Alps Controls - Viconics VH20 Thermostat
Alps Controls introduces you to the Viconics VH20 Smart Thermostat. Alps Controls is at www.alpscontrols.com
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Is Open Source The Answer to Residential Demand Response?
OpenADR — the Berkeley Labs open source system for automating the way utilities do demand response — is already being used to control some 70 megawatts of capacity for big industrial and commercial customers of California’s biggest utilities. Could it expand its reach into homes and small businesses? Mary Ann Piette, research director at Berkeley Labs’ Demand Response Research Center, believes it can and mentioned a list of interested parties on Wednesday during a California Public Utilities Commission workshop in San Francisco.
Energy management startup Tendril Networks has been involved in testing out the possibility of bringing OpenADR, which stands for Open Automated Demand Response, to residential. Sacramento’s utility, the Sacramento Municipal Utility District, has tested OpenADR in small business HVAC systems in a way that might offer an analog to connecting home thermostats. Pacific Gas & Electric has also been mulling a test of OpenADR over its smart meter networks, Piette said. (We reached out to PG&E for more details and we’re waiting to hear back).
Google isn’t on that list yet, but it might well be interested, Piette said. Google has asked the CPUC to set deadlines for California’s big utilities to give their customers real time energy usage and price data from smart meters. But those utilities point to various technical challenges to meeting those deadlines. Piette said that OpenADR could help utilities deliver that type of real-time pricing data in the way that Google has requested.
OpenADR vs. Next-Gen ZigBee
ZigBee is the leading wireless standard for home energy management, but OpenADR has some strong points for the residential market, too. OpenADR combines pricing information with the demand response signals that it transmits to utilities using a variety of networks. That’s the same kind of functionality that ZigBee is promising with its next version of its Smart Energy Profile for home area networks. But while the next generation of ZigBee’s energy profile is still in development, OpenADR has been successfully running demand response events in California since 2005, and is set to reach some 150 megawatts of capacity by next year, Piette noted. “It is commercialized, it is being used, and it is performing very well,” she said.
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