gonna record it again! 367 00:23:54,044 --> 00:23:57,211 I charge it up overnight starting at about 10:00P - no! 368 00:23:57,211 --> 00:23:57,711 It's not "about!" 369 00:23:57,711 --> 00:23:59,221 Stop it! Stop it! 370 00:23:59,474 --> 00:24:03,806 ...sentimental me simply enjoys the knowledge that when the power grid is working. 371 00:24:04,541 --> 00:24:06,099 Its guts out. 372 00:24:07,392 --> 00:24:07,892 PBBBTTPT 373 00:24:10,065 --> 00:24:12,197 So, neat idea, huh? 374 00:24:12,197 --> 00:24:14,193 Oh I bet the comments will be interesting. 375 00:24:14,193 --> 00:24:17,477 "I'D NEVER LET SOMEONE WHO ISN'T ME MAKE MINOR ADJUSTMENTS TO MY INDIVIDUAL COMFORT 376 00:24:17,477 --> 00:24:23,531 THAT'S AN AFFRONT TO MY GOD-GIVEN CONSTITUTIONAL RIGHT TO LIVE UNCOOPERATIVELY AS IF SOCIETY ISN'T REAL AND INTERCONNECTED" 377 00:24:23,531 --> 00:24:48,419 Stuff like that.