When smart grid was first introduced, Cisco declared that the power grid would be much bigger than the Internet. From the data point of view alone, the amount of data produced and processed on the power grid is on a scale that none of us has experienced before. And with more-sophisticated monitoring technologies, the volume of data will even increase. The data collected may include equipment health, power flow, and quantity of power consumption. Simply collecting data does not do much good. We need to process what we collect—make heads and tails of it—to produce useful information for better operation and maintenance. This is the Big Data problem that is getting a lot of attention these days in ICT and other segments.

Usually, Big Data problems are due to the proliferation of SNSs, such as Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn. But with the advent of low-power and low-priced, yet very sophisticated, end devices and sensors, different kinds of Big Data problems are emerging, such as the one I just mentioned.

There are several companies that apply their software systems and tools to solve Big Data problems in a particular vertical market, such as the power industry. When I was covering data centers and their energy efficiency, I visited OSIsoft at its San Leandro, CA, headquarters in 2009. They collect data sent by end devices like sensors and their equivalents and store, analyze, and visualize the collected data to take appropriate actions for improving operations. Since that visit, my focus has expanded to include the power industry, which is only one of the markets OSIsoft addresses (see the other markets here).

Recently, I had an opportunity to attend their users conference in San Francisco.

I listened to several representatives of utilities and others in the power industry talk about their use of OSIsoft's PI system. I also talked to Dave Roberts, Fellow and market Principal – Smart Cities, who is an expert in the power industry.

Dave Roberts

The following is my summary of our discussion, with my comments.

Some power grid basics

I am targeting this blog to very, very IT people and not to power people. So I think very simple, basic information is useful. The power grid is a big connected network of power lines. The power grid consists of two types of grids: transmission and distribution. Generated power is transmitted at a very high voltage via transmission lines to neighborhoods of consumers. Then the high voltage is transformed to much lower voltage, and power is delivered to consumers like you and me via the distribution grid. Because power must be consumed as it is produced, demand and supply need to be balanced all the time. Power on transmission lines is managed by each utility or by organizations called ISOs/RTOs (independent of utility companies) to make sure the balance of demand and supply is maintained—to keep the lights on. Also, as with computer networks, it is important to know the health and status of each device and all the equipment hanging from the grid. As in computer networks, such information is collected from multiple places in the grid. The number of collection points grows as more technologies are developed.

What OSIsoft does

Architecture

Although from my conversations with other OSIsoft people, I knew what business they were in, I just wanted to make sure who they are and what they do. They provide a software infrastructure system called PI to connect remote devices, gather/collect/aggregate data from them, and store and retrieve the collected data for further analysis, such as data analytics and visualization. They do not provide end devices like sensors or analytics engines. In other words, PI is one of the important components of the Internet of Things, M2M, or intelligent systems. Different people define the Internet of Things, M2M, and intelligent systems slightly differently, and the terms are often used interchangeably.

Here's an oversimplified view of PI architecture.

My view on the conceptual view of PI architecture

PI is not an operating system but there is some analogy between PI and Windows. Windows provides a base operating environment for applications to run in. Microsoft in general does not provide any applications packages but provides this base plus some tools/utilities and libraries via APIs. Third parties exploit this platform to write applications. PI is similar and does not provide applications, including data analytics packages. So PI can be said to be a general platform and applications area agnostic.

This will continue to Part 2.

Power quality and data centers

Dennis Symanski of EPRI is an expert in data center energy efficiency. I have talked to him before. His role has expanded to include smart grid. A data center is a special building where ICT and facilities equipment meet. ICT equipment is very sensitive to power quality. Dennis presented very useful information, such as what types of power quality events affect a data center, as in the following.

He also showed a set of mediation methods for power quality events:

· Redundant power supplies

· Dual feeds to power supplies

· UPS

· Diesel generators

These are more or less to mitigate power outage.

Power network simulation and visualization

Peter Evans of New Power Technologies gave a presentation about their Energynet technology for simulating and visualizing power networks.

Peter Evans of New Power Technologies

Their system has been used in conjunction with PG&E, Silicon Valley Power, SCE, and SMUD. Energynet provides the following:

Peter showed several examples of power networks and said that power quality is affected by many factors. One is feeder length. The longer the feeder, the more voltage sag may be caused towards the endpoint. He showed interesting graphs, like the one below.

The y-axis denotes the voltage and the x-axis indicates the distance from the substation. At the substation, standard voltage is measured. As you go away from the substation and towards the end of the feeder, voltage starts to sag. But at some point, voltage is jacked up again with a voltage regulator. From this, we can make some interesting observations. If you happen to live just before the voltage regulator, you may have constant low-voltage problems. If a commercial or industrial building happens to be at that point, those in that building may suffer from chronic low-voltage or voltage sag problems in operating their machinery. Depending on where you are situated, the same PQ event can have totally different impacts. Peter said that by collecting different power quality data on the same feeder, we might gain a more accurate view of what’s happening to that feeder.

He concluded his presentation with the following.

Finally, Ralph Renne of NetApp proposed that the participants share power quality data.

Ralph Renne of NetApp

A follow-up meeting is scheduled to implement the sharing of the data.

EPRI’s presentations covered the subject matter comprehensively. In this blog, I discuss those; I’ll cover the other presentations in part 2.

Equipment sensitivity

Mark Stephens of EPRI gave presentations on this subject as well as on power quality (PQ) standards, embedded solutions, and multilevel approaches.

Mark Stephens of EPRI

Equipment consists of many smaller components, and each component may behave completely differently during a power quality disturbance. Mark listed the equipment components in the following.

Types of components that typically constitute equipment

Frankly, Mark covered a subject that was over the head of many attendees, and I do not want to go into too much detail. I’ll keep it at the layman’s level. We want to know how each component tolerates power quality events like voltage sag. If a component tolerance level is too low, a slight voltage sag may fail or trip that component. Of course it is important to trip the component to protect the rest of the equipment. But if it is oversensitive, all the equipment may halt unnecessarily in a slight voltage sag, causing a long shutdown time.

Mark used an Information Technology Industry Council (ITIC) Computer and Business Equipment Manufacturing Association (CBEMA) curve to describe equipment sensitivity. I just want to show one such diagram so that I can make it a reference point for the remainder of the blog.

In this graph, the y-axis denotes the tolerance level in terms of voltage sag rate in comparison with nominal (standard) voltage. For example, 80% means that if 20% of the standard voltage sags, the component fails. The x-axis indicates the duration of the power quality event. The failure or trip rate goes up as the power event continues. In the graph above, a relay called ice cube relay failed almost instantly when voltage went down to less than 75% of the nominal voltage level. By simply replacing an ice cube relay, many power quality events can be tolerated without damaging equipment. Equipment too sensitive to PQ events tends to shut down unnecessarily and may require a multimillion dollar recovery effort.

Mark covered characteristics of PC power supplies, lighting relays, contactors, starters, semiconductor tools, DC power supplies, PLCs, motor drives, and chillers in some detail. But all that is a little beyond the scope of this blog.

Power quality standards

Mark continued the presentation on power quality standards. Voltage sag is the most common power quality event, so it is a good idea to make sure that your equipment is certified with standards for voltage sag.

He cited the following voltage sag standards.

Voltage sag standards

Mark elaborated on each standard by comparing them. The details are too much to recap here, but it is clearly a good thing to have a set of standards. At the same time, different organizations define their own versions, which have both similarities and differences. They do, however, have something in common: none address three-phase voltage sag. I suppose that is why we need a consultant like EPRI.

Embedded solutions

Power quality can be addressed at several different levels, as shown in the following figure.

Solutions at utility, whole plant, panel feeder, machine, control, and embedded levels

Because it is usually prohibitively expensive to implement solutions at the larger scale, it makes sense to mitigate the power quality event at the embedded level.

Mark showed several methods for the embedded solutions (again, the content was too rich to be summarized here):

• Method 1: design with DC power.
• Method 2: use voltage sag–tolerant components.
• Method　3: apply custom programming techniques—use delay filters, state machine programming, phase/voltage sensing relay.
• Method 4: examine configuration settings.
• Method 5: select appropriate trip curves for circuit breakers.

Multilevel approaches

Mark’s final presentation was on multilevel approaches. Again, the power event problem can be addressed at different levels with different costs.

His point was that voltage sag can be mitigated at various points, including service entrance, panel feeder, panel, machine, and control levels. Each has its cost and advantage and disadvantage.

In concluding all his presentations, Mark said the following.

I come from the ICT field, and many of my friends and the people around me are in the same field. So I think like an ICT person and behave like an ICT person. When I started to cover smart grid, I had opportunities to talk to people in the power industry who are very different from those I know from my ICT circle.

One of my contacts in the power industry with whom I get along very well is Lew Rubin. He was formerly with EPRI and has been a very knowledgeable and excellent consultant in the power industry. Recently, he invited me to a biomass power plant he is helping to start up. In California and other places, biomass is considered a renewable energy source. The renewable portfolio standard (RPS) in California requires that at least 33% of all power be generated from renewable energy sources, such as biomass, by 2020. I had some idea about the other sources but did not have a good feel for biomass.

I read some of the EIA’s information about biomass power generation:

EIA’s estimation of biomass resources shows that there are 590 million wet tons (equivalent to 413 million dry tons) of biomass available in the United States on an annual basis. Historically, biomass consumption for energy use has remained at low levels, although it is thelargest nonhydroelectric renewable source of electricity in the United States (considering both industrialcogeneration from biomass and electricity sector generation). The main impediment has been the cost of obtaining the feedstock. Of the estimated total resource of 590 million wet tons, only 20 million wet tons (equivalent to 14 million dry tons, or enough to supply about 3 gigawatts of capacity) is available today at prices up to $1.25 per million BTU.

Biomass use for power generation is not projected to increase substantially by 2020 in the AEO2002 reference case because of the cost of biomass relative to the costs of other fuels and the higher capital costs relative to those for coal- or natural-gas-fired capacity. Slightly more growth is projected in the high renewables case, but the difference from the reference case projection is relatively small. In the 20% RPS case, significantly more use of biomass for electricity generation is projected than in the reference case, because electric utilities would be required to generate a portion of their power from renewable resources, including biomass.

This is good information but still very abstract. I thought it was a great opportunity for me to visit a real power plant fueled by biomass.

The plant is in the city of Anderson, about a four-hour drive from the San Jose area. I spent eight hours in the car with Lew and learned a lot from him about the plant and other issues with the power industry. Those that were not about the plant will be my topics in a future blog.

Biomass Power Plant

Fuel and combustion

The plant is called Anderson Plant and is next to two lumber mills. Biomass power generation uses wood chips as fuel. Beforehand, I did not know in what form the fuel is fed to a boiler. It is in the form of wood chips, which can be made with a woodchipper. That may be likened to a large pencil sharpener that takes in pieces of wood of various sizes and chips them into smaller bits.

Through a deal with the adjacent lumber mill, Anderson Plant receives wood chips as well as sawdust regularly. In addition, other suppliers bring "fuel” to them. Once fuel is delivered, it is piled up over a multi-acre fuel yard as in the following photo. Kevin Hurte, plant manager, and Lew are standing in front of the pile.

From left: Kevin Hurte and Lew Rubin

They need to make sure that the fuel is in good condition—without foreign material, like dirt, and neither too dry nor too wet. In the case of dirt or other foreign material, all they can do is to select a vendor that consistently delivers good fuel. This is because it is impossible to clean dirty fuel. If fuel is too wet, it still combusts, but it takes extra BTUs to burn it, so it is not economical. It is also important to mix wood chips of various sizes well so that the mixture is uniform. When chips are well mixed, the surface is flat and they burn well. For mixing, a front-end loader like the one in the following picture is used.

The same front-end loader also moves the chips from those piles to a hut attached to the building where the boiler is located. Then three joggers go to work to distribute the fuel evenly.

Looking at three joggers from the other side of the hut.

The fuel is moved again via a conveyor belt to the top of the boiler.

The conveyor belt lifts fuel to the boiler to burn it.

Then fuel is fed into three boiler entrances on the boiler top. As the fuel is burned, it heats water to produce steam. Some of the steam is made available (viacogeneration) to the adjacent lumber mill to dry their finished lumber. The steam is also used to turn a turbine, which rotates a generator to produce power at 12 kV voltage. Water circulates through the boiler inside boiler tubes. If water in the tubes is not maintained at a pure quality, the tubes can get damaged. Therefore, sophisticated equipment is attached to the boiler system for monitoring and controlling water.

Power generated and consumed

This site has been a thermal power plant since the 1980’s, and a 12 kV PG&E distribution feeder passes right by the entrance to the plant. Because the generated power is at a compatible voltage, they do not need a sophisticated switchyard to step up voltage to the distribution system level. The same distribution line is used for sending generated power and for obtaining power for the plant. When they are generating power, they use some of it for their own consumption and send the rest to PG&E. But when they are not generating power, they need to obtain power from PG&E via the same line. At the entry point, there is a CAISO-certified net meter to track what was sent and what was consumed. This is a very simple structure. The power generation capacity is 5 MW but an increase to 6.5 MW is planned. Although this is not very big, it is enough to power a good-sized data center.

Environmental considerations

Power generated with biomass is classified as renewable, but unlike solar, wind, or hydro, it combusts fuel and produces some emissions, including CO₂, into the air. This plant is a repowering of a former thermal power plant, and thus the connection to PG&E and other infrastructure was available. However, they made a number of improvements, including rehabilitating the boiler and the generator. On top of that, they need to install monitors for air and ash quality and invest in other environmental controls. The cost for that accounts for about 80% of all the cost of renovation.

Continuous Emissions Monitoring (CEMS) is a system that automatically monitors and records emissions. For example, when nitrogen dioxide density is too high, inserting urea converts it to elemental nitrogen. Anderson Plant must submit its records monthly to Shasta County. The system is installed on top of the boilers, and they let me climb up there. Even though I enjoyed the view of Mt. Shasta (see below), it was a little scary to stand in the open with little in the way of protective fences and railings.

Ash is an inevitable result of wood burning. If the pH of the ash is too alkaline, the ash must be sent to a landfill. If the pH is within an acceptable range, the ash can be used by farmers as soil amendment for their crops.

Ash is recovered and moved to a truck for processing.

Finally, for the slide show with more equipment by Lew Rubin, click here.

Physical vs. virtual

ICT is a logical or virtual world. Even when I read about power generation, it was logical for me. But this tour let me see a real physical entity and the real people who manage it. I also visited their control room. Much of the equipment is controlled in a semiautomatic fashion. More-sophisticated computer control can be introduced, but it might be overkill for a small plant like this.

Don Bray, JVSVN Executive Director of SEEDZ, opened the workshop and explained its objectives.

Don Bray

Workshop objectives

There were six speakers:

• Bill Howe: Because PQ may not be well known, he gave three very informative talks on different aspects of it, including what the Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI) is working on in this area.

• Jerry Hutchinson and Frank Arroyo: From PG&E, they gave the power supplier’s view of PQ.

• Ralph Renee: He presented what NetApp, a consumer, has been doing in terms of PQ from a user’s perspective.

• Andy Taylor: As a consultant from Applied Power Technologies, he emphasized the importance of metering power.

EPRI:

After brief remarks from Marek Samotyj, Bill dived into three topics: PQ basics, EPRI's research on PQ, and PQ economics.

PQ basics

Three elements are associated with PQ:

1. Voltage amplitude

2. Voltage frequency

3. Voltage/current phase

An even more detailed classification was given in the following table.

PQ classification (Source: EPRI)

Bill Howe

Bill also talked about relevant standards for PQ: IEEE 100, 1100, and 1159. (ZK: One of PG&E’s pages has a comprehensive list of standards for PQ). Voltage sag and swell are by far the most common (48%) PQ events, with harmonics a distant second (22%), as indicated in the following.

PQ phenomena

EPRI's research

Their research in PQ is summarized in their web page. Briefly, it covers:

• Improvement of PQ in transmission and distribution

• PQ monitoring and intelligent applications

• System compatibility

• Knowledge transfer

PQ economics

It is certainly important to include the economic side when PQ is considered. Bill discussed several methods and practices to assess the economic impact of PQ events, but I will not go over them here. You can find out more about what EPRI is doing in the area of PQ here. I just want to show the following to consider how we can improve PQ.

Cost resulting from PQ events must balance with the cost to prevent them.

PG&E:

Jerry Hutchinson and Frank Arroyo talked about the transmission and distribution substation for the zone. They also defined two terms, sustained outage (more than five minutes) and momentary outage (less than five minutes). PG&E has invested $100M in the transmission facility in the South Bay (where the zone is) for the past 10 years and plans to invest another $200M over the next 10 years.

They classify PQ events as:

• Power outage

• Voltage sag

• Voltage swell

• Voltage transients

• Harmonic distortion

• Electrical noise

Voltage sag is the most common. These interesting statistics are associated with it:

• Voltage sag happens 7 to 8 times as often as outages or momentary interruptions.

• 80% of sag is less than 10 cycles.

• The magnitude is greater than 60% of nominal voltage.

PG&E provides consulting for power quality, as described here. I also found their pages (here and here) helpful.

NetApp:

PG&E gave the supplier's view of PQ, and EPRI gave the consultant's view. NetApp's Ralph Renee gave the consumer’s point of view.

Ralph Renne

NetApp's Sunnyvale campus:

• Consists of 13 buildings with a total floor space of close to 1.6M square feet.

• Has three data centers and labs.

• Requires more than 10 MW at peak.

They are keen on energy efficiency. Nine of their buildings are certified with EPA's Energy Star and two are certified with LEED. They monitor their power use throughout the campus to:

• Validate utility billing

• Estimate monthly invoices

• Plan for power capacity

• Track PQ

• Prepare for Energy and Demand reports

They use very sophisticated meters (ION 8600 and ION 6200) from Schneider Electric. Ralph's proposal was to make volunteer companies' measured power information available to each other so that everyone can compare notes for their PQ. If two companies get power from the same substation, they can further tell if a PQ event resulted from internal problems or was caused by a disturbance by the supplier.

Applied Power Technologies

Andy Taylor seconded Ralph's proposal for sharing power quality information among volunteer companies. Both PG&E and Silicon Valley Power (part of the City of Santa Clara) issue PQ problem event alerts. Consumers' information can be incorporated to make these even more useful. He did not think that sharing PQ data from volunteer companies would be hard to do, but the organizational problems will need to be resolved.

A lot to learn but I am looking forward to the second workshop on January 23.

Some of the microgrid projects in the US

Unfortunately, none of those are in Silicon Valley, a center of new technologies and entrepreneurship. But now the Joint Venture Silicon Valley Network (JVSVN) that provides analysis and action on issues affecting our region's economy and quality of life,They announced the Smart Energy Enterprise Development Zone (SEEDZ) last October. It is a Silicon Valley version of smart grid/microgrid, and its details are described in their white paper. The following map shows the smart grid zone they chose.

SEEDZ area outlined by bold orange lines

This area contains mostly commercial consumers that require large amounts (up to 200 MW) of stable and reliable power, including the City of Mountain View, the City of Sunnyvale, NASA Ames, Yahoo!, Google, Juniper, and NetApp. PG&E participates as a supplier utility.

JVSVN uses the term smart energy instead of smart grid or microgrid because the latter terms tend to express the supplier side’s innovation. The comprehensive term smart energy conveys more nuance. There are many issues to resolve to realize smart energy, so JVSVN selected three areas to focus on (pg.16 in the white paper):

• Power-quality information sharing: Sharing of power-quality measurements from customers to identify distribution problems and guide investment.

• Inventory of smart energy practices: Developing and sharing smart energy practices to accelerate the adoption of smart energy solutions.

• Integrated building energy management system specification: Developing a model specification with smart energy–enabling capabilities.

Part 1 of a workshop for power quality took place recently. Part 2 is scheduled for January 23.

Ambassador John Roos at the podium with Mayor Chuck Reed

Ambassador Roos is no stranger to the Bay Area. He grew up in here and graduated from Stanford Law School. Incidentally, Mayor Reed revealed that he was his classmate at the law school. Ambassador Roos was CEO of Silicon Valley–based law firm Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati before he was appointed ambassador.

Mayor Chuck Reed

Mayor Reed has been in many clean tech meetings and emphasized the growth of business with entrepreneurship in San Jose. For more details, check with San Jose Green Vision.

Also, Carl Guardino, President and CEO of Silicon Valley Leadership Group (SVLG), gave a speech, as did the Japanese Consul General in San Francisco, US embassy staff, and others.

 I have been involved in several of SVLG's activities. SVLG deals with many issues to make Silicon Valley a better place to live and work in. Certainly, the new direct flight from San Jose to Tokyo welcomes an even closer tie with Japan, the third largest economy in the world.

Carl Guardino of SVLG

The following is a summary of Ambassador Roos's speech, with my comments (indicated by ZK).

The ambassador began by saying how closely the US and Japan have aligned in the area of security and economy. After all, with the US the number 1 economy and Japan number 3, the close collaboration between the two countries is good for the entire world. The close collaboration is in effect at the government-to-government level, as in the smart grid experiments in New Mexico and Hawaii. On the way is laboratory-to-laboratory collaboration, as with National Renewable Energy Laboratories.

Ambassador Roos then talked about Japan's nuclear disaster. I have reported on this disaster in several previous blogs. Roos said that Japan had decided to increase its dependence on nuclear power from 30% to 50% before the disaster. But after the disaster, the Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ), the ruling party then but the loser of a general election last December and no longer in power, decided to phase out reliance on nuclear power by 2030 and increase the generation of power by renewable energies to as much as 30% of the total. Renewables now generate 10% of Japan’s power, and hydro produces 80% of that; other sources, like solar and wind, account for less than 2%. With this policy change, the DPJ projected the renewables field may grow to be a $600B market by 2020.

The Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), returned to power with DPJ’s defeat, may reconsider this policy. However, the FIT program is on for 20 years, regardless of who the administration is, and the ambassador thinks the renewables market will grow in such areas as solar and smart grid.

(ZK: Jeff Miller, Energy Attaché of the US Embassy in Tokyo, said that the new administration probably would not release its policy on energy until summer. He did not say why. The reason is that the LDP now has a majority in the Lower House of the Diet, which is similar to the US Congress, but does not have a majority in the Upper House. And they probably would like to avoid any controversial issues until an upcoming Upper House election in July.)

The ambassador then said that it was important to plan and conduct business with Japan for the long haul. He also said that he saw a strong new trend in entrepreneurship in Japan since the disaster of March 11, 2011. At the time of the disaster, the US deployed 24,000 soldiers to give a hand to disaster-stricken areas and people. The operation, known as Operation Tomodachi, was a success, and people in the disaster area really appreciated the help. Now Operation Tomodachi has become the Tomodachi Initiative, which attempts to more closely link young people in both countries in the areas of education, culture, and entrepreneurship.

One of the people who spoke after the ambassador was Hiroshi Inomata, Japan’s General Consul in San Francisco.

Hiroshi Inomata, General Consul of Japan in San Francisco

He echoed the ambassador's message of the close collaboration between the two countries beyond clean tech issues. He said that Japan is uniquely positioned in the APAC region and can be a launching pad into the rest of the Asian markets because

Japan provides:

• an innovation hub of new research and R&D

• solid business platforms consisting of favorite business environments, a safe society, and good transportation

• a rich domestic market

In the rest of this blog, I only report some of the things I heard from other speakers. I am sure that I missed some other worthy comments.

The US embassy attaché listed some promising areas of clean tech that Japan may want to adopt:

1. Tidal power generation. (ZK: Because Japan is an island nation surrounded by oceans, there is good potential for this type of generation. However, it is still many years before it can be put into production, and it will cost a lot of money to implement. I am skeptical about whether this is suitable for a private company to tackle with without the backing of large companies and/or the US government.)

2. Bridging two frequency areas. (ZK: As the attaché pointed out, there are two major power grids serving the eastern (Tokyo and Yokohama) and western (Osaka and Nagoya) parts of Japan. The AC power in the eastern part is 50 Hz (as in most of Europe), whereas the western part uses 60 Hz (as does the US). Because of this separation, excess power in one grid cannot be utilized for another. See my old blog for the Japanese power grid infrastructure. One such solution can be the application of the technology used at Tres Amigas to unite three major power grids in the US. The three grids all run AC power in 60 Hz but are not synchronized and cannot be connected directly. So at Tres Amigas, each AC is first converted to DC then reconverted to AC and connected to the other grids with synchronization.

A vendor in the smart meter segment asked for advice about what they can do to grow their software sales in Japan. He was saying that utilities like TEPCO tend to purchase software from Japanese vendors over foreign vendors. Wearing my second hat, I assist US companies to enter the Japanese market, and I encounter this problem constantly. Think of it this way. If you were a US utility company and needed to purchase software, would you prefer to buy it from a US vendor or a foreign one? The answer is very straightforward. In order to sell in Japan, you need to overcome name recognition, marketing and technology documents in Japanese, technical support in Japanese, contracts and other agreements in Japanese, in addition to the Japanese language, business etiquette, and other things. Even in the world of IT, it is often hard to penetrate into the market. As in the US, utilities are very conservative in Japan and do not want to run the risk of adopting a technology from a foreign no-name vendor. There is a solution for that, but it is beyond the scope of this blog.

As I was browsing through the news in Japan, I found an interesting keyword, dry cask storage. There are 54 nuclear reactors in Japan; four of them were destroyed and are going to be demolished. Two are in operation, leaving 48 active but not in operation. Each reactor has a pool to cool nuclear fuel rods. Without cooling, a reactor would surely overheat and explode.

The earthquake on March 11, 2011, did not destroy the Fukushima-Daiichi reactors. They withstood such a major quake. The tsunami that followed did not damage the reactors. The damage was done to the power station that powered the cooling system for the reactors, a constant flow of cooling water, i.e., spent fuel pools. As the power station was installed underground, it was flooded and power was lost, leading to the explosions of two reactors.

So it is very important to keep cooling nuclear fuel rods. A dry cask is an alternative to a water pool. An NRC web site presents a very informative explanation of dry casks. The following picture is from their site. A dry cask contains spent nuclear fuel and keeps it until it cools and does not emit any radiation.

Dry cask (Source: NRC web page)

Because the casks are portable, they can be placed almost anywhere, subject to licensing and other regulations. The NRC's page explains that because there are no permanent spent fuel deposits in the US, spent fuel rods are stored at each nuclear power plant site, regardless of its operational status. They are running out of space for spent fuel, so it is necessary to move it out of pools and somewhere else. Dry casks can be freely moved. Here's a map of dry cask storage locations.

Sites of dry casks in the US (Source: NRC web page)

I was interested in the sites closest to where I live. In addition to Diablo Canyon and San Onofre, now-defunct Rancho Seco and Humboldt are listed. Probably Rancho Seco is the closest to me. According to the NRC page, a dry cask has effectively kept spent fuel contained for more than 20 years. My understanding is that it takes tens of thousand years before all the harmful radiation runs out. So the data that show its safety for the last 20 years do not give me a very secure feeling.

Let's go back to Japan. Japan reorganized an agency that was supposed to regulate nukes, as I reported before. The new agency copied the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission and created the Nuclear Regulation Authority. Recently, Shunichi Tanaka, the chairman, ordered power utilities companies to move spent fuel rods to dry casks. Right now, construction, which started in August 2010, is under way at a place a little north of where the disastrous earthquake hit back in 2011. The figure below illustrates the completed one, to be operational in October 2013. A reprocessing factory is located nearby. It is positioned as a temporary storage place, but it might end up being permanent.

Completed temporary spent fuel deposit (Source: Aomiri Prefecture)

The US and Japan face the same problem in operating and maintaining nukes. The only difference is that the Three Mile Island accident was about 35 years ago and the one in Japan was less than two years ago. I certainly hope no similar accidents will happen in the US.

Nuclear energy cannot compete in price with gas. The only element that might make nuclear shine is its lack of GHG emissions. It is still too early to dismiss any energy source at this time, because it is hard to predict so far in the future.

Although the article is well researched and interesting by itself, it is not earth shattering; other media and researchers have reported similar stories. But it was interesting enough to inspire me to write a blog to compare the US and Japan in terms of their future energy mix. The US is often compared with European and other countries like Japan, and it is said that the US is behind the curve in many areas, like education and sustainability. Because I understand what's going on in both the US and Japan at the native level, an ironic grin comes to me when I read such comparisons. It is so funny to see that people in both countries blame their own country by saying how advanced the other country is. If you read both sides of the story, you would wonder which of the two is better than the other. You know far more about your own country's problems than another’s.

(Well, Japan is not mentioned much when the future energy mix is discussed, partly because not enough information is published in ENGLISH. Wait. Even if you read Japanese. I often get confused about what is really going on.)

When we discuss the future energy mix in the US, we talk as though we were facing a unique problem with energy sources and were the only country suffering so. Nuclear power is a wonder of energy and there is no question about it. Until the Fukushima-Daiichi reactors accident, we did not pay much attention to potential safety problems but enjoyed the power the reactors produced. Although there are many angles to nuclear power in the US, I think these are the main drawbacks:

1. Ever-increasing construction and operating costs

2. Lack of nuclear waste disposal sites

Yes, safety is also mentioned often, especially in surrounding communities and by activists. But I do not see much discussion of it in the media now. Don't get me wrong. I do not intend to marginalize the Three Mile Island accident and the suffering it caused people. Construction cost is increasing because of more regulatory pressure and more safety feature checking procedures and oversight with explanations and opinions of the people in surrounding communities. As a new nuclear power plant needs to go through several phases, it may take as long as ten years to complete construction. On top of that, there is no guarantee the construction will ever reach the final stage, because at each phase, more fixes and modifications may be ordered, with no guarantee of passing each check.

In addition to this, cheap gas, thanks to shale gas, is becoming a more and more attractive alternative to other energy sources. Although gas is gas and does not eliminate GHG emissions completely, as nuclear power does, it is cheap and cleaner than oil or coal. Unless GHG emissions control becomes very strict, this trend will continue.

The second element is the lack of permanent disposal sites. Yucca Mountain was to be the federal nuclear waste deposit site, but no longer is. Diablo Canyon and San Onofre, two nuclear power plants in California, are being operated with a special provision. California does not allow the operation of nuclear reactors without permanent nuclear waste deposit sites. The two are being operated as exceptions because without them, a severe power shortage would become a reality, especially in southern California. There was speculation about a California-wide referendum to negate that exception in the upcoming election. When I received an election packet, I looked for it but could not find it. The referendum was not officially entered because it missed the filing deadline.

Ironically, San Onofre is currently not in operation and will not be restarted until 2013 at the earliest, according to NBCDFW.com. It was feared that southern California could face blackouts if the referendum passed. The power supply seems to be fine without San Onofre for now. What if we stop Diablo Canyon, too?

I’ve written a lot about what's going on in Japan and do not want to repeat it here. Those who are interested in what I said before can take a look at old posts.

Is Japan Really Getting Out of Nukes?(January 20, 2012)

What’s Next with Japan's Nuclear Power? (March 25, 2012)

Should Japan Restart Any of Its Nuclear Reactors? (April 09, 2012 )

More on Japan's Nuclear Reactors (April 25, 2012)

How to Fight Peak Power Demand in Japan (May 15, 2012)

Japan Restarts Two Nuclear Reactors (May 31, 2012)

Japan, which imports about 96% of its energy, found nuclear power to be suitable. It does not emit GHG and its fuel can be recycled. Before March 11, 2011, Japan was one of the biggest proponents of controlling GHG emissions and declared that it would cut them by 25%. But since the disaster, GHG emissions are seldom discussed. These are the current major points about nuclear power facing Japan:

1. Safety

2. Power availability without it

Rather emotional arguments against nuclear power in Japan are subsiding a little compared with the year 2011, but they are still pretty loud and powerful in public opinion. Those who oppose nuclear power claim that power based on renewable energies, such as solar and wind, could easily replace existing nuclear power overnight. But as in the US, that may not happen for quite some time. If I talk to people in Japan who are in business and technical industries like ICT, they say it is not possible to get rid of nuclear power altogether without securing an alternative energy source. It is interesting that their voice, coming from a technical and operational understanding of energy, is far less powerful than that of the anti-nuke crowds.

The current, very unpopular administration flip-flopped its stance. It was initially going to restart all of the stalled nukes, but after strong public opinion it tried to change to a stance of shutting down all nukes by 2030. It then tried to make it official but changed its position again to neutral after the business community's opposition and speculated pressure (not confirmed, though) by the US for security reasons. So it is not clear what the Japanese government’s position is. The big difference between Japan and the US is that the US will be fine without nukes because it has ample and cheap natural gas, while Japan needs to import more energy without nukes. We cannot just look at this as if it were a fire on the other side of the ocean, though.

As the current administration loses support, it tries to regain popularity. It has reversed the old policy of keeping nuclear power in the energy mix for 2030. If that were all, it wouldn’t be a problem. However, the government just gave the OK to restart construction of a plant that was put on hold after the disaster. It will probably be another 10 years before this plant will be available for power generation, but if nuclear power is excluded from the energy mix, its life is only 10 years or so.

There are a lot of factors involved in the exclusion of nuclear energy, including pressure from business groups and the US and those who stand to gain a lot in continuing nuclear energy. I think banning nuclear energy completely from the mix is a mistake. What the Japanese government should do is to make all the data and discussions open and make the decision process fair. The government used to have two agencies under the same minister. One was to promote the nuclear industry and the other was to control and guarantee the safety of nuclear reactors. So it has decided to make the control agency, known as the Nuclear Regulation Authority, independent like the Nuclear Regulatory Commission in the US. Japan has a long way to go before it finally can decide on the energy mix that is right for it.

In the US, Labor Day signifies the end of summer, but in Japan it is still very hot, well over 90 degrees during the day. However, no power shortage has materialized. According to the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications (MIC), power use during July was the lowest since January 2005, as a result of lower temperatures and power saving. An average household in Japan used about 342 kWh in July, 7.3% less than in July 2011. There are many factors to consider, such as temperature and humidity, to get that number. One thing I can say about summer in Japan is that it is hot and sticky and I avoid going there then. The US Energy Information Administration (EIA) has a good link to how much power an average US household consumes monthly. Consumption varies among states. In 2010, the least consumption was in Maine (521 kWh) and the most was in Alabama (1,384 kWh).

Granted that houses are much smaller in Japan, 342 kWh is very little. Believe me that during a typical summer night, the temperature does not drop below the high 70s and the humidity is unbearable. You cannot sleep without AC. So I think this indicates very aggressive power saving by average citizens.

In the Kansai area, two restarted nuclear reactors produce a total of 2,360 MW. During the month of August, they had a 3,470 MW cushion between demand and supply. In early July when reactors had not been restarted, the closest between demand and supply was 2,120 MW. The rest of the utilities territories (9 out of 10) reported the following summertime (the entire summer) power usage decline, compared with the summer of 2010.

Source: TBS TV

Many people in the Kansai region, as well as others, think the restarting of the nuclear reactors was not necessary. There was not a single day when demand was so close to supply to necessitate rolling blackouts. Almost 50% of power generation capacity was lost, yet there was not a single blackout during the months when the highest power consumption was expected. This energized the anti-nuke movement.

In spite of that, the government and utilities companies are planning to restart the remaining 48 nuclear reactors. The sad reality is that they lack a convincing argument to show that the nuclear reactors are safe, because some are suspected to be on fault lines. The government surveyed public opinion about what the energy mix in the year 2030 should be. It asked people to select which percentage nuclear power should take, 0%, 15%, or 20–25%. The overwhelming majority selected the 0% option, and the government is now leaning that way. But they have not yet shown how it can be accomplished or which energy sources can take over from nuclear power.

This is still a fire on the other side of the ocean for the US, but we should consider our energy mix while we still have time. It is very hard to do so when you do not have time, like Japan.

I consulted for MySQL before and knew something about the relational database market. But after it was bought by Sun, I stopped following it. I knew there was such a thing as NoSQL but initially thought it was "No to SQL”; it is more like "Not only SQL.” NoSQL started to get attention circa 2009, and the NoSQL Now conference was only started in 2011. So it is a relatively new area and, as in any new area, the market is very confused. Many terminologies and acronyms are floating around, with many claims by vendors. Quite frankly, it is very, very hard to walk through this market without getting totally confused. Prior to attending the conference, I studied the companies I planned to interview and read anything and everything I could put my eyes on. The sad reality was that I was further confused.

What is NoSQL, technology-wise, component-wise, and application-wise?

Technology-wise

The NoSQL market can be described in a few ways. One way is to categorize it by the technologies used. The 451 Group's Matt Asllet, in his blog NoSQL, NewSQL and Beyond: The answer to SPRAINed relational databases, gave a pretty good picture of the market, with categories and the vendors who belong to each category.

Matt Asllet's database categories

This figure alone is very valuable. This figure helped me to understand where my interviewees’ companies fall in.

This view is great, but I was still not comfortable enough to say, "Yes, I got it.” Bob Wiederhold, president and CEO of Couchbase, made it much simpler for me.

Bob Wiederhold

He thinks NoSQL is playing in a segment that is not concentrated on by NoSQL players that are good at transactions or suitable for backoffice applications. He further classified NoSQL into four categories:

• Key value

• Document

• Column family

• Graph

The current Couchbase (1.8) belongs to the key-value camp but will move to the document camp at its 2.0 version launch. He also told me that the key-value and document camps are being merged and the combined camp will be the biggest of the three new categories. I plan to write about his interview in a future blog.

How they fit together in the enterprise

How do NoSQL technologies fit into the enterprise? William McKnight, of McKnight Consulting Group, presented a keynote speech titled, "Putting NoSQL in its Place—in the Enterprise.”

William McKnight

One of his slides shows really well how data is collected, aggregated, and analyzed in the enterprise, and which components are there for each function. Data are collected for analysis; otherwise, there is no reason to collect them. There are two major groups for analysis: real time (streaming) and static (stored data). In his slide, Hadoop (which processes data in batch mode) is placed on the analytic side. But if you need to analyze a massive amount of data as it comes in real time, you need streaming analysis. Hadoop is not meant for that. That is why we need databases that can handle real-time streaming data, which is in a totally different area from that of Hadoop.

In the picture, blurry brown lines indicate a set of clouds. The components surrounded by the brown lines may be hosted in a cloud.

Application Areas

This is great. Then, what about application areas? Where does each NoSQL technology apply? Scott Jarr, cofounder and chief strategy officer at VoltDB, gave me the following figure.

Scott Jarr

Actually, he drew this on a piece of paper but he had a published blog. I will cover it in more detail in a future blog. He looked at the five areas of applications: interactive, real-time analytics, record lookup, historical analysis, and exploratory. He then placed each Big Data technology in one of the five areas. This is a pretty good explanation of NoSQL in terms of application areas. In the figure, VoltDB is colored differently from NewSQL, but he classified it in the NewSQL camp.

Applications to Energy (Smart Grid)

The applications areas discussed most throughout the conference were publication, financial, and SNS. A couple of people said that SNS is a driving force for Big Data and NoSQL on the West Coast, but on the East Coast it is primarily financial communities. What about its application to smart grid? In the Soft Grid conference, focus was on metered data, which will be collected, aggregated, and stored in real time but analyzed in no real-time fashion. I heard during the Soft Grid conference that some utilities were using Hadoop to analyze their metered data.

The Northeast blackout of 2003 was caused because timely actions were not taken to isolate the problem area from the rest of the power grid, and faults cascaded to the entire area. The causes of the blackout were studied intensely. But in 2011, it was repeated in the San Diego area. The initial cause may be different from the one in 2003, but the impact cascaded in the same way as in 2003. With the more connected ICT technologies, modern monitoring systems like SCADA, and real-time analytics of power grid health, this could be avoided. The decision to cut off faulty areas from the grid requires real-time action by monitored data coming in in real time because power moves very quickly. This is an application area that is different from the trend analysis done with Hadoop.

Those companies I interviewed told me the application to smart grid may be an interesting idea, but it is still premature, as they do not see the market forming. Finally, I just want to mention that David Brown of EMC, a parent company of VMware, used GemFire to implement data collection and analytics for some unnamed utilities. His case was an exception, and I guess the market is still being formed for the utilities.

David Brown

Researchers and vendors have been working to enhance power generation with solar panels. The efficiency of this type of generation has been steadily improving but remains in the 20% range. In producing power from sunlight, only a certain spectrum is used and the rest abandoned. Dr. Noda and his team developed a technology to convert sunlight that is out of the range used for power generation into usable spectrum, with little or no overhead. In this way, sunlight can be used more efficiently to improve the conversion rate of solar panel generation.

If you read Japanese, detailed explanations are given here.

Among those energy types, solar is given the top priority and the price is set at 42 yen ($1 is roughtly 80 yen) per kWh, when the average price for power purchased from utilities is 21.7 yen . Before this program, there was another to let utilities purchase power from residential (up to 10 kW) customers at 42 yen per kWh and from nonresidential (between 10 kW and 500 kW) customers at 24 yen per kWh. There was a cap at 500 kW, and no one with more than 500 kW in capacity could participate in the program. But the program only allowed producers to sell what remained of their produced power after consuming what they needed for themselves.

The new system allows all except residential customers to sell all the power they produce, even if it’s more than 500 kWh, for the next 20 years. The program for residential customers remains the same at 42 yen per kWh, but the price will go down in time.

As for other energy types, wind over 20 kW is set at 23.1 yen per kWh for 20 years, geothermal over 15,000 kW and less than 15,000 kW are set at 27.3 and 42 yen per KWh, respectively for 15 years. In addition, hydro is divided into three classes: less than 200 kW, between 200 kW and 1,000 kW, and over 1,000 kW. They are set at 35.7, 30.45, and 25.20 yen per kW, respectively, for 20 years. Biomass is divided into five classes, ranging from 13.65 to 40.95 yen per kW for 20 years. Those initial prices will decline as more power by renewable sources increases.

With the passing of this law, renewable bubbles are everywhere and growing rapidly. But not all the news is good. Some solar generating sites did not plan ahead to connect to a nearby utility substation. Although utilities cannot refuse such a connection, it’s necessary to lay a cable to connect a new generator to a substation, and that takes a lot of money and time. Also, because transmission capacity is limited, not all the generated power can be transmitted. Utilities may not share their transmission capacity ahead of time and do so only when a connection request is made, which may be too late. Some installations began construction before checking these requirements.

As this law took effect, two nuclear reactors were restarted. As of this writing, no firm energy policy has been set in Japan. Some of the utilities companies in Japan are planning rolling blackouts, just in case. I certainly hope that no major blackouts will take place this summer in Japan.

Apple Computer is doing very well with the iPhone and the iPad and expanding rapidly. If you go to its headquarters, you see countless smaller buildings that house its employees. Apple needs more space. Back in June of last year, the late Steve Jobs appeared at a city council meeting and presented a plan for a new campus in Cupertino. His presentation was broadcast and videotaped. It is available here. The reason I talk about this piece of yesterday's news is that we received a letter from Apple back in March but did not bother to open it until recently. When we opened it, we found it was a letter and a brochure from Peter Oppenheimer, SVP and CFO.

In this letter, he wanted to update Apple’s plan for a new campus where HP’s Cupertino campus is now, which is shown below.

Aerial view of Apple’s future campus. (Source: City of Cupertino)

I have not confirmed it, but the letter was probably sent to all Cupertino residents and some or all Sunnyvale and Santa Clara residents. The purpose of the letter is to introduce the plan for the new campus and solicit support from nearby residents. There was a postcard to indicate options to show our support for the new campus. After reading the details, I support the new campus but do not want to share my personal information, like phone numbers and email addresses. So Peter, I support the campus but do not want to send in the postcard.

I moved from Boston to work at this good-sized HP campus. Apple will remove all the existing buildings and construct a single, very modern building. The construction will begin in either late 2012 or early 2013, pending the city's approval. Occupation is planned for 2015. The details of the campus are given here, and I do not repeat them. But I would like to share some of the highlights of the campus, as it may have some impact on the city of Cupertino and those of us who live in the city.

• Replace 26 old buildings (2.65 million sq. ft.) on the 176-acre site with a ring-shaped main building (see below) of four stories with 2.8 million sq. ft.

• Replace an additional 300,000 sq. ft. of old buildings with new buildings of the same size.

• The new campus will house 13,000 employees (3,000 more than the current site).

• The main building will be built far inside the campus and surrounded by trees to protect views from surrounding communities.

• The asphalt surroundings will be transformed into 120 acres of green space. The current HP campus is surrounded by large parking lots and quite visible from outside.

• LEED-certified with other environmental considerations, such as 100% of energy needs met by renewable energy, a large solar installation, 300 EV-charging stations, and reuse of rainwater.

• The new campus will contain necessary amenities to limit traffic. Unfortunately, these amenities will not be open to the public.

Spaceshiplike main building. (Source: City of Cupertino)

I hope Apple will invite nearby residents for a tour in the future. By the way, its current headquarters (several blocks west) will remain its headquarters even after this new campus is occupied.

After the enormous jolt, all four of the Fukushima Daiichi reactors were automatically shut down but were standing without major damage to the cores. Hitting all the coastal areas near the epicenter, the tsunami reached the plant shortly after the earthquake. The tsunami did some damage to the compound and surrounding areas but did not critically damage the reactors. However, seawater flooded backup generators that were housed underground. The decision to house them underground copied US emergency measures for avoiding damage from tornadoes. Backup power is necessary, when power from the grid is lost, to cool fuel rods because they get very hot even when reactors are not in operation. The lack of backup led to hydrogen explosions and the rest is history.

At the time of the crisis, TEPCO (the utilities company serving Tokyo and surrounding areas) and the government did not communicate well, and chaos ruled the entire country. Rumors of radiation reaching Tokyo made people very nervous. On top of that, rolling blackouts were conducted to save the collapse of the entire grid, handicapping train service and stranding millions of people. Adding insult to injury, aftershocks of various scales were felt very often during that time, making people sleepless and scared.

Now it is revealed that the Japanese government and the US forces in Japan had accurate information on radiation cloud flow at the time. However, that information was not shared with people close to the damaged reactors. Some people were evacuated along the very route of the radiation cloud flow and received some dose of radiation. One thing I was surprised by was that there were no clear emergency evacuation guidelines about which agency of the government should do what or who should evacuate. In the US, NRC has clear guidelines and plans for emergency evacuation. For example, the 5-mile radius is considered within direct threat of radiation, and 50 miles is considered the possible reach of indirect contamination via food and drink.

Many Japanese people felt that foreigners, including Americans, overreacted and became hysterical, exaggerating the disaster as if the entire country were destroyed or blanketed with radiation. The US embassy in Tokyo issued an advisory to US citizens in Japan to evacuate beyond the 50-mile radius of the damaged reactors. The embassy simply followed the NRC guidelines and also had more accurate data about radiation than the average Japanese population. Yes, there were some overreactions on the part of non-Japanese, but the Japanese government did not release pertinent information in time, much less in other languages, making those people worried about the worst.

During the following dozen months, antinuke sentiment was in full bloom, and everyone (Japanese and people outside of Japan) believed Japan would abandon nuclear power. Any other opinions were shut out because it was the right thing to do. But how did that change and why is Japan restarting some reactors? Time is usually a healer and also contributes to fading bad memories. People started to forget how bad it was. However, a power shortage was on everyone's mind. See my earlier postings on this.

• Power Shortage in Tokyo: Firsthand Experience, Part 1 (July 11, 2012)

• Power Shortage in Tokyo: Firsthand Experience, Part 2 (July 13, 2012)

• Power Shortage in Tokyo: Firsthand Experience, Part 3 -- Very Confused State of Energy Policies in Japan (July 15, 2011)

• Power Shortage in Tokyo: Firsthand Experience, Part 4 and Final (July 21, 2011)

• Load Shifting to Combat the Power Shortage in Tokyo (August 01, 2011 )

• Japan Ends Mandatory Power Conservation (September 09, 2011 )

• What Will Tokyo Do with Its Power Supply as Winter Approaches? (November 11, 2011 )

• How Is the Power Supply in Japan These Days? (December 06, 2011 )

• Does Japan Have the Power to Cope with Summer? (February 29, 2012)

• Japan under Power Crunch (March 14, 2012)

Prime Minister (PM) Kan, who was in office at the time of the disaster, was adamant about getting rid of nuclear plants and promoting renewable energies instead. He was very unpopular for other reasons and tried to use this slogan to survive a no-confidence vote. He delayed restarting all the reactors that were halted for annual checkups by introducing a new requirement as a condition for a restart. While this was going on, operational reactors were not stopped for this new requirement. Finally, he made a deal to step down in exchange for passing a feed-in-tariff that was subsequently passed and will be in effect on July 1.

His successor is PM Noda, who has not made his position clear on what to do with the disabled reactors and other reactors. One by one, reactors were shut down for their annual checkup. But none of them were restarted even after the successful checkup. And at the end of April this year, all the reactors were shut down and there were no reactors in operation to supply power to the grid.

However, towards his first anniversary in office, PM Noda made a move. He may have been motivated by the coming summer power crunch, expected especially in the Kansai area (Osaka, Kobe, Kyoto, and Nara). Their reliance on nuclear power was close to 50%, and none of the reactors were in operation. Long story short, he abruptly formed a committee to decide security and safety measures for nuclear reactor operation. Even though it had been more than a year, nothing had been done up to that point. Surprisingly, his committee came up with the measures in a matter of a few days. The security and safety measures were not shared with the general public, and I am not sure if experts in the field contributed to them. The measures were approved, and the stage has been set to restart two (at the Ooi plant) of the halted reactors in the Kansai area.

Governors and mayors close to the Ooi plant opposed restarting the reactors without well-thought-out safety and security measures. But in the end, they were forced to accept the restart. With no more formidable opposition, the government gave the go-ahead to KEPCO, which serves the Kansai area. The restart of the two reactors is imminent.

This oversimplified journal gives you the story on what has happened in the pursuit of restarting nuclear reactors in Japan since the quake. I am not against the restart of the reactors as long as real safety and security measures are discussed with scientists but not by politicians. My prediction is that a good number of the remaining 48 reactors will be restarted soon. There is no longer a barrier to restarting them.

The year's election in California includes a referendum to halt two nuclear power plants in the state until permanent nuclear fuel process plants are built. After Japan's disaster, public sentiment in the US moved against nuclear power. But as time goes by, people forget. The US and other countries are building more nuclear power plants. See A US Nuclear Power Renaissance? (February 12, 2012).

Interested readers may want to refer to my blogs on Japan's nuclear power:

◦ Is Japan Really Getting Out of Nukes? (January 20, 2012)

◦ What’s Next with Japan's Nuclear Power? (March 25, 2012)

◦ Should Japan Restart Any of Its Nuclear Reactors? (April 09, 2012 )

◦ More on Japan's Nuclear Reactors (April 25, 2012)

◦ How to Fight Peak Power Demand in Japan (May 15, 2012)

◦ Japan Restarts Two Nuclear Reactors (May 31, 2012)

KEPCO, which serves the Osaka area, did not prepare another source of power as TEPCO did, and has been warning that the Osaka area will suffer from a power shortage this summer. There are several players in this game:

1. Central government

2. Governor and assembly where the nuclear reactors reside

3. Local government that hosts the nuclear power plants

4. Governors and assemblies of surrounding area

5. Public at large

6. KEPCO

It was clear from the beginning that the central government and KEPCO would like to restart the nuclear reactors. Recently, the local government (both the village master and the assembly) indicated that they approved the restart. The biggest opposition to the restart was a group of governors of the surrounding prefectures (a prefecture is similar to a state in the US).

KEPCO and the governors of the surrounding area have been in discussions for some time. As summer comes closer, the deadline for restarting the two reactors is within days. It takes three weeks to restart one reactor. Because two reactors share some structure, they cannot be restarted at the same time. So it will take six weeks to get full power. If the restart takes place next week, it would be around July 15 when full power is restored. Setting the deadline seems to have worked: the governors have compromised, although they still insist the restart is temporary and only for the summer.

With the compromise, Prime Minister Noda indicated that he would call the shot as early as next week. This writer is puzzled. In spite of these discussions and heated debates, there was no involvement from the technical experts on the security of the reactors. PM Noda said he would take all the responsibility for the restart, but he is not an expert. How can he take responsibility in case of a disaster? If the restart was used to revitalize the nuclear business, what was the significance of the Fukushima disaster? The four reactors in the Fukushima nuclear power plants still need time and care to get them fully decommissioned for the next 50 years or so.

Personally, I think the restart is necessary to cope with the power shortage. But the process of restarting and the discussion of it seem flawed. It seems like more reactors will be restarted before long.

What would happen to the US if 30%–50% of generation sources disappear? It is hard to imagine. We will see something like that in the industrialized country of Japan this summer. I have repeatedly written about it. On May 5, the last operating nuclear reactor was stopped for an annual checkup without a firm restart date. This was celebrated as a victory by some groups of people who are against nuclear power. But other people are worried.

Now all 50 nuclear reactors in Japan are halted without any firm restart dates. Each reactor was stopped for a routine checkup but never restarted. About 30% of Japan’s entire power generation came from nuclear plants, so the country is now running its power grid with a 70% power supply capacity. This still works now, in spring, when demand is relatively low. But come summer, with the increased use of air conditioners, power demand may surpass power supply. The Tokyo area, which is served by TEPCO http://www.tepco.co.jp/en/index-e.html, went through a power shortage last summer with intensive conservation, and TEPCO managed power demand without rolling blackouts. With four reactors decommissioned in Fukushima and seven reactors (a total of 8,212 MW of generation capacity) halted in another plant, TEPCO will have to do some maneuvering to get through this summer without any blackouts. TEPCO has announced it would implement time-of-use pricing to curtail power usage during peak hours. (Note that PG&E indicated time-of-use service will start in 2014.) So far, TEPCO has installed about 1 million smart meters, but the total number of households is 28 million. Does this work? Twenty-seven million meters cannot distinguish time-of-day pricing, and their owners have no incentive to conserve. Moreover, I am sure TEPCO charges extra for the meters and their installation and adds the cost on top of the power price for every consumer to share. Some people think they receive free meters and free installation and are very happy without knowing the utility’s pricing structure.

This is bad enough, but the KEPCO territory—Osaka, Kyoto, Nara, and Kobe—will suffer from an even worse power shortage because of their heavy dependence on nuclear power (some 50%). Currently, the central government and KEPCO are playing tug-of-war with local governments. They want to restart two of the reactors, while the local governments question the safety of those reactors because neither the central government nor KEPCO has provided reliable information about their safety or actual power capacity. The central government and KEPCO have been using scare tactics, saying that not reactivating the reactors means rolling blackouts. Their most recent figures on power capacity are as follows.

Without nuclear power or additional pump-up generation, KEPCO projects a power shortage of 4,450MW in the coming summer. With the reactivated nuclear reactors (an additional 2,360 MW) and pump-up generation (2,100 MW), it can guarantee a reliable supply of power.

People are skeptical about these figures because:

• Additional power and expected shortage almost (conveniently) balance, with a positive 10 MW.

• KEPCO stated that power produced by pump-up generation was much less before.

Of course, I have no intimate knowledge regarding these figures, but I have a suspicion like everyone else that the numbers are cooked to justify restarting the nuclear reactors.

I wonder what would be the reaction of an American if the same thing happened in the US? I am not sure Americans would be as receptive as the Japanese to this explanation. In any event, it looks like it is going to be a very hot summer in KEPCO territory.

on a press release from Physicians, Scientists & Engineers for Healthy Energy (PSE), I was confused. My understanding is that natural gas is the lesser evil, compared with coal. These are the numbers I find for the emission of harmful substances when the three are combusted:

Source: EIA

The table shows normalized figures where natural gas is used as a base unit of 1. Comparisons are of the same amount of energy produced when combusted. According to this, natural gas is far better than coal.

So I read on. Well, they are not denying the information in the table. Here's what I gather. You can also read their paper, which describes it in more detail.

They are saying the following:

On the one hand, these new standards are an important step that will significantly reduce methane emissions, and therefore the greenhouse gas footprint of shale gas. Overall, according to the estimates of Howarth et al. (2011) and of EPA (2011), the regulations—if strictly enforced—will reduce total methane emissions from shale gas development by approximately one third (considering the entire life cycle, from well to final delivery of gas).

Even with the regulations, the greenhouse gas footprint of shale gas will remain larger than that of coal, when viewed over an integrated 20-year time period following emission to the atmosphere, because of the methane emissions (even though reduced).

Basically, they are looking at shale gas methane emissions rather than referring to natural gas in general. This is mostly due to leakage of :

2.5–3.9 percent of the amount of methane produced over the lifetime of a shale-gas well, and possibly as high as 6 percent. These ongoing emissions result from chronic leakages at the well site as well as chronic leakages and purposeful venting associated with gas storage, transmission through high-pressure pipeline, and distribution to consumers.

The press release concluded by urging the immediate enforcement of the regulation. Well, it is a little over my head, and I asked my energy expert, Dr. Ripudaman Malhorta, whom I call Dr. Ripu.

Dr. Ripudaman Malhorta of SRI

This is his opinion:

I had read the Shindell et al. article (Howarth is a coauthor) in Science when it first came out, and I found a lot of useful data supporting my contention that I had expressed in the book [Note: Ripu coauthored a book titled A Cubic Mile of Oil ]and elsewhere that if we want to focus on global warming, we need to look at methane and black carbon sources. The Science paper showed that strategies to reduce methane and black carbon emissions would reduce the projected global warming by about 0.5°C.

OK, so do you disagree with their findings and claims? He replied as follows:

That’s true, unless fugitive gas emissions from shale gas operations are hugely different from normal O&G operations, and I do not know that. If you look at the projections by the DOE’s Energy Information Agency on the use of natural gas over the next 25 years, you see that total natural gas use increases by about 20%, and shale gas basically offsets the decline from conventional sources. This means that in the US methane emissions from landfills would remain the dominant source.

OK, but probably it is a good idea for you to elaborate in your blog or something. Can you do that? He complied with my request, and we can look forward to it sometime soon.

The Japanese government is now clearly pushing for restarting nuclear reactors to secure enough power for the country. The very two reactors in question now are in the KEPCO territory, which includes the big cities of Osaka, Kyoto, Kobe, and Nara. The government performed stress tests on those reactors and abruptly concluded them safe. They did it by creating a safety checklist for the nuclear reactors in a few days. Then they held a meeting to conclude that the reactors were safe because they satisfied all the items in the list.

This did not convince the local people. It appeared that the government had already decided to restart the reactors no matter what and held a meeting to make it official. The surrounding communities and local governors are very much against this decision, and the government has yet to move this matter to the next stage. The Fukui prefecture (similar to a state in the US) is a small and not very populous one, and its industries and employment opportunities are limited. With the nuclear industry in their prefecture, they received a large sum of money in grants from the government, and employment opportunities opened up. They need workers at the reactors, and the surrounding restaurants and inns benefit from the people pouring into their community. The local people are in a dilemma. They are worried and afraid of potential disasters. But with the reactors halted, the local economy is also halted, and they cannot sustain their lives as before.

The Asahi Shimbun, one of the leading newspapers, published a nationwide survey of the government decision to restart the reactors. Only 28% supported the restart, while 55% opposed it. As for whether people believed the government’s assurance of safety, only 17% trust the government assurance, while 70% do not. Also, only 18% believe the government's power-shortage data, while 66% do not. As for whose consent is necessary for the restart, 88% answered that the local community needs to approve it, while 8% said the government could decide by itself. Finally, people who were surveyed felt that the government was not moving away from using nuclear reactors (61% vs. 19%).

The strong argument from the government is that, without nuclear energy, Japan will not have enough power. But the majority of people do not believe that. It appears this standoff will continue into summer, which requires the most power during the year. With the current administration's approval rate at 25% and still sinking, a general election may take place sometime soon. The discussion about energy policy and power supply may be delayed substantially. It is too late to take action when power cannot be supplied adequately when needed.

I looked at table 4.1 (pp. 70–105) and table 4.2 (pp. 107–138) in the report. Table 4.1 lists the technologies that have been deemed standards for smart grid, while table 4.2 lists the technologies that have some potential but have not yet been deemed standards.

Unless I am mistaken, only real ICT technologies (the technologies developed and used in the ICT field) seem to be IP. The IEEE 802 family is still in table 4.2, as it was in the first edition of the report. That family includes technologies used everywhere, including Ethernet and Wi-Fi. Several web services technologies from OASIS, like SOAP, XAD, XML, and WDSL, and cellular standards like 3GPP and 3GGP2 are also used everywhere. I think (and I hope) that these commonly used ICT technologies will make table 4.1 sometime soon.

A lot has been said about IP taking over the methods of communications for smart grid. In reality, in non-ICT fields, IP is used mostly to carry data over a long distance. Building management systems (BMS) still use BACnet, LonWorks, and other protocols locally. Both BACnet and LonWorks made the table 4.1 list from version 1 of the interoperability report. 

The way it works is that within each building the preferred communications protocols are BACnet and/or LonWorks. When the BMS for a building needs to interact with another BMS or energy management system (EMS) over some distance, its data are carried over IP. In other words, those BMS have a web service interface so that they can interact with a web server at their headquarters. Yes, it is the application of ICT technologies. But its use appears to be pretty much limited to long-distance communications.

Another example is the SCADA communications protocols. RTU or PLC, which interact with sensors and other devices, communicate with the SCADA master via something like Modbus RTU, RP570, Profibus, or Conitel. And the communications are specified by standards like IEEE DNP3, IEC 60870-5, and IEC 61850. And those standards have made the table 4.1 list. I understand here again that IP may be used to carry data specified with those protocol standards over a long distance. Even though IEC 61131-3, which is a standard set of programming languages for PLC in the SCADA system, did not make either table 4.1 or table 4.2, programming languages like C or C++, which are often used for programming embedded systems, and other ICT programming languages are mentioned in either table.

The interoperability report discusses seven domains.  As I look closely at it, it appears that the ICT technologies are probably used in typical office or enterprise environments that may not touch the power grid structure directly, such as generation, transmission, and distribution. This is why the ICT technologies show up more at operations and consumer premises where traditional ICT technologies are used. Between power and ICT technologies, there are IP and web services to bridge them.

This does not mean that power technologies do not use computer or communications technologies. Computer and communications technologies are often associated with ICT technologies, but they are not exclusively owned by ICT. Other industries, including power and building management, can put them to their own use. The term IT is a loaded one that includes both the IT department and the IT technologies. The IT technologies here refer to the technologies defined, developed, and used mostly by IT people. But as mentioned, there are other IT technologies that are defined, developed, and used by other industries, such as power and building management, whose main technologies have been deemed standards in the interoperability report.

I think the IEEE 802 family and the OASIS web services technologies, along with cellular standards like 3GGP and 3GGP2 and network management standards like SNMP, will be listed in table 4.1 eventually. Am I wrong in this understanding?

The problem is that it is really difficult see what is going on and how the decision about the nuclear policy is being worked out there. Unlike the previous administration, the current administration is determined to restart some of the halted nuclear plants. It is easy to blame Japan for restarting them after such a big accident. But Japan does not seem to have any other choice, unlike the US. The US has several options for energy. In the worst case, it can suspend its policy of protecting the environment and drill for oil and coal. Natural gas is plentiful and priced very low compared with the world market. For example, natural gas costs more than four times as much in Japan as in the US.

Japan imports virtually all of its energy. Japan decided to adopt nuclear power because it:

1. Is relatively cost-effective compared with other fuels.

2. Has no GHG emissions.

So it is understandable that Japan would restart some of the halted reactors to get ready for summer, especially in KEPCO territory, which has depended on nuclear energy to meet 44% of its total power demand. However, the process and transparency of how the restart is planned and carried out are awfully flawed. Most Japanese people are very skeptical about government announcements after having watched how the nuclear disaster was handled. Most people believe that the government withholds much information about the disaster and its aftermath. Many people are afraid and worried about nuclear reactors. The government does not seem to be able to wipe out their mistrust and suspicions. On top of that, it does not seem to have a clear plan or the will to carry out an energy policy.

Bypassing the regaining of trust and not showing the safety of the nuclear reactors makes it appear that the government plans to restart the plants without providing adequate safety measures and processes. Some time ago, a stress test was a condition for restarting the reactors, but it was not really described to the public. The first phase of the test was a computer simulation, and the second phase was to prepare for all possible problems. Then a few days ago 13 interim safety measures for reactors were announced and, thus, the conditions for restarting them. On April 9, the government issued three major conditions for the restart:

• Mechanisms to guarantee power supply in case all the internal and external domestic imported power is lost.

• Readiness for earthquakes and tsunamis.

• Several safety measures, including satisfying the stress test.

The conditions keep changing and are very confusing.

In addition, some key members of the cabinet seem to have some reservations about restarting the reactors, even if these conditions are met. Also, the central government cannot move quickly because local governments and people are concerned about restarting the reactors without clear evidence of their safety. The way things are going, Japan will suffer from another power crunch this summer.

The best thing the government can do is to release all the information, including power needs and availability of other power sources, and convince people about what needs to be done. It may take longer, but in the long run it is the only way. If the central government forces a restart without any good evidence of the reactors’ safety, the backlash could be enormous.

The second of three sessions about the Chevy Volt presented over the three days of the recent Design West Conference in San Jose covered the charging system and operating modes. Each of the three speakers did a good job of tearing down a Volt and showing what is inside it from the architectural and electronics points of view.

From left: John Scott-Thomas of UBM Techinsights, Albert Steier of Munro Associates and Brian Fuller of EE Life

Half-disassembled Volt on display at the show.

This one dealt with some of the internal architecture, the charging system, which is shown below.

Some of the highlights are as follows. You may want to refer to my previous post on how the Volt works for a more complete discussion. 

• When charged, AC 110/240V is converted to DC 360V, which is fed into the battery packs. The batteries are also charged by the inverter, as shown in the picture. The battery feeds power via the inverter to the main motor and the generator motor.

• The inverter converts AC to DC and DC to AC. It feeds the main motor and the generator motor, which functions as a generator and motor with three-phase AC. It also receives AC generated by the generator motor and degenerative electricity via the main motor.

• The main motor is always in charge of giving torque to the gear system. The generator motor and the gas engine also give torque but do so via the main motor. Both the main motor and the generator motor pass electricity back to the battery via the inverter when the brake is engaged.

• The gas engine is 1.4 liters and used to generate electricity when the charge is low in the batteries. Even if the charge is adequate, the engine may run occasionally to make sure its system functions OK. The gas engine is architected not to give torque directly. It needs to pass its torque via the main motor.

• The generator motor is a secondary motor and plays the role of a generator as well. It generates electricity by the gas engine. It also gives torque when it is more appropriate to do so. Efficiency goes down when the main motor rotates too fast. To avoid that, the generator motor participates in giving torque with the main motor at a slower speed.

This session also described the Volt’s four operating modes. Again, refer to my previous blog to complement the discussion. 

Mode 1: The main motor runs the car.

This is a very simple mode. The main motor receives power from the batteries and drives the car. When the brake is engaged, generated power is fed back to the battery.

Mode 2: The generator motor joins the main motor to drive the car.

When the car needs acceleration, the main motor runs very fast. At some rotations, its performance efficiecy goes down. Instead of increasing the rotation of the main motor, the generator motor joins in to run the car together with the main motor.

Mode 3: The gas engine kicks in to charge the battery.

When the battery charge drops below a certain level, the gas engine is engaged to run the generator motor to produce electricity for the battery.

Mode 4: Every engine joins in to run the car.

Depending on several conditions, such as the required torque, the gas engine is also engaged to give torque. A fairly complex algorithm determines which combination of engines to run. But note that only the main engine has a direct contact to run the car, and the other engines do not directly give torque.

Both Al and John did a good job of showing the Volt’s internal workings. Many EV enthusiasts claim that an EV is much simpler than a typical gas engine vehicle, as it consists of a smaller number of components (batteries and a motor with a few other components). My impression is that a Volt is a very complex system. As a former engineer, I find it a very interesting system to study. I am beginning to see more Leafs in Silicon Valley, but I have yet to see a Volt here.

The Design West conference consists of several subconferences: ESC, Android, Black Hat, Design Med, Designing with LEDs, Multicore, and Sensors in Design.  

That means it covers a wide range of subjects, even though the underlying theme is embedded systems. As you know, embedded system environments are drastically different from those of PCs and servers. Their computing resources are very limited in size and power. You need to constantly pay attention to those constraints. One area I focused on in covering the conference was automobile and embedded systems. Luckily, there was a keynote delivered by JB Straubel, the cofounder and CTO of Tesla Motors.

JB’s keynote gave me an excellent view of Tesla’s vision, history, differentiation, and future plans. You may wonder how an EV has anything to do with embedded systems and IT. An EV consists of a lot of components (embedded systems), and all of them are controlled by software. He said people asked him why he did not move his company to Detroit, the Mecca of the car industry. He said it was because EVs require embedded and software expertise and Silicon Valley was the best place to source such talents. So he will stay put in Silicon Valley.

In a different presentation, it was reported that more than 10 million lines of code and about 100 controllers are used to control a Chevy Volt.

This includes many sensors to monitor how the car is operating. This is beyond checking battery level and simple engine oil depletion. The collected information can be used to alert the driver to take appropriate action. For example, each tire reports its pressure, and if it’s low, a low-pressure alarm is generated to alert the driver to remedy the problem. I do not know whether the Roadster and Model S are on a par with Volt in the area of electronic control complexity. Even before the EV era, automobiles were increasingly controlled by electronic systems. In a way, we are driving a computer on wheels. On top of that, with more infotainment coming to cars, the importance of software and embedded systems will increase, for sure. These new trends will generate more data than before to form Big Data. That is another area where IT and software engineers can contribute.

JB Straubel

Now back to JB's keynote speech. His motivation was to contribute to preserving and sustaining the environment. When he looked into oil consumption, he found that the majority of consumption is in the transportation segment.

The slide he presented is based on data that is a little dated, but it is well known that about two-thirds of oil consumption is in the transportation segment. By converting automobiles to run on electricity, we can gain more independence from foreign oil.

Some of the points he made are the following.

Manufacturing philosophy

Most car manufacturers outsource their parts and components. That is why they are often called OEMs. Tesla insources when possible, as shown below.

The good news for software engineers is that each component will require more software control and, as each component grows in sophistication, more sophisticated software control will be required. This means more demand for software expertise, which means more employment.

Battery technology choice

As is well known, Tesla uses a large number of small batteries to run their motor. The Leaf, Volt, and other EVs and hybrids use bigger batteries. Tesla’s current battery packs weigh about 1,000 pounds and can fuel a motor for 245 miles, while the Volt's 430 pounds of batteries drive it only 35 miles in all-electric mode. This is very interesting to note. Battery technology is based mainly on chemical reactions but also requires mechanical and software support. It needs climate control to cool or heat the batteries so that the operational temperature range stays in the designated area. Also, charging and discharging need software control to protect batteries. Too much current to a battery at one time would harm or even destroy it, and good control on that is a must.

It is amazing to see how the size of the battery pack shrank in their new design. The new model, Model S, can have its battery laid out flat, as shown below.

Compare it with the Volt's battery packs (weighing about 430 pounds), shown here.

Battery charging

Tesla's new Model S will be equipped with its own DC fast charging. There are three different levels of charging for EVs. Level 1 operates at AC 120V and takes 14 to 16 hours for a full charge. Level 2 works at AC 220V and takes 3 to 8 hours for a full charge. Level 3 operates at DC 480V or higher and takes 15 to 30 minutes for a full charge. The Society of Automotive Engineers (SAE) has not finished the level 3 specification. Japan's CHAdeMO is trying to make itself an international standard, although SAE does not seem to accept it as a standard. Tesla's level 3 is yet another level 3. Without a standard for level 3, the market will be confused, and consumers may not be encouraged to buy EVs. For more details, see  here.

My take on battery technology

No one disagrees that energy storage such as batteries holds the key to a new world order of energy. An EV in particular relies heavily on battery technology for its success. As discussed before, the state of the art needs drastic improvement. The 430 pounds of the Volt’s battery packs sustain only 35 miles of driving, while the Tesla’s 1,000 pounds sustain a 245-mile travel range. Something does not add up here. Tesla knows something that GM does not? I wonder.

JB said that Moore's law does not apply to battery technology, which improves in density by about 7% annually. And that makes twice as much in ten years. EV1 in 1996 and Roadster in 2006 show this.

Considering all of this, a battery has become a pretty complex embedded system. But if battery technology improves as JB predicted, the EV future may be bright.

He concluded his speech by discussing future plans, as shown below.

The first version was manufactured under several constraints because of body and other suppliers. Once they become a viable company for developing their own versions of components, they can start innovating.

Tesla is without doubt a very different car company and has been doing many unconventional things, such as staying in Silicon Valley and insourcing rather than outsourcing. It has its own DC rapid charging system. I hope they keep their momentum and keep providing unconventional, innovative ideas to the car industry.

One session that attracted my attention was on the Chevrolet Volt. It was presented by Albert (Al) Steier of Munro Associates and John Scott-Thomas of UBM Techinsights who disassembled a Volt and analyzed its various functions and components, including batteries.

Three battery packs are placed under the seats with a cover (shown in the picture below), which the presenter called a doghouse.

The next picture shows the connections inside the doghouse.

The next picture shows the placement of the battery packs inside of the dog house. .

The presenters’ complex explanations went over my head, but one thing stuck in my mind. These large battery packs together weigh more than 430 pounds. A Volt can go a maximum of 35 miles on a full charge, so the 430 pounds of batteries are required for that much distance. A gasoline car, on the other hand, needs only one gallon of gas for 35 miles. One gallon of gas weighs about 6 pounds. When you simply compare those two numbers, a gasoline car is more than 70 times more efficient than an EV like the Volt, in terms of the weight of its energy source. (For your information, a Volt's batteries can hold up to 16 kWh when fully charged.) Also, don't forget that those batteries require heating in cold weather and cooling when it’s hot, and that takes extra components and energy.

When we use a different measure, a Volt's mile per gallon equivalent (MPGe) is 93 miles, while many gasoline cars hover around 30 to 40 MPG. This definitely puts the Volt at a very high level of energy efficiency.

I am not claiming that an EV is not energy efficient. On the contrary, I think we should improve the battery technology and make smaller batteries that require less energy. Energy storage in general holds the key to a new world order for energy. This field needs more research and investment, for sure.

To recap, the reason for stopping the nuclear reactors is not out of fear that they aren’t safe but because utilities companies do not want to restart them, even though they were deemed to be fine after their checkups. The former administration required a stress test to make sure the existing nuclear reactors can withstand more severe earthquakes and tsunamis before they can be restarted. The details of the stress test have not been publicly available, but bits and pieces of information from the media reveal the following.

The first level of the stress test is to simulate even more severe earthquakes and tsunami, to see whether the current infrastructure holds. That is the first level. It is only simulation. The second level is to enumerate all the possible ways for the nuclear reactors to get into trouble and provide remedies for them.

These conditions are rather silly because:

1. The halted nuclear reactors are not safer than the running reactors, because reactor cores require constant cooling. Until this problem of supplying power for cooling when there are major quakes or tsunamis is solved, nuclear reactors will not be safe.

2. It was OK not to test operational reactors, while the halted reactors were tested. In spite of #1, operational reactors are possibly more dangerous than halted reactors.

3. The first level of the stress test does not test physically to see whether the outer containment can really withstand severe quakes. Therefore, passing the test does not guarantee any real physical integrity. If we take the condition for the second level literally, we can’t restart any reactors. Instead, we need some kind of rating system to decide whether each nuclear reactor can be restarted.

Right now, KEPCO, which serves Osaka, Kyoto, Nara, and Kobe, is trying to restart two out of eleven reactors as early as April. Up to now, the central government and local governments that host nuclear plants were ducking the issue of nuclear power plants for fear of a public outcry. The current administration seems to have decided to restart nuclear reactors no matter what. When you look at my three reasons that the conditions are silly, # 2 does not apply, because every reactor will be halted soon. But #1 and #3 still hold. KEPCO got a clearance on level one of the stress test in an open meeting of the Nuclear Safety Commission. It took only five minutes to certify level one, in spite of questions and opposition. They are now at level two and likely to pass it some time soon, so that two reactors can be restarted as early as April.

Under the guidance of Toru Hashimoto, maverick mayor of Osaka, the City of Osaka will suggest getting rid of nuclear reactors in an upcoming KEPCO shareholder meeting. The City of Osaka, along with the Cities of Kyoto and Kobe, holds about 13% of KEPCO's stock. KEPCO reported that the district it serves would be short of power this summer without nuclear power. What they want is to restart their nuclear reactors to remedy this. The stock owned by the Cities of Osaka, Kyoto, and Kobe does not constitute a majority but is big enough. Their demand is that all the nuclear power plants be abandoned.

I wish they had had a rational discussion of this. KEPCO should publish detailed information about its power supply and demand. How much does it lack at the peak times, as opposed to non–peak times? If peak times are the only problem, there are a lot of ways to avoid that. Some people wonder whether last summer’s power shortage in the TEPCO territory was real. Some people are skeptical that KEPCO really has a power shortage problem without nuclear power.

If there is a reasonably priced way not to use nuclear reactors without hurting individuals and businesses, it should be considered. But one thing remains to be addressed. Simply halting nuclear reactors does not guarantee safety, because fuel rods need constant cooling, which requires power.

What was feared most before the beginning of winter was a power shortage in the Osaka area, which is served by Kansai Electric Power Company (KEPCO). As you recall from my blog, KEPCO has 14 nuclear reactors and relies on them for 45% of its power. With all 14 reactors halted, KEPCO's territory, including Osaka, Kyoto, Kobe, and Nara, is holding up, with power demands under 90% of supply. Come April, power demands will decrease substantially as temperature rise.

As for the halted nuclear reactors, some of them may be restarted. Reactors halted for annual checkups were not restarted, even after their checkups were positive, because the public does not trust the government’s assurances of nuclear safety. My unscientific survey (I talked to everyone I met about this) shows that most people do not trust the government, especially what it says about nuclear safety. Two reactors in the KEPCO territory went through a stress test whose details were not published, and I do not have any idea what was tested. Because the details of the test were not published, it is very difficult to trust the government’s statements. Each reactor, even when it is not actively running, has a number of fuel rods in it, and those rods need to be cooled all the time. Even if the reactor is not running, the loss of cooling could cause another Fukushima Daiichi accident.

The stress test has an inheritant problem. The only thing you can do is to simulate hazardous conditions and see if the current design and construction holds. That does not give me any assurance. The simulation is a simulation.

The current administration is eager to restart the two reactors. Considering the lack of other options, restarting some of the reactors is a necessary evil until other means are laid out. Unlike the US, Japan does import almost all its energy from outside. Some idealists believe solar power would suffice to replace nuclear power. The Japanese media reports big on mega–solar (large-scale) plants, but one thing they do not report is that the total power generated by such resources is not enough.

This coming summer will try Japan really hard, especially the KEPCO territory. I think the government will restart some of the reactors in the KEPCO area. The current administration does not have the guts to take this matter into their own hands and assume full responsibility. They want to pass the buck to local governments, which do not want to take responsibility either. I speculate that at the last minute the government will forcefully restart the reactors, causing further mistrust.

What was feared most before the beginning of winter was a power shortage in the Osaka area, which is served by Kansai Electric Power Company (KEPCO). As you recall from my blog, KEPCO has 14 nuclear reactors and relies on them for 45% of its power. With all 14 reactors halted, KEPCO's territory, including Osaka, Kyoto, Kobe, and Nara, is holding up, with power demands under 90% of supply. Come April, power demands will decrease substantially as temperature rise.

As for the halted nuclear reactors, some of them may be restarted. Reactors halted for annual checkups were not restarted, even after their checkups were positive, because the public does not trust the government’s assurances of nuclear safety. My unscientific survey (I talked to everyone I met about this) shows that most people do not trust the government, especially what it says about nuclear safety. Two reactors in the KEPCO territory went through a stress test whose details were not published, and I do not have any idea what was tested. Because the details of the test were not published, it is very difficult to trust the government’s statements. Each reactor, even when it is not actively running, has a number of fuel rods in it, and those rods need to be cooled all the time. Even if the reactor is not running, the loss of cooling could cause another Fukushima Daiichi accident.

The stress test has an inheritant problem. The only thing you can do is to simulate hazardous conditions and see if the current design and construction holds. That does not give me any assurance. The simulation is a simulation.

The current administration is eager to restart the two reactors. Considering the lack of other options, restarting some of the reactors is a necessary evil until other means are laid out. Unlike the US, Japan does import almost all its energy from outside. Some idealists believe solar power would suffice to replace nuclear power. The Japanese media reports big on mega–solar (large-scale) plants, but one thing they do not report is that the total power generated by such resources is not enough.

This coming summer will try Japan really hard, especially the KEPCO territory. I think the government will restart some of the reactors in the KEPCO area. The current administration does not have the guts to take this matter into their own hands and assume full responsibility. They want to pass the buck to local governments, which do not want to take responsibility either. I speculate that at the last minute the government will forcefully restart the reactors, causing further mistrust.

Many views were expressed from different perspectives—of a journalist with intense familiarity with Japanese culture, of an investor with Japanese funds, and of a large Japanese trading company. Most of all, Mike Kanellos did an excellent job of moderating. It was a pleasure to spend one and a half hours discussing this matter.

As I prepared for the panel, I went over my notes and read many more articles in Japanese newspapers. Whether or not Japan adopts more renewable energies, with 52 out of 54 of its nuclear reactors halted and the remaining two to be shut down come April, and with current renewable energies far short of the capacity to compensate for the loss of nuclear power, a power shortage should be imminent.

Before the disastrous quake last March, nuclear reactors generated about 30% of the total power produced in Japan. When you lose 30%, you gotta do something about it. What Japan did last summer was to:

• Mandate energy savings of 15% from the previous year at manufacturing facilities and businesses.

• Restart thermal and hydro power plants.

Power saving went very well. Average consumers were not ordered to save power by law, but people pitched in. Large factories shut down on Thursdays and Fridays and operated on weekends instead. Most businesses started early in the day and stopped early to save power. Small factories started their day late at night when power demand is not severe. People were working in offices in 86°F conditions. Parents with small kids had a hard time finding a caregiver on weekends because child-care facilities were usually closed on weekends. Small restaurants around factories were forced to change business hours because they had very little business on Thursdays and Fridays. On the weekends, workers at factories could not find restaurants open for lunch nearby. Although this worked, people are now fed up with hardship. Don't believe everything you read in the media. The US and Western media praised Japan for its calm reactions to the disasters and the hardships that came after. However, there is always a breaking point for anything. If that point is passed, people may snap.

Restarting old, dormant thermal and hydro power plants did not go so well. Far more thermal than hydro plants were restarted. Those thermal plants were old and very inefficient and were to be demolished. It was only because of the emergency that they were brought back into service. But they had been neglected for some time, and some of them broke when restarted. Even the plants that did not break have been shaky.

With the two methods mentioned above, Japan survived the power shortage last summer. This winter is going relatively OK, except in the Osaka area served by Kansai Electric Power Co. (KEPCO), which has more than a 45% dependence on nuclear power. As of now, all 14 of its nuclear plants are shut down. Even though 45% of its power supply is gone, the Osaka area (including Kobe, Kyoto, and Nara) appears to be holding out. I exchanged email with one of my friends in Osaka who works at a subsidiary of KEPCO. He wrote that because KEPCO wanted to show that they were saving power, his company set thermostats at 50°F throughout the facility. He had to work in a heavy jacket and a blanket.

As you know, TEPCO lost four nuclear reactors in Fukushima and is required to pay compensation to the people who evacuated from the region. It is clear that TEPCO alone cannot pay all the claims. The loss of land and houses, though very costly, might not be too much. But the people who lost their jobs because radiation is preventing them from going back to their places of work need money every day and every month. This amount keeps rising. TEPCO is on the brink of bankruptcy, and there is talk of nationalization.

TEPCO is proposing to hike its fee for electricity by 17%. People in the TEPCO region are furious. Even though everyone is angry, one individual cannot do much about it. The vice governor of the Tokyo Metropolitan government tried to send a strong message to TEPCO to request power from Chubu Electric Power Co. (CEPCO), which serves the Nagoya region, as reported here.

The Tokyo government uses about 11 MW, roughly the power required by several good-sized data centers. The local utility for the Tokyo government is TEPCO, and if they import power from CEPCO, they need to:

1. Find a way to bypass the TEPCO distribution infrastructure or get an agreement to use TEPCO's and reconcile later.

2. Convert power from 60 Hz (CEPCO territory) to 50 Hz (TEPCO territory). Conversion capacity is limited to 1,100 MW.

Because it is not possible to lay a transmission line to connect the CEPCO side and the Tokyo government, CEPCO needs to connect to the transmission line owned by TEPCO. They can lay a set of distribution lines from one or more substations to the Tokyo government facilities. Or they can cut a deal with TEPCO to use all of their infrastructure and reconcile later.

CEPCO turned down this offer by citing their need to help their western utilities, especially KEPCO, which desperately needs power. Both KEPCO and CEPCO use 60 Hz, and they are adjacent to each other for easy sharing of power. (See the figure below.) It is speculated that Tokyo's attempt was a bluff to force TEPCO to reconsider the price hike.

Utility company territories.

The current administration seems to be coping with the power loss by:

1. Restarting as many thermal and hydro plants as possible.

2. Restarting selected nuclear plants.

The thermal plants use mostly natural gas, which Japan must import. They seem to have an agreement to import natural gas from the US. It is an exceptional gesture because US policy is to use natural gas as a strategic means for energy security and to embargo any exports of the fuel. This surely will increase GHG emissions.

Restarting some nuclear plants is much more controversial. It appears that the central government is running out of options to compensate for the power shortage. It is likely that some nuclear reactors will be restarted before summer.

Is the US ready for a power shortage? Before the disaster, Japanese utilities executives fended off my questions about the long-range energy policy by saying that Japan's power infrastructure was solid and there was plenty of power available. Are we saying the same thing in the US now?

I’m not reporting on this approval but reviewing the current status of nuclear power plants in the US, the license applications filed so far, and the actual construction in progress. My sources of information are the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) and the Department of Energy (DOE).

According to the NRC, 104 nuclear reactors are now in operation in the US, as shown below.

Operating nuclear reactors in the US. (Source: Nuclear Regulatory Commission)

As you can see, most of the reactors are in the eastern half of the country or actually along the East Coast. Another thing I see is that half the nuclear reactors in operation are getting old, ranging in age from 30 to 39 years. By law, the life of a reactor is 40 years; a 20-year extension may be allowed after rigorous examinations. Recently, Japan has adopted a similar life limitation (40 years, with a 20-year extension) for their nuclear reactors. Although Japanese officials have not mentioned the reasoning behind their decision, I suspect they copied or at least studied the US version.

I tallied the number of reactors state by state; below are the seven states with the most reactors. You’ll see that three states are tied for fifth place.

Number of reactors: top seven states.

It is usually true that larger states require more power than smaller states because power demands are roughly proportional to population size. That is why large states like Illinois, Pennsylvania, and New York made the list. But what's missing from the list are California (#1 in population, with 37.7 million) and Texas (#2, with 25.7 million). California is running two nuclear plants with a total of four reactors: two each in San Onofre and Diablo Canyon. Since 1976, California cannot construct a new reactor until the federal government sets up a permanent place to process the used nuclear fuel. There is no such place in the US, although Yucca Mountain was once designated as a site but no longer plays that role. The four operating reactors have been treated as exceptions because of the fear of a power crunch. If the Nuclear Waste Act of 2012 is enacted, this exception might be removed. See the details here.  If it is removed, some argue that California will suffer from power shortages, especially in Southern California, with mandated rolling blackouts.

Another finding from this table is that South Carolina, although it is a small state, has a large number of reactors. The reason is said to be that power consumption per capita is high in South Carolina. The weather in South Carolina is hot and humid in summer, and people there use electricity rather than gas for heating in winter. On top of that, many houses are not well insulated, and cooling and heating efficiency is not very high. Also, population growth in the US is expected to be higher in southern states like South Carolina. The energy mix for power generation is roughly 36%, 50%, and 10%, respectively, of coal, nuclear, and natural gas.

Let's change gear and take a look at nuclear power plants planned for construction. The DOE publishes the Quarterly Nuclear Power Deployment Summary, which summarizes the applications submitted for construction and operation of nuclear reactors in the US. 

List of nuclear reactor licenses applied for in the US. (Source: DOE's Quarterly Nuclear Power Deployment Summary, January 2012)

Public opinion in support of nuclear power plants fluctuates. It goes down substantially after big accidents like those at Three Mile Island (1979) and Chernobyl (1986). When the memory of the Chernobyl accident began to fade, public opinion became more supportive of nuclear energy. Twenty-six new applications for nuclear reactors were filed between 2007 and 2009, mostly in 2008. Some call this period the renaissance of nuclear energy in the US.

The map below shows where licenses for nuclear reactors have been applied for.

Planned nuclear reactors. (Source: Nuclear Regulatory Commission)

Of the 26 reactors, six were suspended for various reasons, but the rest are going through the screening process. Of those 20, two reactors have been approved for licenses for Vogtle, the first entry in the table above. (See the post at the beginning of this blog.) The second entry in the table, VC Summer, with two reactors, is still going through the process. But the remaining 16 reactors seem to be either on hold for financial reasons or having a hard time continuing after companies of foreign origin obtained majority stakes in ownership after the US partners left the project.

Let me also note that the suspended license process of one of the six reactors, TVA’s Bellefonte project (the final entry in the table), was revived for completion last summer. With that, a total of five (two by Vogtle, two by VC Summer, and one by TVA) may be operational as early as the 2016–2018 timeframe. When you consider the original 26 reactors, five seems a pretty small number.

The US needs to make a tough decision on its energy policy soon. Even though this is a tough decision, the US position is better than that of Japan. Japan has 54 reactors, about half of what the US has, in a land one-twenty-seventh the size. Only three or four of these reactors are in operation. By law, each reactor must be halted and examined every 13 months of operation. But because of public sentiment, either the federal or local governments could not decide to restart them. If public sentiment stays the same, no nuclear reactors will be running in April. This impacts businesses and people's lives significantly. Would you like to work in an office where your AC thermostat is set at 86°F during the hot and humid summer or the heating thermostat is set at 50°F in the cold of winter?

We still have time to discuss and establish an energy policy to meet the nation's power needs. Once our situation is similar to Japan’s, it will be too late.

Unfortunately, I have not seen a Volt on the road yet. Maybe I have but, because I am not familiar with its looks, I did not notice it. I want to test-drive it but have not seen any local opportunities yet. I do not know about you, but I do not want to go to a Chevrolet dealer to test-drive it, even though I am not going to buy it. There has been a lot of discussion about whether the Volt is a true EV. Depending upon your point of view, your answer may be different from mine: here.

If you purchase an EV, you get a federal tax credit based on the size of the battery in your vehicle. The list of eligible cars is here. It applies to BEV (battery EV), like Leaf, and PHEV, like Volt, which is often categorized as range-extended EV (RE-EV).

Also, in California, the state government provides some incentives to put more low-emission cars on the road, including cash rebates and stickers that allow you to drive in a carpool lane reserved for high-occupancy vehicles (two people or more). The cash rebate program is called the Clean Vehicle Rebate Project. The list of cars that qualify for the rebate is here.

Actually, this project is done through the Air Resources Board of the California Environmental Protection Agency.  See the FAQ for details. The four categories of qualifying EV are zero-emissions vehicles (ZEV), plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEV), neighborhood electric vehicles (NEV), and zero-emission motorcycles (ZEM). See the FAQ for definitions of each category and for the reason the Volt does not qualify for this rebate.

In addition to the cash rebate, California has three types of stickers that allow you to drive in a carpool lane, even if you are the only person in the car. They’re called Single Occupant Carpool Lane Use Stickers. There are three types of these stickers: yellow, white, and green. The yellow one shown below expired in July 2011 and is no longer valid.

A Prius with an expired yellow sticker.

The white one is good for Federal Inherently Low-Emission Vehicles (ILEVs), including zero-emission vehicles (100% battery electric and hydrogen fuel cell) and compressed natural gas (CNG) vehicles. The expiration date for this sticker is January 1, 2015.

A Leaf with a white sticker.

The green sticker is defined at here.

It became available January 1, 2012, and will be valid through January 1, 2015, to the first 40,000 applicants that purchase or lease cars meeting California's enhanced advanced technology partial-zero-emission vehicle (ATPZEV) requirements. Vehicles qualifying for this new sticker will be added to this website. Qualifying vehicles purchased before the program began are eligible to receive the green decals.

At this time, only the plug-in Prius, which is categorized as enhanced ATPZEV, is eligible for the green sticker, according to the list.  Chris Nichol of North County Times has a very informative article on the green sticker.

He wrote:

The successor "green sticker program” started Jan. 1, with little fanfare.

The quiet start was probably because there’s no car yet on the market eligible for the state’s new and more stringent program.

You’ll have to buy a Toyota Prius Plug-In or a modified Chevrolet Volt, also a plug-in, when they go on sale later this year to be eligible for a green sticker, according to state officials.

Those are the only two widely manufactured cars the state expects will meet its new green sticker standards anytime soon. Only 40,000 green stickers will be available through the new program, which is scheduled to sunset Jan. 1, 2015.

In less than two months, the anniversary of the dreadful 3/11 earthquake and tsunami will arrive. There is less and less news coverage of this tragedy in the US media, and even in Japan. Unless you follow the Japanese media closely, including TV, radio, and newspapers, you might think Japan was already completely through with nukes.

The truth is that it is not certain. With hundreds of thousands of people still evacuated from the radiation-infected areas, the Japanese government seems to be indecisive about what its policy should be on nuclear energy, and all other energy for that matter. I monitor the news and opinions of people and can tell you that pro-nuke and anti-nuke forces are not having a fruitful discussion. It is probably safe to say that if there were other sources of energy available to replace nukes right away, the overwhelming majority of people would halt all 54 nukes and use the other sources. Almost all the nuclear reactors, by the way, are currently halted after their regularly scheduled checkups, because of resistance from the people living around them and indecision by local and national governments.

Pro-nuke forces emphasize that only nuclear plants can afford to generate adequate clean power, but they do not want to talk about a future energy policy. Anti-nuke forces demand that nukes be stopped right away because, in their opinion, Japan has enough power without them. They claim that if the same amount of money spent on nukes were used for renewable energies, renewable energies would very soon be able to take over for nuclear energy. Some anti-nuke people are rational enough to say that nukes should be phased out over time and not shut down right away, but their voices seem to be in the minority. So the discussion does not make sense because two extreme opinions have no common ground, which would be the decision on a national energy policy based on cold facts with hard data.

The national government is also to blame. It does not seem to have made a clear decision about what to do with nukes, or for that matter, the entire energy policy. Former Prime Minister Kan was clear in banning nukes and encouraging solar energy to replace them. But as most experts point out, solar energy alone could not replace nukes now, and maybe not even in the future. Kan was criticized for using get-out-of-nukes as his platform to cling to his seat. The Ministry of Economics, Trade, and Industry (METI) was worried about the power shortage resulting from halting nuclear plants, which definitely affects business and manufacturing in Japan. So with Kan’s blessing, Mr. Kaieda, Minister of METI, went to see a governor whose territory had nukes to get his OK to restart them. After just one day, Kan, in spite of his earlier OK, overturned Kaieda’s request to restart the nukes. Instead, without consulting with experts, Kan decided to bring in a new stress test, similar to the one used in Europe, as one of the conditions for restarting nukes.

The details of the stress test have not been revealed, and the Japanese people, especially those living around nukes, do not know how the results would be used to ensure nuke safety. Current Prime Minister Noda seems to be more pro-nukes, even though he does not say so in public. He seems to be of the opinion that if passing the stress test shows the nukes are safe, he would like to restart them. However, because no details have been revealed, people and local governments around the plants are skeptical about their safety, even if the national government declares them safe. Meanwhile, Japan is still exporting nuclear technologies to countries like Turkey and Vietnam. Also, Toshiba is working at one of the US nuclear power plant construction sites, in south Texas (South Texas project).

Although I speak and read Japanese and can collect pretty detailed information about what’s happening in Japan, I am not sure where Japan is going with its energy policy, including what to do with nukes there. Another factor that may make prediction difficult is that the current administration and the ruling party (the president of the ruling party is usually elected prime minister, similar to the UK system), may lose their power, as the rumor of an imminent general election is spreading. The current administration and the ruling party are both losing support. To win the election, the ruling party may switch prime minsters. Or they may lose the election and lose power altogether. If so, the new administration might devise a completely different policy.

That is why I say Japan is mysterious.

I have obtained a short description (in Japanese; cannot find an English version yet) of the Volt’s inner workings from Chevrolet’s Japanese website and these two English-language websites:here and here. 

The second site included a short interview with Andrew Farah, chief engineer for the Volt.

I am not a mechanical engineer or a specialist in automotive mechanics, but here’s my understanding of how the Volt works, after reading all the information cited above. It is oversimplified, but it is definitely better than most high-level descriptions available elsewhere.

There are three engines on board. One is an electric motor that drives the car and must be operational at all times when the car is driven. Let’s call it the main motor, just for the sake of reference. This is strictly by my terminology and not Chevrolet’s. The second is another electric motor (let’s call it the secondary motor), which is much smaller and includes a generator for the battery to drive both main and secondary electric motors. The third is a gasoline engine that is used to charge the battery and provide torque indirectly with both of the motors.

There are four scenarios in the Volt operation. Let’s look at them one by one.

Scenario 1: After the battery is charged up, the car is driven by the main motor only. The main motor draws power from the battery, and the battery keeps discharging for it. This operation is pure EV and can sustain a Volt for 40 miles or so (your mileage will depend on several parameters, such as weather, road conditions, and your driving habits.)

Scenario 2: As the rotation of your motor increases (towards the maximum), the motor’s efficiency decreases. Therefore, at some point, the secondary motor joins with the main motor to drive the car. Both motors draw power from the battery.

Scenario 3: Eventually, the battery loses its charge. When the battery level goes down to a certain point, the gasoline engine kicks in to charge the battery. Even in this scenario, the gasoline engine does not drive the car. Nor does the secondary motor, which is only used for charging the battery.

Scenario 4: The two motors (main and secondary) and the gasoline engine drive the car together. This is when greatest torque is required. But even then, the gasoline engine is not mechanically connected to the main gear directly. An elaborate way of building the gear system allows the gasoline engine to transmit its torque only indirectly.

Those four scenarios are repeated during the Volt’s operation. Which scenario is in play depends on the charge left in the battery and the torque necessary for operation.

I think the explanation here is oversimplified, even though this clarifies some of my early questions. It is important to know that the gasoline engine alone cannot drive the car. It provides torque but does so in an indirect and auxiliary way. One might argue that the Volt is an EV because the main (electric) motor is the one that drives the car all the time. Initially, I thought the Volt was nothing like the Leaf, but after knowing a bit more about how it operates, I can see why Chevrolet designed it this way. It is a good compromise between a pure EV and a useful car for everyday life. If you do not drive more than 40 miles a day, it is a pure EV. If you do, a good compromise extends the distance you can travel. I hope this helps you to understand what the Volt really is.

Tres Amigas is developing an interconnection station to accomplish just that. Construction will take a total of $1.5B, but Tres Amigas began by soliciting an initial fund of $15M, of which $3M has been collected. At the end of 2011, Japan’s Mitsui invested $9M to complete this round of investment. 

This was a win-win deal for both companies. Tres Amigas receives the funding as well as Mitsui’s expertise in IT, battery technology, transmission line installation know-how, and other services. Mitsui gains valuable information about how such interconnections work, and improves and internationalizes its own "Smart Green Information Technology” business model, which includes smart grid IT, renewable energy development and management, and CO₂ emissions mitigation strategies.

This received good media coverage in the US but not much in Japan. In a way, I can understand why. It took place in the US, not in Japan. But I think this could be good news for Japan, which needs to learn how to improve its own two disjointed power coverage areas. 

The first generator imported to the Tokyo area (50 Hz) was from the UK, but Osaka received a generator from the US (60 Hz). At that time, people did not even think about having a power grid to connect the entire country. Although voltage was standardized to 100 V AC, Japan never saw any urgency to unite the two frequencies. So, as electrification continued, each region developed devices and equipment for its own frequency. In the early days, an alarm clock that counted the frequency and displayed the correct time did not work if transported from the Tokyo region to Osaka. So a businessman relocated from one region to the other needed to purchase a new alarm clock. Soon each vendor came up with a way to solve this problem.

This was an easy fix for consumer electronics but not for industrial equipment. Today, much of the large equipment at factories does not work correctly if there is even a small fraction of change in the frequency. If Japan unites the voltage level to a single frequency, it would be prohibitively expensive to replace the equipment and devices (especially the industrial ones), let alone the generation, transmission, and distribution infrastructures. So Japan has to maintain two frequencies but needs to somehow connect these two disjointed power grids.

Now there are three frequency conversion stations in the middle of Japan whose total conversion capacity is 1,000 MW. This will be elevated to around 1,200 MW this summer. But it is not enough. Tres Amigas plans for its initial capacity to be 750 MW, then will raise it to 3,000 MW, eventually hitting 50,000 MW.

Japan does not seem to have a solid energy plan or policy after the Fukushima incident. The country’s position on nuclear power seems to have changed from a total ban to limited use. There is no firm policy for the nuclear power plants that public opinion prevented restarting after their routine checkups. Last summer, the Tokyo area was hit hardest by the power shortage. This winter it is Osaka’s turn because it relies heavily (40% plus) on nuclear power plants for power generation. A friend of mine in Osaka told me that his company slashed 10% of its power use and the office is too cold to work in.

Yes, simply increasing the capacity of conversion stations will not solve the problem. A comprehensive method to guarantee the reliable delivery of power needs to be put in place as soon as possible.

This applies to the US as well. Along with the Presidential election, Californians will cast ballots on the shutting down of two nuclear power plants in the state, which might cause blackouts and brownouts. 

This is not a fire on the other side of the river anymore, as the Japanese say.

As of this writing, CHAdeMO-based charging stations can be found in the US at three locations: Portland, Oregon; Vacaville, California; and Dallas. Among them, the one in Vacaville was installed but was shut down for lack of UL certification. CHAdeMO has now cleared the certification.  According to CHAdeMO, the unit in Vacaville was meant to be a pilot version for PG&E to test, but because of its public accessibility and claims that it used non-UL-compliant equipment, PG&E turned it off until it could be certified. Now that the certification is done, it should be reactivated for use. I assume the story is the same for the one in Dallas.

While SAE apparently is developing theirs by using a single socket for level 1, level 2, and level 3 (rapid charging), CHAdeMO uses separate sockets. Their version is expected to appear in late 2012.

The Nissan Leaf’s two sockets. The one on the left is for CHAdeMO, and the other is for SAE J1772. (Photo taken at Tokyo Motor Show 2011 by the author.)

Meanwhile, the CHAdeMO assault continues in the United States with an announcement by Nissan and others. Regardless of who wins, I welcome an early resolution to the rapid charging method so that consumers can take advantage of rapid charging, which will lead to more and quicker adoption of EV in the US.

This was my first visit to any motor show, and I cannot say if this show was small or not. But it was very crowded, and it was hard to walk without bumping into someone. Many of major car manufactures stages were surrounded by several layers of people, and it was almost impossible to see what was happening on the stage.

Crowds prevented me from approaching the stage.

Took a few minutes to get to an escalator to move.

There are many articles written about the show but mostly in Japanese. Because I read Japanese and got enough information, I am not sure if many articles were written in English as well. An unscientific study (I just watched) revealed that 99.99% of attendees and exhibitors were Japanese. Even though English signs and English texts were placed next to Japanese ones, my perception was that the show was geared to the Japanese audience only. I am not sure if this was the result of their losing attendees over the year or not.

There were a few European exhibitors but very little presence by US car manufacturers. There was one small Chevrolet booth with one car (not the Volt) exhibited, and Volt participated in the test-drive program.

Chevrolet’s En-V concept car. Watch a video of it in action.

Test drives were offered by many car manufacturers, including Suzuki, Toyota (the PHV Prius), Nissan (the Leaf), Honda (the Clarity), and Chevrolet (the Volt). Because the number of people who could test-drive was limited, I did not bother to try to sign up for it.

The schedule for the test-drive program

It was not possible to cover every car manufacturer and review all of their BEV and PHEV. But many BEV and PHEV, including concept cars, were displayed. As expected, available and planned BEV and PHEV are different between Japan and the US (see here).

Finally, Mitsubishi’s exhibit shows that EV could become a home appliance, as shown below.

Except for too many people and difficulty in accessing displays, it was fun to be at the show. I took a lot of pictures, which are available at Flickr.

When I was a college student, I was involved in a student volunteer group that assists foreign visitors in Kyoto. I became friends with an American student who came with a group of 50 or so students one summer; he frequently visited Japan thereafter. One time he said that the Japanese talk a lot about Christmas from the beginning of December, and familiar Christmas music is everywhere, so he expected something big on Christmas Day. He was really disappointed to find out that nothing special happens. Because it is not a national holiday, people go to work as usual and that is it. It is a normal day.

The influence of American culture has been big in Japan, especially after the defeat of WWII and the occupation of Allied forces (mostly Americans). Japanese TV carried a lot of American shows, such as "My Three Sons,” "77 Sunset Strip,” "The Donna Reed Show,” "Father Knows Best,” "Combat,” "Lassie Come Home,” "Bonanza,” "The Adventures of Rin Tin Tin,” and "Hawaii Five-O.” It is a little strange to welcome and like the culture of the former enemy such a short time after the defeat. But that is the way it was. Over the years, Christmas has been celebrated without any religious meaning. The Christian population of Japan is a mere 1% or less.

Several years ago, people discovered that Americans illuminate Christmas lights during the holiday season. So some Japanese started doing that. It has escalated to a point that rivals the big displays in the United States. Every year, Japanese TV reports on it.

This illumination used 400,000 lights last year. The owner of the house spent about $80,000 for the illumination and service staff. He runs his own company and started preparations in September with the help of his employees.

This year the owner of the house donated all 400,000 lights to the city office and abandoned the display. Some speculated that there was some pressure to stop such an extravagant illumination. However, illumination in the center of Tokyo stayed the same. Power consumption pretty much stays flat in winter. The peak usually comes during the early evening hours, 6:00 to 9:00. During this period, consumption at each home goes up substantially because people get home and start preparing dinner.

As winter comes closer, another power crunch is feared, this time for KEPCO. Unlike in summer, the peak power consumption periods are during the mornings and evenings because of heating needs at home rather than at work. Most of the power will be consumed in the evenings by heating and dinner preparation. It is almost impossible to force the public to conserve by a law like the one that forced businesses in the TEPCO territory to conserve over the summer.

As reported before, KEPCO relies about 50% on nuclear power, which is to be shut down 100% next February. Nuclear reactors that were halted for a checkup have not been restarted due to a lot of complexities. The Japanese government flip-flops on nuclear power policy. The former prime minister, Naoto Kan, tried to prolong his reign by completely abandoning nuclear plants. After his ouster, his successor, Yoshihiko Noda, seems to have reversed that. However, Noda is not exercising his leadership on this issue. The government is moving behind the scenes to restart the halted nuclear reactors. Because the government does not inform the general public of what it is doing, there is only speculation. After talking to several people, I have concluded the following.

The government went with the stress test, which imitated the European stress test, and completed the tests for some of the halted nuclear reactors. The results were reviewed and approved by the relevant organizations within the government. Then, the results were passed on to local governments for their approval. The local governments were reluctant to go ahead with the restart because the central government is not firm about its policy for nuclear power. The central government does not seem to take full responsibility for a restart that might cause another Fukushima if there is another major earthquake. The local governments do not want to take responsibility when the central government does not. So it seems the matter is stuck.

To make the matter worse, it is speculated that the Lower House will be dissolved and a general election will be held in spring or summer of next year. Because of the unpopularity of the current government, the current administration is likely to lose power. While this is going on, the power policy discussion and decision will be held up at status quo. In the meantime, the KEPCO territory continues to lack power. Other territories will also suffer from a power crunch, if to a lesser extent. It seems that this winter will be a very cold one for many people in Japan.

I drive an HEV version (not plug-in) of the Prius and am somewhat used to driving a semielectric car. At low speed, a Prius usually is driven by its electric motor; the gasoline engine takes over as speed increases. But when more power is needed, the gas engine also kicks in, even at low speed. I notice this when I back up from the garage to the street in the morning. First, the electric engine moves the car, but within a minute the gas engine kicks in. I can clearly see that, as the engine noise changes from almost none to that of the familiar gas engine. Because the Nissan Leaf is BEV (battery EV), there is no gas engine onboard, and it is quiet and smooth. It is great to drive an electric-engine-only car, a BEV.

My second car is getting old and I may consider updating it, if the problems I raised in my previous blog are solved. 

To recap, these are the problems with EV:

1. Expensive

2. Short driving range

3. Long charging time

In view of these problems, do I replace the old car with a Leaf, Volt, plug-in Prius, or another conventional Prius? Are they different? If so, how?

EV is a broad term used rather loosely to describe a car with an electric engine. So in casual conversation, details are ignored and people get confused. Some details are hard to find, and unless you dig into their specification closely or talk to manufacturers, you cannot find the answers.

There are roughly three types of them: BEV, PHEV (PHV), and HEV. And PHEV comes in two flavors. Let’s call them PHEV-1 and PHEV-2 and describe them separately. Note that these are my terms and not standard ones.

First, BEV stands for battery EV. The term is confusing because the BEV, PHEV-1, PHEV-2, and HEV each has a battery for an electrical engine. A BEV has only an electrical engine, and the car is driven solely by it. The battery is charged by plugging in to an external power source like a power outlet at home. An example of a BEV is the Nissan Leaf that I test-drove. With a full charge, it can go as far as 100 miles.

PHEV stands for plug-in EV. PHEV has two engines (electric and gasoline) onboard. The battery is charged by plugging it in to an external power outlet, as in charging a BEV. The differences between PHEV-1 and PHEV-2 are as follows. PHEV-1 uses only the electric engine to drive the car and uses the gas engine only to charge the battery when it runs out of juice. Initially, PHEV-1 gets power by being plugged into an external power source. As the car is driven, it eventually runs out of battery power. When that happens, the gas engine kicks in to generate power to charge the battery. An important point is that the gas engine is never used for driving the car. The fact that it never uses the gas engine to drive the car may make it closer to a BEV. An example of a PHEV-1 is the Chevrolet/GM Volt.

PHEV-2’s battery gets charged by plugging it in to an external power source, as the BEV and PHEV-1 are. As long as the battery has power, the electric engine alone drives the car. When the battery is depleted, it goes into normal HEV mode. This means that the car will be driven by both electric and gasoline engines. The big difference is that PHEV-2 does use the gas engine as well as the electric engine to drive the car, while PHEV-1 does not. An example for this is the plug-in Toyota Prius.

Finally, HEV uses both electric and gas engines from the beginning. A example is the Toyota Prius.

GM, Nissan, and Toyota, three major players in the EV market, take different approaches to the problems of expensive batteries and somewhat limited capacity. Nissan dived into BEV by putting in a larger battery to increase the travel distance and working with partners to put up fast-charging DC stations. I asked the guy who accompanied me on the test drive about nearby charging stations. He pulled out his iPhone and showed me their locations. It appears that they have enough stations from San Jose to San Francisco. This alleviates the short travel distance (100 miles) and long charging time problems. Actually, 100 miles may not be too bad. Depending upon your commute, 100 miles may be sufficient even in the US (it’s certainly enough in Japan), although commuters between San Jose and San Francisco may need to refill somewhere on the way back. Nissan put a large battery under the front and back seats.

Chevrolet/GM took a different approach by using a gas engine to recharge the battery. But the gas engine is not used to drive the car, and that is innovative. This may be a good compromise to satisfy EV operations as much as possible for the first 25 to 40 miles and to refill the battery with help from the gas engine. EV purists would not call it a true EV, but at this time, this allows Volt owners to be as clean as possible yet to extend their travel distances.

Toyota, which was very successful with the HEV Prius, was somewhat late in coming to EV, although some folks may claim that HEV is EV enough. Their plug-in Prius is a natural extension of its HEV version. The HEV Prius does not charge the battery from external power sources but strictly by the gas engine. The plug-in Prius is charged by an external power source and can go as EV (electric engine alone) as far as 15 to 25 miles. When the battery is depleted, it goes into HEV mode. A distance of 15 to 25 miles seems a little short, but I am sure Toyota will improve that in later models.

It is hard to predict which solutions will win the market majority at this point. But it seems that EV passions will stay and that technologies, including batteries, will improve with fierce competition among car OEMs. Many major OEMs are working on EV and PHEV now and have plans for the future. The next figure lists car OEMs’ EV and PHEV. It is based on a recent presentation by PG&E at an EV conference, and I reproduced it here.

Green = BEV; yellow = PHEV

The time may soon come when we put EV in our living room as if they were another appliance, as Mitsubishi Motors predicted on their website. In any event, we are living in exciting times.

1. Expensive

2. Short driving range

3. Long charging time

4. High power cost

Probably #1 is enough to make me not buy one. But the other reasons also sway me to not purchase an EV yet. Number 2 is really a battery capacity problem. The Nissan Leaf probably runs up to 100 km (60 miles) comfortably with no fear of running out of power. Number 3 is also a killer. If you park your EV at home and let it suck up power for 8 to10 hours, it might be fine. PG&E said in a recent conference that 85% of charging is done at home anyway. Combining #3 with #2, even if you can find charging stations everywhere, who can afford an hour of charging, let alone 8 hours or more? Number 4 seems not to be an issue, according to a presentation by David Leeds of Greentech Research. If the power cost for an EV is converted to the per-gallon equivalent, it is about $1 per gallon, assuming the per-kWh power cost is between 10 and 15 cents. See the picture below. Around here, gasoline is about $4 per gallon, and I am willing to pay $1 per gallon to drive an EV.

Let's focus on #3 because Nissan issued a press release recently about it. 

Japan is losing its influence and confidence in the world market. But when they provide interesting news, in addition to the US sources, I look for it in Japanese because I can obtain much more from the Japanese sources.

The press release stated that Nissan will collaborate with Sumitomo to bring CHAdeMO rapid charging technology for EV to the US as early as January 2012. They will work with AeroVironment (NASDAQ: AVAV)  for whole and retail sales as well as installation services. An excerpt of the press release follows:

The starting price for the charger will be $9,900, about a third of the cost of models available on the global market today. The quick charger will come in two different models: a version for indoor use, designed to help accommodate fleets such as daily rental cars; and an outdoor model, which is specifically designed for public and commercial charging uses – such as public spaces, corporate campuses, and retail centers. Nissan and Sumitomo Corporation, together with its U.S. subsidiary Sumitomo Corporation of America, currently are taking pre-orders for the charger, with an online ordering system launching in January 2012. AeroVironment will help manage installation and distribution.

In Japan, Nissan will set up a joint venture with Sumitomo, NEC, and Showa Shell to conduct the power-charging business for plug-in hybrid EV (PHEV). The name of the company is Japan Charge Network (JCN). Ten percent of the roughly $70M founding capital is from Showa Shell, and the other three each put in 30%. JCN will install charging stations strategically for the convenience of EV owners in Japan, with the Tokyo area first.

There are three types of EV charging: level 1, level 2, and level 3. They are summarized in the following table. SAE International stands for the Society of Automotive Engineers. SAE is a US-based standards body for vehicles on the ground, in the air, and on the sea.

As you can see, SAE has not developed a standard for DC fast charging. Then, why did Nissan, a member of SAE, decide to go with CHAdeMO?

CHAdeMO was developed by TEPCO and other companies in Japan. Nissan is one of the core members of the CHAdeMO association. I visited the TEPCO branch working on CHAdeMO before. See more details there.

Nissan, along with Toyota and Honda, considers the US one of their most important markets. To sell EV in the US, it is imperative for them to produce EV with a standard connector for charging. The current model of Leaf comes with two sockets: SAE J1772 and CHAdeMO. It would be cheaper for Nissan to have only one connection rather than two.

In searching for nonagreement on the charging method, I found an interesting blog and an article. The blog is by Hirakazu Hirano, who was with Nissan and was involved in planning EV at Nissan Research & Development in the US. His blog is a little dated (2007) but gives us a glimpse of how Nissan as part of JARI worked with key members of SAE (GM, Ford, Chrysler, Toyota, Honda, and Mazda) to define EV standards. It also gives us a hint about why Nissan decided to come to the US with CHAdeMO rather than wait for SAE's standard for DC fast charging.

The New York Times also has an interesting article on charging standards.  According to it, SAE will develop a fast DC charging prototype soon (fall 2011), but the final version will only be available late 2012 by modifying SAE J1772 to support all three kinds of charging. It also said that the CHAdeMO camp could modify its connector and socket to suit the SAE's, once it’s developed.

I do not want to speculate on the reason behind this, but for a user like me, it would be nice if only one kind of connector and socket is used for all three kinds of charging. Because of the lack of consensus, a Leaf comes with two types of sockets: SAE J1772 and CHAdeMO.

Even if a standard emerges for DC fast charging, I will still not buy an EV until problems #1 and #2 are solved, unless I become rich all of a sudden.

I read a blog post (in Japanese) by Naoki Inose, lieutenant governor of the Tokyo Metropolitan Government, regarding the necessity of another electric power company to reinforce TEPCO. 

TEPCO estimates its power supply in December will be roughly 55 million kW, or 55,000 MW, with power demand at 51.5 million kW, or 51,500 MW. However, back in 2007, the demand in winter exceeded 55,000 MW, and it is not a safe bet. On top of that, the Tohoku power territory needs help from TEPCO. As I mentioned before, Japan's power grid is split into two parts. (The US power grid is split into three parts.) The eastern part of Japan (Tohoku and TEPCO) has 50-cycle AC power, while the western part has 60-cycle AC power. Although there are a few power conversion stations, they don’t have the capacity to send extra power from the west to the east. And the west is also expecting a power shortage because their nuclear power plants will be halted. So TEPCO is the only one that can save the Tohoku power company. TEPCO also feels they need to help it.

The Tokyo metropolitan and local governments of the surrounding eight regions are contemplating a second TEPCO to secure enough power for their areas, according to Inose. An irony is that the world-famous Fukushima Dai-Ichi nuclear power plant is owned and operated by TEPCO to generate power for its own territory, but geographically it is in the Tohoku power company’s territory. People in the Tohoku power company territory are still suffering from the accident at a nuclear power plant that does not generate power for their use. This is like PG&E having a nuclear power plant in Washington or Arizona, and an accident happened there.

TEPCO is losing its generation capacity, as some of its nuclear reactors (2,500 MW) will be halted by spring for checkups. Since TEPCO lost the Fukushima nuclear reactors, it will probably lose up to 8,000 MW altogether. The Tohoku power company is expected to lack around 700 MW. Under these conditions, TEPCO will not be able to support Tohoku.

The Tokyo Metropolitan Government is constructing a natural gas thermal power plant (1,000 MW), but it will not be enough. Those nine local governments got together and discussed how to cope with the lack of power. Renewable energies are desirable, but they cannot generate enough renewable energies at this time. The best choice at this point is natural gas. There are several problems that must be resolved at the national level. For example, in the current system, private power generators will be charged for the use of transmission lines (owned by TEPCO) in selling power to TEPCO. Also, if gas thermal plants are the inevitable choice, how will the national government secure enough natural gas for generation and stabilize its price?

Also, TEPCO, out of desperation, restarted old thermal power plants, which are 35 to 40 years old and very inefficient, to secure enough power. They generate up to 15,000 MW but may break anytime. Also, they tend to emit more harmful substances into the air than do modern facilities. TEPCO is required to pay an astronomical amount of money to compensate for the nuclear accident and does not have a fund to upgrade the old thermal plants. Someone has to pay for more power plants.

Some of the nine local governments complained about the lack of support from the national government. Inose concluded that the national government probably could not help the situation and that they needed to take the matter into their own hands. They are now talking about creating a fund to construct and renew power plants. Inose also talked about a smaller but easily controllable generation facility, like one at a hotel or a business office.

It has been eight months since the quake, but recovery is slow in coming, if at all. Budgetary talks to help the stricken areas are not progressing rapidly. The Japanese people once were very proud of their highly reliable infrastructure, including the power grid. The utility companies told me that their infrastructure was superb and they did not need smart grid. Former Prime Minister Hatoyama promised the world that Japan would cut CO₂ emissions by 25%. But with more natural gas–based thermal plants, how will Japan keep its promise? People who supported Hatoyama’s plan now do not say much. When confronted with reality, people need to make a tough choice between controlling GHG emissions and sustaining society and businesses. What about the US? Are we ready to make a tough choice?

Those keywords include:

• Green IT

• Data center energy efficiency

• Energy efficiency

• Cloud computing

• Mobile computing

• Monitoring

• Sensors

• Big Data

• Renewable energy

• Green power

• Smart meter

• EVs

• Smart grid

• Power grid

• Power generation

Standup comics in the US talk only to make the audience laugh. There are similar things in Japan, including comics very like those of the US. A variation is the guy who delivers a story rather than a bunch of short lines, and sometimes the story is funny but sometimes it appeals to the audience for tears. Some guys (but not all) who do this may choose a few keywords, create a story around those keywords, and tell it on the fly, as if they had planned it ahead of time. I think each of the keywords listed above has a very broad meaning, and I feel like I can produce a blog by picking up any three of the above on the fly. Looking back in my blogging for the past three years, I want to mention green IT and cloud computing. As you will see later, I’ll end up using six keywords instead.

The first keyword is green IT, which was the first keyword I encountered when I started. Green IT, when first introduced, tended to make IT itself green rather than make other things green. It is far easier for IT folks to discuss making IT green, because they know IT well. However, I think the real potential of green IT resides in making other things green. This is far bigger than making IT itself green, but it is very difficult for IT folks to tackle. Most, if not all, systems now use IT to control their components and operations. Without IT, or should I say ICT, adding the communications element, no sophisticated system would work properly. Furthermore, each sophisticated system is governed by some area of specific knowledge and processes. Without knowing each specific area inside out, we cannot apply ICT effectively.

For example, IT has developed a lot of technologies and know-how, but without knowledge of the area of the control system, we cannot apply IT security to it as is. Modifications and additions are required. In order to settle down the dispatch of power for tomorrow, prediction software contains many parameters, such as weather information. We can develop any software if and only if we know the exact specification. IT folks may understand at a very high level what prediction software is supposed to do, but unless they work with experts in the weather forecasting business or are trained to understand the details, they cannot produce meaningful software.

The second keyword is cloud computing. The following slide came from Lew Tucker’s keynote speech at Cloud Connect in March. This slide is a great way of explaining how ICT is being used and how it will be utilized even more before long. I thought this slide was great at the time, but now I appreciate it much more.

As computing becomes ubiquitous, to meet demands for computing and processing data, data centers are increasingly and exponentially important. The amount of data is increasing astronomically and now forms Big Data. How Big Data is analyzed and utilized is getting a lot of attention. Data is being added to clouds, thanks to (1) sensors, which are much cheaper, wireless, and low power, and (2) mobile devices, which are no longer just for voice communications but also for data processing and EVs’ telematics, which generate tons of data. Initially, data from the four data sources, conventional computing, sensors, mobile computing, and EVs, may not interact with each other. But as we improve the use of Big Data, the interactions will increase, and we will need ICT to manage the data and mine information for better operations of systems.

I produced this blog by using the following keywords, (1) data center energy efficiency, (2) green IT, (3) cloud computing, (4) sensors, (5) mobile computing, and (6) EVs. I bet I could produce a blog with only three keywords.

In the installation for electricity, there was a brief service interruption, but this time no interruption will occur. I do not use gas much, only for hot water, and the use is pretty constant. I am not sure how the meter installation will change my pattern of gas use.

The major problems with EVs are price, driving range, long recharging time, and lack of public charging stations. At Greentech Media's recent Networked EVs conference, the status of EVs in conjunction with these problems and predictions was discussed. I plan to write about some sessions in more detail, but in this blog I’ll summarize the conference and inject my thoughts. For some of the acronyms, refer to here.

PG&E is getting ready to accommodate EVs in their territory. Several media sources state that there will be 1 million EVs in California by 2020. There are now about 2,200 EVs in PG&E territory, 2,000 EVs in SCE territory, and 200 EVs in SDGE territory, so the total in 2011 is less than 5,000. But many car companies are planning to introduce BEV and PHEV, as shown in the slide by PG&E.

Some of PG&E’s and Greentech Media’s findings were interesting.

1. Most charging—85%—takes place at home, not requiring public charging stations too much for now.

2. Level 1 charging at 110 V for 10 hours is good enough for average users.

3. Current generation capacity is adequate for 1 million EVs.

4. The distribution grid needs to be run intelligently to accommodate EVs’ power demands.

5. Vehicle to grid (V2G) may not work until 5 to 15 years beyond the horizon.

6. EVs are real this time, with solid EV technologies and with commitments from car manufacturers, government, and utilities.

7. EVs’ emergence will accelerate smart grid.

8. Only 5% of new cars today are web ready, but 100% will be in 3 to 5 years.

9. Standards for car communications protocols are 1 to 2 years away.

10. Nearly two-thirds (60%) of daily driving is 30 miles or less, and 70% is under 40 miles.

11. The per-gallon equivalent of the electricity cost is about $1, and the price of gasoline is expected to rise.

The points made in #1, #2, and #10 may change significantly. As I wrote here, the battery capacity may increase and its cost may go down significantly around 2015. If an EV’s driving range extends to 620 miles, on par with a typical gasoline car, people will demand more public places for rapid charging. Incidentally, the Prometheus Institute for Sustainability Development predicted a battery breakthrough around 2015. Point #10 indicates we need two types of cars, one for commuting and the other for extended distance driving. With an improved driving range, this requirement will go away.

Utilities and other expert participants agree that the US has enough power capacity for the time being, even if we need to support 1 million EVs in 2020. The real problem is how to distribute adequate power to EVs without breaking distribution power grid components like transformers, which are getting old (some have lasted more than 40 years beyond their normal span). This coincides with several research studies demanding the improvement of distribution automation (DA). Point #7 is a natural conclusion from this.

Point #9 is essential to making EVs part of smart grid. There are two major coupler technologies, Chademo and SAE 1772. The Nissan Leaf, for example, supports both in Japan but not in the US. The US standard is SAE 1772.

Point #11 is a good motivator for people to consider changing their cars to EVs. I think the oil price will increase, and we need energy independence from foreign oil.

As for #5, there was no disagreement on this among the speakers. Their reasons were (1) warranty of batteries and (2) need for an understanding involving several parties. I totally agree with their conclusion. I also would like to add one point. A battery needs a higher capacity with a large number of cycles and a low price before this is even considered. But as I wrote here, V2H might be a reasonable application, and some of the speakers also said that.

As for #6, this time all the stakeholders seem to be in sync with one another to make EVs a reality. I will seriously consider buying an EV after my Prius. Hopefully, by the time I replace my Prius, a reasonably priced EV with a reasonable driving range will be available.

Regarding #8, Airbiquity does design, operation, and management of telematics connectivity infrastructure. Mission Motor also generates monitored data to a cloud. See a video here. 

This shows that automobiles will be one source of Big Data, as discussed by Lew Tucker.Other sources of Big Data include the Web on desktop and laptop computers, mobile devices, and sensors.

Networked EVs stand in the intersection of ICT and energy, touching smart grid, cloud computing, and intelligent distribution of resources (i.e., power). This is truly fascinating to me.

I will write blogs on what I heard. But I would like to first present a list of acronyms needed to understand the discussions.

• BEV: battery electric vehicle; all-electric car, like Nissan Leaf. See here for details. 

• Chademo: Level 3 charging technology for EV developed by TEPCO and other Japanese companies. See here for details.

• EREV, REEV, or SPHEV: extended range, range extended, or series plug-in hybrid electric vehicle; ICE-assisted EV, like Volt. See here for details.

• EVSE: electric vehicle service equipment; charging station. See here for details. 

• HEV: hybrid electric vehicle; hybrid between ICE and EV, like Toyota Prius. See here for details.

• HICE: hydrogen internal combustion engine; evolutionary approach to bridge the gap between current propulsion technologies and hydrogen fuel cells as one of the primary power sources for transportation. See here for details.

• Hymotion: technology to convert HEV to PHEV. See here for details.

• ICE: internal combustion engine; ordinary gasoline-fueled vehicle. See here for details.

• Level 1, 2, and 3 charging: different levels of charging technologies. See here for details.

• NEV: neighborhood electric vehicle; low-speed (25–35 miles per hour) EV. See here for details.

• PHEV, PEV, or PHV: plug-in hybrid electric vehicle; hybrid vehicle that utilizes rechargeable batteries or another energy storage device that can be restored to full charge by connecting a plug to an external electric power source. See here for details.

• SAE J1772: North American standard for electrical connectors for EVs, maintained by the Society of Automotive Engineers. See here for details.

• SCE: Southern California Edison. See here for details.

• SG: smart grid. See here for details.

• UEV: urban electric vehicle; low-speed (less than 60 miles per hour with a 50 mile driving distance) EV. See here for details.

• V2G: vehicle to grid; uses EV battery to feed power to the grid. See here for details.

• V2H: vehicle to home; uses EV battery to feed power to home. See here for details: 

Japan’s power crunch was real this summer. But as the temperature goes down this fall, the power balance appears to be holding up. Come winter, the same power crunch is expected. The power shortage was in the territory of Tohoku Electric Power Co. and TEPCO (serving the Tokyo metropolitan and surrounding areas), but it spread to the entire nation because of halted nuclear power plants. Since their checkups, none of the nuclear reactors have been restarted. Out of 54 reactors, only 10 are currently in operation. By next spring, none of them will be running. So I thought the fever for EVs would subside significantly because people would be more conscious of how much power they use. I think I was wrong.

The Nikkei Shimbun (similar to the Wall Street Journal) recently reported the improvement and advancement of batteries for several applications, including EVs.

Toyota came up with a battery that allows an EV to go 622 miles (1,000 km), which is comparable to a gasoline-fueled car. Mazda developed materials that double the capacity of a battery. The Nissan Leaf is an EV I am beginning to see around here in Silicon Valley as well as in Japan. The picture below is of a Leaf taxi in Osaka.

If I remember correctly, a Leaf can go 62 miles with a fully charged battery. This does not help a commuter between San Jose and San Francisco who needs to drive at least 90 miles a day. But 620 miles would be sufficient. For distances like this, the purchase price of an EV is reasonable, and the power cost is comparable with that of a gas-fueled car. I am sold on the EV.

Toyota is working with Tokyo Institute of Technology on new technology to improve capacity. They have created a prototype that allows an EV to travel the 622 miles (1,000 km) cited above. They plan to put this into practice in 2015. Toyota will take the cost information outlined in the Battery RM2010 set by the New Energy and Industrial Technology Development Organization (NEDO), which established the rechargeable battery technology development road map (Battery RM2010, Japanese only). I will summarize the road map in future blogs, but for now I will report that it expects battery cost in 20 years to be 10-20% of what it is today.

In addition to EVs, NEC has developed a lithium battery with manganese, rather than cobalt, electrodes. The former are one-twentieth the cost of the latter. This type lasts five to six years longer than the current version, which lasts seven to eight years. They plan to further improve it so that it could last 20 years.

With these improvements and progress, a battery with large capacity and rapid charging may become reality sooner than we think. With that, power generated by renewable energy sources may become baseline power. I cannot wait for that day!

Two outcomes of this situation hitting ordinary Japanese daily life are a power crunch and higher electricity bills. At this point, as in the US, if nuclear energy cannot provide adequate power, the only alternative is thermal power generation. In Japan, the fuel for thermal generation is either coal or LNG. If greater reliance is placed on thermal energy, the higher cost of those fuels will raise the cost of generating electricity. The utilities, including Tokyo Electric Power Co. (TEPCO), plan to raise the electricity price for consumers. Japanese consumers have had no other way to obtain electricity but from the existing local monopoly. The figure below shows the power grid infrastructure in Japan.

The infrastructure is similar to that of the US except for the differences in voltage levels and other miscellaneous points. In Japan, average consumers (those using less than 50 kWh) pay about 20 cents per kilowatt hour, while large customers (those using more than 50 kWh) pay about 13 cents per kilowatt hour. Moreover, since the substations closer to the power plants are deregulated, large customers have the option to buy power from independent power generators. TEPCO explains the price difference as follows. As the figure illustrates, large customers receive power from substations closer to power plants, so the delivery cost is smaller. The average consumer receives power through long and complex distribution networks, so the delivery cost is higher.

Average customers did not have any other option until now. In Japan, land is limited and having a single-family house in an urban area is almost impossible unless you are superrich. Many people live in multitenant dwelling units (MTDU). Because each home contracts with utilities separately, the consumption is surely below 50 kWh. What if all the residents in the same building combine to contract with utilities? Japan is gradually taking this approach. The payback (ROI) is about five years, and many residents in MTDU are becoming aware of this option. Some barriers exist, such as getting the consensus of every single household in a building.

With this system, power bills may go down, and at the same time, demand/response can be used to curtail power demands when supply is tight.

Molten salt has a set of good characteristics for battery technology:

• nonflammability

• nonvolatility

• high ion density

• compactness

Until now, high temperature (over 100°C ) was necessary to keep the salt molten. The patent-pending technology that SEI and Kyoto University developed keeps the salt molten at a temperature as low as 57°C. The battery has high energy density and a large output. They are currently experimenting with the battery and plan to put it to use in 2015.

Finally, the following table compares four types of batteries. I’ve reported on the NAS battery, one type of sodium-sulfur battery, before.

Japan is not known for completely new inventions but is good at improving what has been invented. I welcome any progress in improving battery technology, because batteries play a key role in advancing smart grid.

Putting several components together to provide enough power for home use is not that easy; one hurdle is purchasing and installing an appropriate battery. What if we use what is already available? In addition to solar panels, Japan has been pushing EVs. An interesting experiment begun in Yokohama last year involves residential homes and offices, EVs, and communications. The major components are Sekisui House, Nissan (EVs), and NTT (femtocell).

With those vendors forming an ecosystem, it is like integrating preassembled components to form a complete system. Controlling power use is done via a TV screen powered by the energy generated by solar panels. You can distribute power to store in the battery of your EV or sell what you don’t need. If you need to use the EV tomorrow, you might want to charge the battery. When you need power at home, you can take it from the battery. Another objective of the project is to establish the communication protocol for the green house, femtocell, and EVs.

There have been a lot of similar experiments, but this one is different in its inclusion of the EV as a battery. The close integration of EVs may provide the key to success.

That is exactly what happened on September 15 in Korea, only a week after the San Diego outage. The cause of the outage in the San Diego Gas and Electric territory is still under investigation. However, the Korean outage seems to be because of human error. To get as much information as possible, I checked with several Korean and Japanese newspapers. I checked the Japanese papers because Korean papers did not include power usage and capacity information, while Japan's Sankei Shimbun reported a good set of quantitative information on power demand and supply.

According to both the Chosun and the Sankei Shimbun, at around 2 p.m. on September 18 demand surged unexpectedly, and by 3p.m. the power reserve fell below 3,000 MW. The person in charge at Korean Electric Power Company (KEPCO), which generates more than 90% of Korea’s power, ordered a shutdown. The supply that day was estimated at 64,000 MW, but it actually went up to 67,260 MW. Stability is maintained if the reserve is at least 1,000 MW. Even though they had a cushion of 2,000 MW, the person in charge panicked and ordered a complete shutdown. Usually, KEPCO is required to check with a government agency before a shutdown. But that step was bypassed, and without any objections from within, either. Because of this, people lost power with no prior notice or warning. More than 2 million households and buildings lost power, causing a lot of disruptions like the those we had in San Diego. 

It was the San Diego outage all over again—this time in Korea. We don’t yet know the cause of the outage in San Diego, but this outage in Korea was definitely the result of human error. Two errors were committed. The first was the mistake in estimating demand, and the second was not following the emergency steps. The first is worse than the second. Although the calendar tells us it is the end of summer and hot weather, it is still very hot in that region—easily over 90°F—yet the KEPCO staff somehow underestimated demand. Accordingly, they shut down some nuclear and thermal plants for checkups, and supply went down. They restarted all of them and now have a total supply of 78,840 MW. In Korea, the demand in summertime has been increasing; the highest demand was 69,890 MW, recorded last summer. The way things are going, it may go over the 73,140 MW recorded in January of this year.

The second mistake would not have happened if enough supply had been prepared. However, it is surprising to me that the major utility in a country still technically at war with North Korea panicked and did not follow emergency protocols. They still had 3,000 MW in reserve (2,000 MW to go) but shut down the supply without any warnings or consultation with the government. KEPCO should have warned people before abruptly shutting down power, or implemented rolling blackouts rather than shut down the entire country.

With power outages in Japan (in March), San Diego (last week), and Korea (this week), power supply seems to be on shaky ground. Yes, we have nearly perfected a way to balance demand and supply by estimating demand and allocating enough power for it. But once something goes wrong, whether by human error or other reasons, we can lose power easily. As power becomes one of the most important infrastructures in our society, its supply should be secured and maintained. Power generation and delivery have not changed much from the days of Edison. And the same system is used all over the world. An outage like this will happen again unless we completely change the way power is generated and delivered. I wonder if smart grid will make the power supply much more stable. And if so, will it happen during my lifetime?

The states in color are under CSAPR. (Source: EPA)

CSAPR forces utilities to emit less of harmful substances like SO₂ and NOx into the air. EPA thinks this is the best way to protect US citizens from harmful substances in the air and save lives. ERCOT and the Texas utilities complain that enough power cannot be generated to meet demand if this rule is enforced in Texas. EPA claims that something like this has been overdue and that ERCOT and the Texas utilities were warned a long time ago. EPA further claims that the financial impact of this rule is not as big as ERCOT and the utilities claim. They also claim that initially Texas was exempt from this rule. And if they conform to this rule, some of the thermal power plants will have to be idle for some hours a day or be shut down altogether to keep emissions within the range allowed. That will make the power crunch even worse.

One remedy is to use the kind of coal that contains less sulfur. ERCOT and the utilities claim that the availability of such coal is not guaranteed or that not enough time is available to modify the thermal plants to take the different kind of coal by January 2012, when the rule goes into effect. Luminant announced it would take further action and shut down two of its thermal plants, laying off 500 people who work at the plants, if the rule is put into effect.It also has filed a lawsuit against EPA to stop the application of CSAPR to Texas.

I do not have enough objective data to judge which side’s claims are right. But people in Texas will be stuck in the middle and may suffer from the power crunch even more. A few things came to me when I heard of this.

1. The scale of the Texas Interconnection is much smaller than the Eastern and the Western Interconnections.  Disturbances tend to create bigger problems in small grids. Texas wants to stay as independent as possible and is reluctant to connect with the other two interconnections closely. Technically, closer connections would relieve the current and future crunches because the grid would become more stable and more power could be imported from outside the Texas Interconnection.

2. One way to balance demand and supply is to control demand. Is it reasonable to assume that controlling demand alone could maintain a healthy balance? I tend to think that is not the only solution. It should be used with other means.

3. Aside from changing the coal type to emit less SO₂, is it reasonable and affordable to apply a technology like carbon capture to contain CO₂ and a technology to remove harmful gases like SO₂ so that they’re not released into the air? I wonder if the utilities would rather shut down the plants than invest further in such a technology.

4. Regardless of the lawsuit outcome, the days of the coal-based thermal plant are numbered. Other sources need to be developed and cultivated in place of coal-thermal plants. In Texas, wind is 7.8% of all power sources, and growing. The current and planned wind farms are shown in the following figure. The stronger the wind, the higher the class number. Existing wind farms are concentrated in the northwest of the state and in the Panhandle. Those planned are along the Gulf Coast (offshore).

Specifically regarding #4, power generated with variable energy sources tends to vary in amount and to be unstable. As long as the total amount of unstable power is smaller than the entire amount of energy stored in the power grid, no harm will be done. But beyond some point, such unstable power will disturb the grid. North American Electric Reliability Corporation (NERC) created a task force, called Integration of Variable Generation, to investigate the problem. I will summarize their findings in a future blog.

Actually, TEPCO had only four days of emergency power watches; the rest of the days were well within the supply capacity range. TEPCO restarted old thermal power stations and attained a total capacity of 55,700 MW. Some analysts estimated that a 19% reduction in power use was accomplished in the TEPCO region. Of that total, 5% was because of cooler temperatures, and 14% was the result of conservation.

What will happen to Japan now? Is consumption going to be lighter during the day and night? One noticeable change is to vending machines. Unlike in the US, vending machines are everywhere, including machines that dispense cigarettes and alcoholic beverages. Between TEPCO and Tohoku Electric Power Company, there are about 1.1 million of them. Their lights and cooling were turned off during the day and the night to save power, but lighting and cooling will soon be restored.

Vending machine with lighting and cooling turned off

Train service will return to normal, and some equipment, including escalators and ticket readers at entrances, will be 100% functional. While the order has been in effect, some of the equipment was offline to save power.

Streamlined ticket-reading machines and dimmed subway entrance

Many big businesses, including Hitachi, Mitsubishi, and NTT, shifted their working schedules and worked on weekends, taking Thursdays and Fridays off. But people in certain positions who need to interact with other companies that kept the normal schedule could not take any time off. The inconvenience mounted, and it is estimated that the GDP from July to September 2011 will have declined by close to $8B (5.6%), with an additional 200,000 people unemployed.

As I dig into more on the use of power by renewable energies like solar and wind, I am less optimistic that nuclear power can be replaced within a decade or so. I will discuss that sometime in the future.

According to Wikipedia, DVP's North Anna nuclear plant has a generation capacity of 1.8 GW. Two reactors currently in operation were built in 1978 and 1980, so the plant has been in operation for more than 30 years. They are only 60 miles from Richmond and 90 miles from Washington, D.C. My impression is that the reactors are pretty close to large cities. What happens if a nuclear emergency takes place so near major cities?

When the Fukushima plant first began to emit radiation, the Japanese government initially set a 5-km-radius evacuation zone, then gradually increased it to 10 km and then to 20 km. In the US, two zones are predefined for nuclear plant emergencies. The first has a 16 km (10 mile) radius (direct contamination) and the second has an 80 km (50 mile) radius (indirect contamination). At the time of the Fukushima accident, the US embassy in Tokyo warned all the US citizens in the Fukushima region to evacuate outside the 80 km (50 mile) radius, in accordance with the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s guideline. The embassy was simply doing what was in the manual for nuclear disasters.

This confused many Japanese people in the region because the Japanese government set a very narrow zone for evacuation and gradually increased it. Some thought the severity of the situation was much worse than what their own government said. But many thought the Americans were exaggerating the incident. That might be half true. Many non-Japanese in Tokyo, which is 135 miles away from the plant, started to flee Japan. We now know that that was not necessary.

But the US government probably knew what was going on, because the US force in Japan probably knew where and how radiation was flowing in the region. It shared that information with the Japanese government. The Japanese government independently had information about where radiation was flowing but did not share that information with people in Fukushima. The radiation was flowing northwest from the plant, beyond 20 km. Many evacuees incidentally followed the path along the flow of radiation. Many of these people, including children, were certainly exposed to radiation. After six months, we know that the Japanese government did not have a solid plan for evacuation in case of a nuclear disaster.

What was the cause of this disaster? Fukushima’s problem was the loss of power to cool reactors and spent fuel pools. The reactors shut down automatically and did not break because of earthquakes or the tsunami. The power grid was knocked out, and emergency power was not available because the basement where the diesel generators were was flooded. North Anna had five available backup diesel generators with enough fuel for 30 days. Grid power was restored on the same day, and backup power was working well, according to CNN.

From this we know that cooling is essential to maintain the safe operation of nuclear reactors. Fukushima’s problem would not have escalated as it did if emergency backup power had been operational. It is ironic that power generators need other sources of power to cool themselves. Emergency backup power is currently limited to diesel generators. Although disasters at data centers are not life threatening like nuclear accidents, they can make a huge impact on people’s lives and on society. I wonder if we will get some alternative ways of securing power beyond diesel generators anytime soon.

Japan still cannot decide what to do with its energy policy. Public sentiment was to replace nuclear power with power from renewable energy. But it will take many decades before renewable energies can replace all the nuclear power plants. As for DVP, they plan to go ahead and get approval for North Anna 3 (the third reactor) in 2013. I think we need to keep nuclear plants and gradually replace them with other sources of energy, even though it may take 10 to 30 years.

What Kan did confused many people and stalled the progress of energy policy discussions. As the situation with the damaged nuclear reactors worsened, public sentiment went anti-nuke without suggesting any replacement energy sources. Kan rode this trend and did the following:

1. He stopped one of the nuclear power plants located at the shoreline and on a fault line. But he did not touch any other plant that might be as dangerous as it.

2. When one of his ministers okayed the restarting of a reactor that passed its checkup, he overrode that decision by imposing another stress test that is yet to be decided. The funny thing is that all the reactors currently in operation can continue to run without the stress test, but those undergoing a checkup must have an additional stress test.

3. Kan declared "out of nukes” for Japan’s energy policy and forced a renewable energy promotion draft, which is now a law mandating the buy-out of all the power generated by renewable energy sources.

4. Japan is still in talks with countries like Turkey and Vietnam for the sale of its nuclear technologies.

If you do not know Japanese politics, you may think Japan has dumped nukes and dived into renewable energies, like Germany and Italy. But it is not that simple. There are still a lot of entities, including the Ministry of Economy, Trade, and Industry and big businesses, that want to keep nukes alive. There seem to be three kinds of people on the nuke issue:

1. Radical anti-nuke people who want to stop all the nukes immediately.

2. People who want to keep nukes for now but gradually phase them out.

3. People who want to keep nukes as before.

Right after the quake and when the reactors were still emitting radiation, the first type of people were everywhere. As the situation stabilizes, the second type is gaining momentum. The third type has been quiet for fear of being bashed. The problem with this discussion is that many people do not seem to understand that in order to balance demand and supply, three kinds of power sources are necessary: base load, middle load and peak load. Base-load power is run all the time and generates minimally necessary power constantly and reliably. In the US, nuclear and coal are used for that. In Japan, nuclear and hydro are used.

The question is, if nukes are dumped, can renewable energies replace them as the base-load power sources? Solar and wind, major renewable energy sources, are variable in nature and cannot provide power constantly and reliably without support from energy storage and/or another energy source, such as natural gas. Although energy storage technologies, such as batteries, are making progress, they are not ready for utility-scale deployment at a reasonable cost. Supporting wind or solar with something like natural gas goes against the spirit of being totally renewable, because natural gas is a fossil energy source and its combustion produces CO₂ and other harmful gases, even though it is better than coal or oil.

As this information spreads, the type-1 people seem to be losing power and the type-2 people are gaining momentum. I guess many of the type-2 people do not understand that it will be many years before renewable energies can overtake nuclear power. With the advent of many ICT technologies, controlling the degree of output by renewable energies is getting better. However, I am not sure if we will ever reach the level of nuclear or coal.

This problem is not unique to Japan. As I see nuclear plants shut down after the recent but rare earthquake on the East Coast, the US may also need to consider replacing nukes sometime in the future. I wonder when we can make renewable energies as dependable as fossil energies?

Indirect impacts are being felt elsewhere, including Tokyo, which has depended on power produced by the nuclear reactors. TEPCO, Japan’s biggest utility company, serves the Tokyo metropolitan and surrounding areas but runs nuclear reactors far outside its territory. The government formerly pushed nuclear power to solve the energy problem—Japan imports close to 100% of all its required energy, and nuclear power was seen as the means to maintaining energy independence. When nuclear power plants were planned, people in Tokyo did not want them in their neighborhood. So the government offered villages that were suffering from little or no business economic stimulus funds in exchange for sites for nukes. That is why many nuclear plants were built in remote villages.

The government declared a power emergency at the beginning of summer and imposed 15% mandatory power conservation on big businesses and factories. This is similar to Emergency Alerts 1 and 2, currently enforced in Texas by ERCOT, as reported here.

There were some exceptions, such as hospitals, trains, and data centers, but everyone, including average consumers at home, was encouraged (but not ordered) to conserve power. The total power consumption meter displaying real-time data for the TEPCO territory was put where as many people as possible could see it: in train stations, on buildings (these were giant displays), on websites, on Twitter, and elsewhere. Except for a few days, demand fell visibly, and no rolling blackouts took place. TEPCO is canceling the power emergency as of September 9, two weeks ahead of the planned date.

There are a few reasons for the successful completion of the power emergency. I stayed most of July in Japan and can comment on them firsthand.

1. The curtailment of power use by large businesses and factories worked. Those entities shifted their business hours and/or worked on weekends, with Thursdays and Fridays off.

2. Average people voluntarily tried their best to conserve power.

3. The media encouraged people to conserve power and showed many innovative ways to get cool other than by turning on the air conditioning.

Before immigrating to the US, I was born and brought up in Japan, so I can see why this worked fine. In short, many Japanese have a tendency to endure hardships without complaining.

Factory workers needed to change their shifts so that they could work during the night, when power demand was low. Office workers needed to come to work one or two hours earlier to save power. Many had a hard time adjusting their lives and arranging day care for their kids and elderly relatives. Restaurants had to adjust their business hours to accommodate the change as well. Office workers needed to work when it was 86°F with 70% humidity. A packed train at rush hour without air conditioning is intolerable; I cannot recommend it, even just as an experience. Many people, several times more than in an average year, were sent to hospital with heat exhaustion because air conditioning was off to save power.

Now that their summer with power conservation is over, winter will be another test for Japan. Nuclear reactors are run for 13 months and stopped for checkups for three months, by Japanese law. Many reactors, once stopped for checkup, will not be restarted, because the government has no firm policy to restart them. Cold weather may not demand as much power as hot, but there will be less power. We will soon see what happens.

I follow the status of US utilities on Twitter, and I learned this summer that Texas had a power shortage this year. I once lived in the suburbs of Dallas and know how brutal its summer is without AC. Luckily, I never experienced a power shortage when I was there.

The US transmission system consists of three independent subsystems. (See above.) The Texas subsystem is the smallest and tends to be self-sufficient. The Electricity Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) is an independent systems operator with responsibility for balancing the power within its territory—most of Texas.

I checked ERCOT's press releases from the beginning of summer through August 24. ERCOT defines three levels of power shortages and procedures for them: power watch (alert level 1), power warning (alert level 2), and power emergency (alert level 3).

They are defined as follows:

• Level 1 allows ERCOT to bring on uncommitted generation and power from neighboring grids.

• Level 2 calls for dropping load-resource customers (large industrial and commercial customers that have been paid to accept the risk of interruption). The second part of Level 2 calls for dropping additional interruptible loads in the load-reduction program if necessary to maintain system frequency.

• At Level 3, ERCOT instructs utilities to reduce demand on the grid by conducting temporary outages at the local distribution level. These controlled temporary interruptions of electrical service, or rotating outages, typically last 15–40 minutes before being rotated to a different neighborhood.

Level 1 is issued when the reserve goes under 2,300 MW. Those alerts have been issued several times with different degrees of severity. (See below.)

I will cover the winter power shortage later and focus on the summer shortage now.

None of the emergency alerts lasted very long; they were dismissed on the same day. ERCOT attributes the power shortage to the unusually hot summer and the increase in demand as a result of population growth. In addition, some power plants may not have been available for power generation because of technical and operational difficulties. ERCOT asked two power generators to stand by to restart older thermal generators at a moment’s notice. They also imported power from the neighboring Southwest Power Pool. Luckily enough, there have not been any rotating blackouts so far this summer.

According to ERCOT, peak power demand from May 1 to August 24 was as follows:

ERCOT also published peak power demand information from 2000 to 2010. The peak is gradually increasing, as the graph below shows.

Now, let me take a look at the power situation earlier this year. The rotating power outages actually occurred during winter, on February 2. Although the peak demand was less than the available power, it was not by much. On February 2, peak demand was at 56,334 MW; the previous record was 55,878 MW. The severe cold weather affected some generation capacity of 5,000 MW, so it was not available. Even though the total peak demand is less than that of summer, the planned capacity may not be enough to meet the demand.

What is the remedy for this? One easy solution is to maintain reserve power and get ready for surges in power demand. But it is quite expensive to keep idle power plants standing by. The second thought is to implement energy efficiency to the maximum. Actually, the level 2 warning implements demand/response and shuts down some large customers. This works fine but has big impacts on businesses and cannot be used all the time. Besides, this is after the power shortage has already happened. More energy efficiency measures must be taken beforehand. The third solution is to import power from other grids. They have already done that. But their import is limited and ERCOT may be reluctant to increase the import to be independent. But this appears to be the most reasonable approach, along with the increase of power generated by solar and wind energy.

Will Texas have rotating blackouts again next winter? I will keep watching to see how they solve this problem.

This must be working well. This July has been pretty hot. but power usage is around 85% of power capacity. I looked at power usage closely for the past few days and show the results in the following table.

The supply changes from one day to another, depending upon the power usage prediction. Overall, this power shifting scheme seems to be working well. However, behind the scenes, working parents are struggling to find child care during the weekends. As in the US, child care services during the weekend are very limited. The power shifting schedule is only for the summer months, and changing day care for children just for these months may not be easy.

On a related subject, Prime Minister Kan, who is very unpopular, is not clear about the energy policy. One day he declared he was getting rid of nuclear power completely, but later he toned that down to a gradual departure from nuclear power. The Ministry of Economy, Trade, and Industry (METI) is a proponent of nuclear power even at this point. Recently, it was learned that METI, utilities, and local governments were involved in swaying public opinion for nuclear power during public hearings. People are very skeptical about what the government says these days. It will be a long time before Japan decides on a long-term energy policy.

I had a few questions about this idea.

1. An EV requires about the same amount of power as the home itself. Do we have enough power even to support EVs in the first place?

2. The battery capacity is very limited. Can we afford to send electricity in the battery back to the grid?

3. The battery’s life depends upon how many cycles it goes through. Won’t using it to support the grid impose extra cycles and shorten its life?

In Japan, Toyota and others are getting serious about vehicle to home (V2H). In Japan, even before the major quake and the resultant power shortage, PV, in the form of solar panels on rooftops, and EVs were popular. These two were considered examples of what smart grid was all about. Now that the power shortage that began in the TEPCO (Tokyo – Yokohama) area has spread to other service areas—CEPCO (Nagoya) and KEPCO (Osaka-Kyoto-Kobe-Nara)—how has this perception changed?

Toyota, located in CEPCO’s service area, has been actively experimenting with V2H with manufacturers like Panasonic and Hitachi and with a wind power company to maximize power use at home. PV may be put into the mix for self-sustaining power generation and consumption. I am still somewhat skeptical about V2H, much less V2G, because of those three questions of mine.

I am not very familiar with PV’s total generation capacity, but I do not think it is enough to charge an EV fully. The battery capacity and the number of cycles must be improved substantially to support V2H. The second and third problems are concerned with batteries. So I am still skeptical.

Still, Japan is in a real power shortage. Its market and people’s mentality are completely changed since March 11. When real needs arise, technologies and processes dismissed before may be deemed reasonable and break into the mainstream. What about the US? I am not sure whether there is a driver here like the one Japan suffered from.

Regardless of V2G or V2H, improvement in battery technologies is important for stabilizing power demand and supply and exploiting variable renewable energy sources like sun and wind.

I am not an expert in transformers, but I know they explode when they get too hot. According to a friend of mine who is an expert in grid infrastructure, transformers do fail, although not very often. As many others have pointed out, our nation’s power infrastructure is aging. Transformers are no exception. They blow up when they process excess power and overheat. If they are old, their chance of blowing up increases.

These are some of the places reporting transformer blowups:

• Binghamton, New York

• Ballston, Virginia

• Ellicott, Colorado

• Ferndale, Michigan

Excess power use causes overheating, which leads to transformer failure.

This is another reason to modernize our power infrastructure to sustain increased demand.

The US has a chronic power shortage problem. Japan, before March 11, was looking from the other side of the river and commenting on it. Now Japan needs to conserve power as a result of its own shortage. I stayed there for two weeks in early to mid-July and did not enjoy the power conservation much, especially when office ACs were set at 84°F or higher. I stayed at a relative’s place where the AC was broken. It is no fun to sleep when the room temperature is 86°F. I can sympathize with the thousands of people in Chicago who lost power and were trying to sleep when it was 90°F at 3 a.m. I lived in Chicago for five years and remember its uncomfortable summers.

There have been some heat stroke casualties reported in the Midwest and Eastern US, as in Japan. In Japan, many of the casualties had intentionally turned off their AC when they could. But it is a shame in this country that people cannot even turn on ACs because there is no power for them. Smart grid with grid modernization needs to be accelerated.

I recently visited NGK and asked them about their battery. I reported earlier on their NAS battery installation at Tohoku Electric Power Co., to compensate for the shortage of power in the Tohoku region, which was hit hardest by the March earthquake.

Some analysts have written that the adoption of smart grid technology is slow because utilities tend to be conservative and take ample time before deciding to adopt new technologies. If this is true of any utility, a pilot project with one utility is usually not recyclable for other utilities. So the same pilot needs to be repeated with other utilities, greatly slowing the speed of adoption. I asked NGK representatives whether that is true of Japanese utilities. They said that it is the same as in the US. The NAS battery project was initiated by TEPCO, and NGK became a partner in it.

These are the merits of NAS batteries:

• Compact size (one-third the size of the lead-acid equivalent)

• Long life

• Made of abundantly available materials

• High efficiency in charging and discharging

These are some of their demerits:

• Must be kept at a high temperature (around 300°C)

An NGK brochure compares NAS, lead-acid, lithium-ion, and NiMH (nickel-metal hydride) batteries as shown below:

The NGK 7 battery lasts about 4,500 cycles （one cycle is one charging and one discharging). Fifteen years times 300 days a year equals 4,500 cycles. Each box is container-sized, about 5 x 5 x 10 meters, and can provide a different level of power, such as 0.5 MW, 1 MW, and 2 MW. The desired level can be produced by combining these boxes. This battery takes about eight hours to charge and six hours to discharge. Charging takes place at night when power is abundant (because of low demand), and discharging takes place during peak time (some three hours or so). The NAS battery can be installed at several places in the power system—at generation facilities, at different levels of substations, at large businesses and factories. A data center also may be a good candidate for its use; the NAS battery, instead of a diesel-based generator that produces CO₂ and other harmful gases, could be engaged to provide emergency power. The NAS battery does not make any undesirable noise or cause shaking. Maintenance is easy.

NGK’s strategy is to work with utilities like TEPCO to provide utility-scale power storage. NGK also works with plants that generate power from renewable sources, such as solar and wind.

Energy storage is very important in two areas.

First, every day a balancing authority tries to balance power demand and power supply at each moment in real time. We can only guess demand at a given moment; we cannot really know exactly what it is. If the power balance is disturbed, the entire power grid becomes unstable, and a blackout may occur. We walk a tightrope in estimating how to balance demand and supply at each moment of every day. If we had power storage, we could use it to smooth out demand and supply, and it would become easier to balance them.

Second, energy storage can be used to smooth out power from unstable sources like solar and wind, which produce power intermittently. Such power cannot be entered into the grid without some smoothing. The grid can absorb a small amount with little impact, but as more power comes from renewable sources, the grid will feel the impact and could become unstable.

Although NGK operates some NAS installations in Japan, many are in the United States and Europe, especially those for renewable energy plants. In the US, NGK works with American Electric Power , which operates in 11 states (Arkansas, Indiana, Kentucky, Louisiana, Michigan, Ohio, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia, and West Virginia). NGK's solutions are installed at four substations in West Virginia, Ohio, and Indiana. Operation began in 2006 with the purpose of leveling loads and providing an emergency power supply. The capacity of the batteries is either 1 MW or 2 MW, for a total of 7 MW.

Other customers include Electric Transmission Texas, for standby and emergency power supply; New York Power Authority, for load leveling; and Xcel Energy, for wind-power smoothing and stabilizing. NGK also has customers in Germany and France.

TEPCO, which serves Tokyo and Yokohama and is the biggest utility in Japan, has been telling everyone to conserve power, but recently it made an interesting comment. One of their spokesmen said that power consumption in the TEPCO area is well under control, in spite of the unusually hot summer. But he cautioned that power conservation should be continued because TEPCO needs to send power to KEPCO, which may run out of power this summer. Some people did some calculations on the power supply by adding up the available thermal, hydro, and nuclear power. The sum is well beyond the estimated demands. Moreover, TEPCO and other utilities are providing less capacity, even though they have the ability to generate more power, and appear to be claiming that nuclear power is necessary to meet power demands in Japan.

There are a lot of discussions going on regarding what needs to be done to the energy policy. The radical and emotional calls to completely get rid of nuclear power have died down somewhat. However, antinuclear sentiment is still pretty high. The gradual departure from nuclear power is inevitable, but many people do not realize that renewable energies cannot immediately replace nuclear power. Until energy storage technologies are capable of greater capacity, renewable energies cannot be used in the mainstream. Energy storage technologies come in several different forms, such as pressurized air, pumped hydro, and batteries. Both pressurized air and pumped hydro require specific geographic conditions and may not be available in many places. On the contrary, battery technologies are making some progress. Batteries may be placed in some strategic places in the power grid, such as at generation sites, substations, and consumer premises (including EV's battery). See here and here for the actual battery use for storage.

Once different types of batteries are placed (the large capacity type at generation sites, medium capacity at substations, and smaller capacity at consumer premises), it would be necessary to use information and communication technologies to balance and optimize their use, smoothing out power demand and supply.

The Japanese people tend to trust their government and utilities, but some have started to doubt the statements coming from them. Many people are suffering unnecessarily from the power shortage.

I recently chatted with people at Yamatake. They agreed that their market share is 60%, but they wanted to correct me by pointing out that 60% is for the lower layer, but there is also the upper layer to consider. They used the term field for the lower layer. The field is the local area that directly connects a control system to equipment, such as HVAC. The upper layer is for a larger view to consolidate equipment. They told me that they have roughly a 30% share in the upper layer. Even if that is the case, talking to the market leader helps me understand what building management systems are like in Japan. Incidentally, number two in that market is Johnson Controls’ Japan operation.

Two layers of BMS

Some of the noteworthy points of our conversation follow.

Networking Protocols

Before my visit, I researched the BMS segment in Japan and wrote a blog on it. The Japanese market is different from the US in having only three major protocols: BACnet, LonWorks, and Modbus. Modbus is pretty much limited to switches and can be seen at data centers. There is some use of LonWorks, but the majority use BACnet. This meeting confirmed that information.

But this fact is also interesting: Yamatake dominates the market, but more than 50% of their customers still run their proprietary solutions (control bus or C-bus) rather than BACnet. In Japan, those who are running legacy protocols do not seem to upgrade them to BACnet. This is different from other Asian countries and Australia, which want to move to BACnet.

Technology Refresh Cycles

We talked about the technology refresh for buildings in comparison with IT's. IT's refresh cycle is one to three years, and the building technology refresh cycle is around 20 years. IT tries to update technologies as often as possible, but building operators do not. This observation is true for both the US and Japanese markets.

MPX

I was wondering whether a multiprotocol exchange (MPX) like Tridium/Niagara is also used in Japan. The Tridium/Niagara system has been used in Japan. According to Yamatake’s people, Panasonic was very active in using the system by Japanizing it. But they do not hear about it much anymore. Yamatake’s people use Tridium/Niagara in their data center projects.

Wireless

Regarding wireless communications like ZigBee, in Japan only the 2.4 GHz band is available now. When there are more bands, wireless will be used more.

IT and Facilities Integration

I asked about integrating data from both IT and facilities. This is known as data center infrastructure management (DCIM), and it is getting hotter in the US. See here. Although it isn’t necessary for conducting data integration, integrating IT and facilities into one organization might make it easier. Gartner has pointed out that more and more US enterprises put both IT and facilities under their CFO. According to Yamatake, such a top-down structure might not work very well in Japan. Even if the organization is structured that way, those who actually do the work may decide on the final process and how to run the project.

Yamatake’s people asked me why such integration is required in the first place. I told them that those who are responsible for the energy on an entire campus or throughout an enterprise need to consolidate data coming from both IT and facilities. Although they agreed that there is such a need, they questioned whether the integrated data must be visualized in real time. The only exception to this is for data center operations, because it makes sense to integrate temperature and air-flow information with facilities operations like cooling. Except for data centers, real-time data integration (of different formats and types) may not be necessary, but I think data integration is necessary anyway.

Customer Reaction to IP

In the US, some customers demand the use of IP to keep their BMS from becoming obsolete. In Japan, BMS operators do not care as long as they can operate the systems easily.

Similarities and Differences between the US and Japanese Markets

I think the US and Japanese BMS markets are more similar than different.

Similarities:

• Both face the difficult integration of IT and facilities.

• IP is discussed at the upper layer rather than the lower (the field).

Differences:

• The US market sustains more protocols, and the Japanese market has only three, BACnet, LonWorks, and Modbus.

• The top-down organizational structure that works in the US may not work well in Japan.

What I’ve found out so far about the market in both the US and Japan leads me to believe that IP is going to penetrate (or already has penetrated) the upper layer. But penetration into the lower layer may take a building life cycle, which is some 20 years.

Kan then started to issue many ideas to de-emphasize the issue of his resignation. First he played with the idea of stopping nuclear reactors. He never clearly indicated whether he would like to shut down all of them. It is believed that he would dissolve the lower house with a referendum on nuclear power. That might result in a win for his party, which otherwise, because it is very unpopular, might lose power after the election. (The prime minister can dissolve the lower house at any time.) Most Japanese will support moving away from nuclear power and his position should get a lot of applause. But Kan stopped short of drawing a clear road map to future energy policies. Japan gets 30% of its power from nuclear energy, so the business sector is worried about a power shortage. There is no replacement for nuclear power at this point. Renewable energy plants are too small to take over where nuclear power leaves off. If Japan decides to move away from nuclear power, how should it do so? What should the schedule and energy sources be? Kan has not provided any details, and many people speculate that he has no idea what they should be.

His second idea is related to the issue of future nuclear power. He indicated that Japan should move away from nuclear power and shift its focus to renewable energy. A bill that forces utilities to buy power at a fixed cost (high enough to sustain business for renewable energy providers) is being introduced. If passed, the law will be reviewed for continuation in 2020. The sources of renewable energy are the same as in the US: solar, wind, small-scale hydro, biomass, and geothermal. The system is the same as in the US: utilities are required to buy every watt of power produced by renewable energy sources. Utilities will recover the cost by adding it to consumers’ bills. Some people are against this scheme mainly because of the cost hike. Businesses are especially wary because on top of a potential power shortage resulting from the unclear nuclear power policy, they face the price hike.

In spite of the confused state of the energy policies, some people are attempting to exploit Kan's new ideas. Masayoshi Son is president and CEO of Softbank and also runs Yahoo Japan and Softbank Mobile.  Son formed an organization with 35 prefectures (similar to states in the US), the New Energy Promotion Council(Japanese only). He is rumored to plan a run for office in the lower house once Kan dissolves it.

So when you read the news from Japan about its distancing itself from nuclear power and adopting renewable energies, you may want to know more about it because I am not sure if Kan's ideas have any substance.

It is tragic that Kan, who indicated his imminent resignation and who did not seem to have a comprehensive set of ideas, is trying to dictate the nation's long-range energy policy. As he tries to hang on to his position, many people wonder if he will ever quit on his own. Not only the opposition parties but also most of the ruling party want Kan to quit immediately. What a tragedy!

The power shortage is becoming a critical problem, spreading from the Tokyo and Tohoku regions to the entire nation. People here do not seem to be getting to the root of the problem but are concentrating on power conservation. Everyone seems to comply with the law (in the Tokyo and Tohoku regions) and the advisory (in other regions) without question. Businesses invent new ways to save power, and develop new products that save and conserve power consumption. A few people have questioned whether the halted nuclear reactors really have caused a power shortage. Some claim that using all available power sources, including dormant thermal power plants, could provide enough power without any nuclear plants. Most people do not validate such claims but instead go with power conservation.

TV and other media keep broadcasting the household power consumption ratio. It is roughly 60% AC and 20% lighting. Because of that, many households turn down or completely shut down AC in the 94°F weather. Older generations tend to comply with the power conservation laws or advisory more, and many of them (fivefold more this year than in an average year) are sent to the hospital with heat stroke.

What would Americans do if the same thing happened in the US? I think we would do the same for the nation if we were convinced that the government’s claim were true. But before jumping onto the conservation bandwagon, we would investigate the claim and, if not convinced, demand information and data so we could think for ourselves. If convinced, Americans would unite under the flag. If we decide the government is not telling the truth, we would rise up and show our disapproval by demonstrating, or whatever it takes. This is what’s missing with Japanese people.

I want to point out that the Japanese government is in disarray. The prime minister expressed his resignation in early June (everyone but the prime minister thought he declared his resignation) yet keeps introducing new policies, contradicting what his cabinet members have promised local governments. For example, one of his cabinet ministers asked a local government to restart one of the halted nuclear reactors, and the local government agreed to do so. Right after that, the prime minister denied the start of the reactor by introducing yet another test (a stress test) that imitates the one being run in Europe. The minister lost face, and the local government now refuses to restart the reactor.

The problem is that there is no clear definition of such a stress test. The stress test is a simulation with various conditions, such as shaking and tsunami-grade pressure. But the test could be manipulated easily by those who run it, and it will be run and verified by the government organizations that lost the nation’s confidence by mismanaging the accident at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant.

To resolve the difference in the conditions for restarting reactors, the prime minister talked with his cabinet and declared yet another condition. The new plan consists of two steps. The minister in charge of electricity and industry thinks the reactor could restart with the first step, but the prime minister and others require both steps to be cleared. The local governments hosting nuclear power plants are confused. So are most people in Japan.

Four months after the major quake, more than 50,000 people are still housed in school gymnasiums, 70% of the debris has not been taken care of, evacuees of the Fukushima nuclear reactor accidents have no clear information about when they can return to their homes, and 80% of donations are stuck in the pipeline and not reaching the victims. Yet, the prime minister does not resolve those problems but produces new policies to prolong his life as prime minister. His approval rate is a mere 15%, but there are no citizen demonstrations or major public voicing of complaints or demands for his resignation. The foreign media praise the calm reactions of the Japanese people, but this is ridiculous, even though I was born and brought up in Japan and am supposed to know what it’s like.

I just wish the Japanese people would wake up and do something to help themselves. With the damage from the quake, less power consumption in sympathy with the victims, the power shortage, and radiation fears within and outside the country, Japan runs the risk of hitting a second disaster as big as the quake. I only wish this would change soon for Japan.

Before I flew, I checked the news and information from friends here. I was expecting a real hell, but it is not too bad, relatively speaking.

Lighting: Lighting is dimmed in train stations, trains, some public places, and offices. In attending several meetings, I noticed darker office areas. The situation is quite different in the Nagoya and Osaka areas.

AC: Train stations are pretty hot and humid, and very little AC is on. Trains are not too bad, and some are well air-conditioned (I did not want to get off). Offices are pretty bad. Their ACs are set to 86°F or higher. This is pretty uncomfortable, and those who wear a jacket take it off when the meeting starts. This is not so in the Nagoya and the Osaka areas.

Escalators and elevators: The last time I was in Tokyo was May. At the time, some elevators were in operation, but many escalators were halted. This time most escalators are in operation.

Attire: Japan is a country of formal attire. Before this power shortage, I would see people in dark suits and neckties in the heat of summer. But no jacket and tie is the way to go. I feel at home.

Power consumption forecast: The forecast is given everywhere, including TV, newspapers, Twitter, and public digital displays. In spite of 94°F and higher temperatures, power consumption is well below available capacity. Businesses and people are really working hard at reducing power consumption. Large factories take Thursdays and Fridays off and operate during the weekend to exploit the lower consumption then.

Victims: Because people tend to trust and obey the government, some people try to contribute to power conservation by not turning on their AC. More and more people are being sent to the hospital with heat stroke.

Nuke controversy: The Japanese government is not clear in their policy on nuclear power. They abruptly applied pressure to stop a nuclear reactor (by law the Japanese government does not have the authority to order a shutdown) because of fear of an earthquake in its region. Several nuclear reactors were supposed to be restarted after routine checkups (every 13 months by law). Right after the government declared one of the nuclear reactors safe, the prime minister demanded more tests for safety. This confused and angered state and local governments. Moreover, the utility that wanted to restart the reactor tried to manipulate the outcome of a public hearing by sending pro-nuke emails purporting to come from average citizens with no connection to the utility. This did not help people living close to the reactor. The government is to issue its position on the operation of nukes, but if it does not convince the citizens of Japan, it is likely that all the nukes will be stopped by next spring. That will really bring on a power shortage crisis.

That has changed completely after the quake. When I was in Tokyo in May, power conservation efforts and campaigns were everywhere, even though power demands are the lowest in April and May. The situation was completely different in Osaka. People in Osaka, of course, know what’s happening in Tokyo and other cities in the eastern part of Japan. But I did not see any power conservation campaign or slogan for conservation.

Fast-forward. It is July, when power conservation is expected to increase. I leaving for Japan now. The new law to cut power consumption by 15% will take effect July 1. The law will be enforced on businesses but is only advice and a plea to individual residential consumers. Violators will be fined by the hour. It is already very hot in Japan—it hit 95°F in the past few days. A lot of people were sent to the hospital, and there were some deaths, because of heatstroke. The number of people who were sent to the hospital is several times more than in an average year. This is partly because of excessive power conservation. The government has been campaigning to conserve power. Some people took that very seriously and turned off their air conditioners. Japanese tend to conform to a government advisory. I suppose more deaths will be reported over this summer.

I, an import from Japan, will observe and experience this uncomfortable situation at first hand and will report it in my future blogs. I plan to visit Tokyo, Nagoya, and Osaka. Both Nagoya and Osaka are under advisory to conserve power because of their stalled nuclear power plants there. So everywhere I go, I will experience the hell. I usually avoid going to Japan in July and August because of the harsh weather. In May, a hotel I stayed in did not allow me to control the AC temperature, and I suspect they will do that again, in spite of the hot weather.

This is happening in Japan, where they laughed at my concern about the availability of energy and power only six months ago. I hope the same thing does not happen in the US, especially in earthquake-prone California. I conclude this blog with a word from someone in Japan: "We could only appreciate what we lost when we lost it.” Are we ready for a potential energy and power shortage?

The Tohoku area is less populated than the Tokyo region (TEPCO), and the size of business is much smaller. Like TEPCO, Tohoku cannot supply enough power because of the damage caused by the quake, and it is taking every measure to prevent blackouts in summer. One such is to install energy storage at one of the thermal plants. Tohoku announced that it will build energy storage of a capacity of 80 MW (40 units of 2 MW). This is roughly equal to supporting 50,000 households for a full day. They are used to charging during the night and discharging during the day. The construction will start in July, and Tohoku will start its operation in January 2012.

The battery used for storage is a sodium-sulfur battery by NGK Insulators, and it was selected because it is light and lasts long. NGK’s application of sodium-sulfur for a large capacity battery is probably the first attempt. In my recent interview with AES Storage, their largest capacity of battery used for energy storage is 32 MW and Tohoku’s is even larger.

NGK and TEPCO worked together to improve the sodium-sulfur battery and have provided this battery to multiple companies in the US and Europe. In the US, American Electric Power Company installed it. 

This may accelerate the investment and the installation of energy storage. In turn, this would accelerate the use of renewable-energy-based electricity production.

At the recent ConnectivityWeek smart grid conference, I found Robert Burke chairing one of the sessions. I approached him for a short interview to help me understand what ISOs/RTOs are and what they do. Now Principal Analyst, Market Development, at ISO New England, Robert had worked at a utility company then transitioned to an ISO and RTO.

Robert Burke

The following is based on my conversation with him. The information and opinions expressed here are Robert’s own and do not necessarily reflect his employer’s views. I also want to emphasize that Robert answered my amateur and naive questions very nicely.

ISOs and RTOs

One of the most difficult things for me was how to tell the difference between ISOs and RTOs. Robert’s experience is a good way to illustrate the differences.

He was an employee of Northeast Utilities before joining the ISO. It is the largest electric utility company in New England and has several operating companies under it. These operating companies are transmission/distribution companies and retail electric providers (like Connecticut Light and Power Co., and Western Massachusetts Electric Co.). Back in the mid 1960s through early 1970s, various utilities joined together to form voluntary organizations (power pools) to ease power management in New England, New York, and other states. In order to manage such a power pool in an economically efficient manner, the power pool organization was generally formed within one of the utilities. The power pool in New England was called the New England Power Pool (NEPOOL) and the initial agreement establishing NEPOOL was effective September 1, 1971.

In 1996, FERC issued orders 888 and 889 to form ISOs. Both orders concern, among other things, fair non-discriminatory access to the transmission system by all wholesale market participants. Under these orders, Independent System Operators, like ISO New England (ISO-NE), would be created. ISO-NE was created on July 1, 1997. Later, FERC issued order 2000 which encouraged the voluntary formation of Regional Transmission Organizations and defined the requirements of RTO. FERC has an interesting page on the differences between ISOs and RTOs.

After satisfying the twelve characteristics for an RTO outlined by FERC in order 2000, ISO-NE became an RTO under the same name. Like other ISOs and RTOs, ISO-NE manages wholesale power markets and operates (rather than owns and maintains) the transmission system. They oversee the wholesale market to ensure a fair and open market, and they operate the transmission system to guarantee open and fair access to all generators and market participants.

Electric Market Deregulation

In New England, the power industry is deregulated except in the state of Vermont. All of the electric utilities were required to sell off their generating plants and retain only their transmission, distribution, and retail operations. The transmission lines are managed by ISO-NE, but the distribution infrastructure is managed and operated by the local utilities. I spent more than five years in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, but I left there in 1985. While I was there, the power industry was quite simple, but there was no choice for me.

We briefly talked about California’s power crisis in 2000. I was in the middle of it, but I do not remember much about it, other than a rolling blackout I was caught in and the recall election of Governor Davis. Robert gave me a short history of it. California-style deregulation required utilities like PG&E to sell off all of their generation plants and buy power from the spot market without any long-term contracts. The expectation was that there would be many energy suppliers that would flock to California to supply the retail customers. Companies, like PG&E, would only serve as the "provider of last resort” for electric service for a very small percentage of customers. When the wholesale power prices surged, the energy suppliers that were expected to serve all the retail customers could not compete with the regulated low fixed energy price of the utilities in California that was established by the state regulatory commission, and the retail customers stayed with the local utilities, Because of those regulated prices for consumers, local utilities, like PG&E, bought high and sold low. The power storage was real and resulted in rolling blackouts.  The financial consequence was the bankruptcy of PG&E. It also cost the governor his job.

I was interested in what deregulation means to a new competitive entrant in the deregulated generation market. I asked Robert what my chances in the ISO-NE territory would be if I were a wind farm power generator and needed permission to operate. The siting and permits are specific to each state. The interconnection to a transmission line must be studied to insure that the line will not be overloaded and an interconnection agreement must be negotiated with the local utility. I may have to lay some cables myself or pay for the extension of the transmission lines. Deregulation does not mean free lunch.

Power Demands Forecast

I asked him how ISO-NE could run a power grid so well and know almost the exact level of demand ahead of time. Robert explained that there must be excess generation on-line to response to changes in system conditions. ISO-NE forecasts the load, demand for energy, for both short-term and long-term independently. ISO-NE forecasts tomorrow’s loads, short term, in advance of the day-ahead wholesale energy market. Generators offer energy into the day-ahead energy market and load has the option to submit bids to purchase energy in the day-ahead wholesale energy market. The offers and bids are tabulated for the day-ahead market, starting at noon and the results of the day-ahead market are released at 4:00 p.m. for tomorrow. Then, for the next two hours, until 6:00 p.m., generators are able to adjust their offers for real-time operation. The reliability analysis process is then conducted based on ISO-NE’s forecast of tomorrow’s load, and may result in some necessary changes, dispatch of additional generation, to reliably meet tomorrow’s forecast load. At 10:00 p.m., the first reliability analysis is released. This analysis can include additional generators to be dispatched for tomorrow to meet ISO-NE’s forecast load. But even after that, necessary adjustments are made every four hours as the day unfolds.

For long-term forecasting, Robert thinks ISO-NE, being totally independent of other organizations, can make a fair assessment of load increases or decreases for the region.

This is a fascinating area to study further. I hope Robert remains my source of information.

Lew Rubin

Because Lew is a hands-on power engineering expert, I had a bunch of questions for him. The following is a summary of our conversation.

When I tried to research what deregulation of the power industry means, I found too much information and no short, concise definition. Lew told me that initially deregulation was only for generation. Obviously, transmission and distribution infrastructures are too large to be duplicated for competition and never considered for deregulation from the beginning.

But this idea had a flaw, as we saw in the California power crisis in 2000 and 2001. Even though generation is deregulated, unless fair and equal access to transmission is guaranteed, generation companies cannot compete with existing utilities. In California, generation deregulation is somewhat subtle. Utilities sold off most of their generation plants except for nuclear and hydro, and they buy power mostly from independent power producers (IPP). The crisis was caused by the fact that utilities were required to buy in the spot market without a long-term contract with IPPs and rigid control on the use of transmission lines.

Currently, IPPs may sell their power to spot markets and/or have a long-term contract with utilities. This stabilizes the price. The power price is regulated by the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC), and IPPs cannot charge what they want to charge.

We touched upon deregulation on the retail side as well. In states like Texas and Pennsylvania, consumers can choose a retailer for their power service. But Lew thought that people do not really move from one retailer to another. I can understand this. Power is power. We cannot even see it, and as long as it is delivered reliably and we do not suffer from outages, do we care which power company we use, unless there is a significant price difference?

We talked about ISOs and RTOs. It is very hard to understand what they do other than the fact that they were conceived by order of the Federal Energy Reliability Commission (FERC). Both ISOs and RTOs were supposedly built to run transmission, independent of its owner, to guarantee fair and equal access. There are several ISOs and RTOs in the US and Canada, as shown below. Lew said that PJM is the oldest and most successful RTO.

ISOs and RTOs and their control territories Source: ISO-RTO Council

The Energy Information Administration published a report on the state of power deregulation.

Level of power deregulation state by state Source: Energy Information Administration

When I searched for information regarding deregulated vs. regulated states, I found some very confusing, conflicting information. ISOs and RTOs are normally under FERC’s jurisdiction, but each ISO and RTO differs with each state’s situation. Vermont is regulated yet covered by ISO-NE (New England). Does that mean that utilities in Vermont retain their generation capacity, but the transmission lines are managed by ISO-NE? The answer is not apparent, and I probably need to talk to Vermont PUC or ISO-NE for answer.

There is also an organization called North American Reliability Corp. (NERC) which divides North America into several regions, as shown below.

NERC is a voluntary organization to ensure reliability of the power grid in North America. Some of the NERC regions coincide with ISO/RTO regions, but that is coincidental. Even if there is no ISO or RTO in a region, NERC oversees an effort, such as balancing demand and supply, to make sure the power grid stays reliable.

This whole thing is so complex, with many layers of oversight by several organizations, such as FERC, NERC, PUCs, and ISO/RTO. It is a mystery to me, and I said so to Lew. He did not disagree with me. Lew knows so much about the industry, and I am sure that my persistent and naïve questions irritated him. But in the course of the discussion, it became clear that deregulation is not necessarily is intended to completely separate generation and retail from utilities but to allow other participants to play in both generation and retail markets with oversight, because utilities still have very strong power in the market. Oversight comes from both state and federal agencies, which confuses me a lot.

It is totally different from what I know in the ICT industry. The ICT industry is at least easier to understand because it is not regulated. Of course, we have the situation that the best technology does not win all the time. But compared to the power industry, it is easy.

Here is a summary of what he said:

• With smart grid in place, power demands could be reduced by 20%.
• Smart grid can provide enough energy and reduce CO₂ emissions at the same time.
• Smart grid will save each person in the US $500 per year.
• The savings are four to five times more than the cost of building smart grid.
• Smart grid accelerates the progress of new green technologies and employment.
• NIST is making sure that appropriate standards are selected and integrated for smart grid interoperability.
• Smart grid is not just for the US. Countries like Canada, EU, Brazil, China, and India are working towards smart grid in conjunction with the US.
• He acknowledged the role of Silicon Valley in smart grid and encouraged Silicon Valley to keep innovating and taking the lead in smart grid.

You can see his entire speech (a little more than three minutes) here:

Aneesh Chopra

These are some of the points he made:

• The US government is focusing on the intersection of technologies and energy as well as on education and health care.
• Referring to President Obama’s State of the Union speech in January, Chopra said that by 2035, 80% of all energy in the US would be produced by renewable energy sources and the power grid infrastructure would be modernized.
• Three key components in the President’s 2009 strategy for US innovation are digital infrastructure, human capital, and R&D.
• To stimulate entrepreneurship, the White House started a campaign called Startup America. Startup America contains five key elements: access to capital, creation of support organizations, opening up access to large corporations (such as utilities), lessening regulatory burdens (see http://reducingbarriers.ideascale.com/), and promoting market opportunities—see DC to VC (Washington, D.C., to venture capitalists) program here.
• The specific energy subject Chopra covered was the blueprint for energy security for the future. The new technology is the cornerstone of cleantech, and the modernization of the electric grid is essential.
• The smart grid policy committee chaired by both NIST and the Department of Energy established four key pillars: investment (case studies and other information in here); innovation, consisting of R&D (see ARPA-E, with an annual innovation submit); information sharing, grid security, and privacy for consumers; and empowering consumers.
• To assist in sharing data and information held by the US government, data.gov was set up to provide machine-readable data to anyone who wants it. This includes energy use information at home.
• He also mentioned challenge.gov, where the public and the government can solve problems together.

Chopra’s powerful delivery of his speech and the government’s efforts to promote innovation and entrepreneurship made me think that my tax dollars are used effectively.

Finally, his videoed speech (about 27 minutes) is available here.

Right now, METI is working on an exemption to this law that might include hospitals and other vital organizations. Data centers are also vital to current society, but their importance is not well understood. The data center consortium Japan Data Center Council is working with METI to get an exemption from the application of Article 27 this summer.

Virmal Mahendru: fourth from left

Mahendru started by joking that India has a lot of smarts but needs grids to supply electricity. He emphasized India’s technology resources by pointing out the following facts.

Now India is getting serious about laying a power grid infrastructure to modernize itself. This is a huge project, building both the power infrastructure ($600B) and energy efficiency, including smart grid ($300B).

Mahendru also showed India’s plan for power sources for the next ten years or so. As shown in the graph below, the nonconventional source will grow rapidly over the next ten years. This is the source based on renewable energies. Mahendru predicts that solar alone will add 30 GW of power over the next ten years, and he solicited participation in that market.

He reminded us of India’s size. It is roughly 2,500 km (north to south) by 2,500 km (west to east)—that is roughly 1,500 miles by 1,500 miles and smaller than the US. But its population is young and plentiful, roughly 1.2B, four times that of the US.

India’s generation capacity is about 200,000 MW, and it is concentrated in the northern parts of its territory (indicated in red in the picture) with hydro- and coal-fueled power. But the consumption areas are in the southern parts (indicated in blue in the picture). This requires India to construct 37,150 MW of transmission capacity.

Finally, Mahendru showed what India plans to do in the coming years.

Like any market, the cleantech market is bombarded with inexpensive gear from China, and the press tends to focus on the Chinese lead over the US in clean energies. But we may want to steer our efforts towards India, as indicated above. What more do we want beyond the largest democracy with a significant technology-savvy population, greenfield power infrastructure opportunities, common business practices, and the English language?

The Japan Data Center Council (JDCC) is a consortium of data center operators. The membership includes major data centers of major companies like Hitachi, Fujitsu, and NEC. JDCC has been campaigning with the Ministry of Economics, Trade, and Industry (METI) to make data centers exempt from this mandatory cutback. As far as I know, they have not received any word from METI yet. JDCC has been arguing that the nature of data center operation makes it impossible for their member companies to cut back power use by 15%.

Now a security company called Kabu Dot Com Securities (KDCS) has announced that they have cut power use at their data center by 15%. KDCS accomplished this by replacing old servers with more energy efficient ones. KDCS had been using the HP database server Superdome for customer information, but now they are using the HP ProLiant DL785 G6. The accounting database servers also were HP Superdome, but now they are Superdome 2. This upgrade cut server power consumption by 54.5%. The decrease in server power consumption will also decrease the cooling requirement by 17.7%. Overall, KDCS claims that it will accomplish the 15% power cutback and satisfy the METI mandate to replace old servers (KDCS’s were bought in 2006) with new ones in fall 2011. KDCS moved the server upgrade plan up by several months.

KDCS is not a member of JDCC. I am not sure what impact KDCS’s result will have on JDCC’s argument. Certainly, new servers tend to be more efficient, and replacing old servers with new will reduce power consumption. But it may not be possible for every data center to do something similar. I will ask about this during JDCC’s meeting next week.

The new plan will include the use of renewable energies for power production. The details are to be announced later. Regarding the type of renewable energies, power company people told me that wind was not considered appropriate in Japan because of its geographical constraints. However, I got information from another source that power companies were pressuring the government not to grow wind as one of the sources for power generation in Japan. I will meet with wind power operators in Tokyo soon to get their side of story.

Other countries also are following different policies after the Fukishima incident.

Germany is stopping old nuclear reactors and will turn itself from an exporter of power into an importer of power from countries like France.

France is not changing its policy on nuclear power at all. Nuclear plants produce 77% of all the power generated there. The French president points out that the Chernobyl accident was caused by faulty architecture, the Fukushima disaster was caused by a tsunami, and neither wind nor solar are ready to replace nuclear power.

South Korea has not changed its policy and may exploit Japan’s business decline to gain new opportunities in the world market. Nuclear plants generated 36% of its power in 2007, and the country plans to increase the rate to 59% by 2030.

The US has not changed its policy, but construction of new nuclear power plants will be hard.

India wants to develop more nuclear power plants to accommodate its economic growth. However, because of a strong campaign against it, its nuclear power growth is slowing down.

Finally, I would like to add this short note. Neither the Prime Minister nor the Minister of Economics, Trade and Industry will receive their salaries until the Fukushima situation is settled. This is very Japanese. I do not recall that President Carter returned his salary after the incident of the Three Mile Island nuclear reactors.

Until about 10 years ago, the network protocols in BMS were proprietary systems by Yamatake and Johnson Controls. No one dared to use any other protocols. Your HVAC vendor’s control system became your control system. Mori Building Co. http://www.mori.co.jp/en/ is a big real estate and building company that has built many large, famous buildings in Japan and elsewhere. About 10 years ago, the company developed a building called Venus Fort and specifically requested LonWorks be used for the network protocol. This opened up the protocol field to LonWorks. NTT Data, one of the biggest system integrators, supported LonWorks as well. It was an epoch-making event to use a standard open system to connect and control equipment in a building.

As time went by, BACnet gained a foothold in the marketplace, and LonWorks was integrated into BACnet as a lower layer. IP was incorporated as BACnet/IP. Other protocols were converted by a system like Niagara by Tridium.

Other trends include the type and placement of HVAC systems. HVAC was a big centralized system before, but these days a smaller unit is installed for each room or group of rooms. Daikin and Mitsubishi have a large share of this market.

Wireless technologies, such as ZigBee, are not very popular yet. The Japanese tend to collect data more frequently than Americans do. ZigBee sometimes drops data packets and therefore is not very popular.

As for demand and response (D/R), Japanese power companies do not implement mandatory power shredding or shaving. When a large client exceeds its upper limit, which was contracted at a certain rate, it must pay at the next level for the rest of the year. The next level is usually much more. Thus, the client is very keen on its total power use and tries to keep consumption under the initially agreed-upon upper limit. The power company does not shut down the power as its US counterpart might do in the face of a power shortage.

Since then, TEPCO has been able to restart many of the thermal power plants halted after the quake. At one point, power was estimated to be enough to sustain necessary summertime demands.

Data center operators were relieved, but the story did not end there. The Japanese government abruptly ordered the shutdown of the nuclear power plant operated by CEPCO (headquartered in Nagoya). CEPCO is sending power to TEPCO to compensate for the Tokyo utility’s insufficient power. Now, because of the shutdown, CEPCO can no longer send extra power to TEPCO. With this new development, the Japanese government is going to order a 15% reduction in power use in summer. I have not talked to the JDCC representative, but I have not heard that data centers will be exempt from this power use reduction. As data center operators have repeatedly told the government, it is very hard to reduce power for operating data centers.

I will find out how they plan to cope with this new development next week after their emergency meeting to discuss this.

In this display, the total power supply is 45 million kW but usage is 33.91 million kW at 12:30 p.m. on May 17. The graph in blue shows hourly power consumption. The indicated use ratio is 75%.

Other notable scenes indicate that Tokyo is undergoing a power shortage:

The sign says this escalator is stopped to save power.

Without an escalator, I had to carry my baggage up these steep stairs. I took it as a good thing for me to have extra exercise.

Lighting underground is decreased and it is noticeably dark.

See the turned off fluorescent lights.

The electric bulb is removed to save on lighting.

People do not seem to mind too much about the darker Tokyo. Probably, they are now used to it. The city is still receiving aftershocks, even though they are not very big. I carry a flashlight while I am there. I hate earthquakes, but I need to get used to them in Tokyo. The bad thing is that even if I go home to Silicon Valley, I could still be in a major earthquake.

So it was timely to listen to Brad Williams, Vice President, Utilities Product Strategy, who happened to be a keynote speaker at the recent Networked Grid 2011, to find out what Oracle is up to regarding smart grid.

He covered quite a number of topics, listed below, but emphasized the importance of information and how to use it for utilities. The following is a summary of his talk.

These were his seven topics:

1. Smart grid investments

2. Consumer transactions

3. Electric vehicles

4. Intermittent renewable and electricity storage

5. Aging assets

6. Smart grid device management

7. Business intelligence and analytics

Smart grid investments:

• Investments continue but regulators require the added value of smart grid.

• Consumers need to be convinced of smart grid’s value.

• New entrants to the market include Google and Microsoft.

• Some negative media hype exists because of increased power bills.

It may be hard to read the picture. These are the labels for the points shown on the graph:

• Advanced Distribution Automation
• Workforce Management Project
• Substation Automation System
• Mobile Data Goes Live
• Remote Terminal Unit (RTU) Upgrade
• GIS System Deployment
• OMS (outage management system) – 200-TB point
• Distribution Management Rollout
• AMI Deployment
• Programmable Communicating Thermostats (PCT) Come On-line – 700-TB point
• New devices in the home enabled by the smart meter – 800-TB point

Consumer transactions:

• Transactions are much more real-time, and IT needs to keep up with them.
• Utilities are educating consumers with key messages like:
• Rate change and the benefits that come with smart grid
• More-reliable services
• Win-win for both utilities and consumers

Oracle’s take is that the discussions with consumers need to expand.

EVs: If managed well, they could be a killer app, but if not, they could disrupt the grid. Seventy-two percent of large utilities are evaluating EV adoption. Oracle thinks smart charging is the area where it can apply its expertise on management information to optimize the charging mechanism.

Intermittent renewable and electricity storage: Oracle is working with its customers to model, monitor, and manage renewable energy sources.

Aging assets: With smart grid, more information is available for devices and components and that will prolong their lives and make it possible to provide timely and proper maintenance.

Smart grid device management: Smart grid brings IT and OT (operations technology) together. An IT company like Oracle could provide services beyond traditional technology fields to the power market.

Business intelligence and analytics: As more data is collected, knowing how to make useful information out of it would give a company a competitive edge.

As you can see, IT companies can make the best of what’s going on in the smart grid market and enter the power utility area with their information technology and data analysis expertise.

The new plan will include the use of renewable energies for power production. The details are to be announced later. Regarding the type of renewable energies, power company people told me that wind was not considered appropriate in Japan because of its geographical constraints. However, I got information from another source that power companies were pressuring the government not to grow wind as one of the sources for power generation in Japan. I will meet with wind power operators in Tokyo soon to get their side of story.

Other countries also are following different policies after the Fukishima incident.

Germany is stopping old nuclear reactors and will turn itself from an exporter of power into an importer of power from countries like France.

France is not changing its policy on nuclear power at all. Nuclear plants produce 77% of all the power generated there. The French president points out that the Chernobyl accident was caused by faulty architecture, the Fukushima disaster was caused by a tsunami, and neither wind nor solar are ready to replace nuclear power.

South Korea has not changed its policy and may exploit Japan’s business decline to gain new opportunities in the world market. Nuclear plants generated 36% of its power in 2007, and the country plans to increase the rate to 59% by 2030.

The US has not changed its policy, but construction of new nuclear power plants will be hard.

India wants to develop more nuclear power plants to accommodate its economic growth. However, because of a strong campaign against it, its nuclear power growth is slowing down.

Finally, I would like to add this short note. Neither the Prime Minister nor the Minister of Economics, Trade and Industry will receive their salaries until the Fukushima situation is settled. This is very Japanese. I do not recall that President Carter returned his salary after the incident of the Three Mile Island nuclear reactors.

Erich Gunther

His position is that power could be delivered in any voltage and at any frequency. In addition, it could be available without being transmitted all the time. His example was convincing. The laptop PC I am using to type this blog can take a wide range of voltages (100–240 V) and frequencies (50 and 60 Hz). If I use a battery, the laptop does not need to be plugged into a power outlet. What if we could accomplish the same thing with the power system?

This is important because we will have more renewable energy sources for power in the future, and centralized power generation and transmission may not work very well. Let’s look at voltage first. One of Erich’s graphs showed voltage changes for a solar panel (direct current, DC) in the course of a day. Right now a voltage regulator smoothes this level of volatility out. If a voltage regulator can do this, we could do the same thing to allow a wider range of voltages. I think power (alternate current) produced by wind should be treated this way as well, because wind does not blow at a constant pace.

How about frequencies? Photovoltaic power generation is DC, and the frequency does not matter. But in the case of wind power generation, the frequency fluctuates depending upon how fast the wind blades rotate. This needs to be regulated to deliver stable power.

Power is not generated by solar or wind power if the sun is not out (night) or the wind does not blow. We need some kind of storage to compensate for a lack of generation. As I reported before, energy storage technologies are advancing and large-capacity energy storage is no longer a dream.

Things like distributed generation, microgrids, and energy storage would change the status quo, which is based on the tightly coupled pieces of the centralized generation, long-distance transmission, and consume-as-we-produce power system paradigm. Of course, this will not change overnight, but it is time to start talking about decoupling.

The figure below shows the relative positions of three major power companies and Tohoku Electric Power Co. TEPCO generates about 60 million kW of power. Both KEPCO and CEPCO generate about half of that, and Tohoku is much smaller than either.

The Sankei Shimbun reported some data about CEPCO, whose territory is adjacent to that of TEPCO (Tokyo). CEPCO’s supply capacity is about 32 million kW, and nuclear power provides about 14% of that. Losing 14% of capacity could cause a power shortage in CEPCO’s territory, which might lead to rolling blackouts there. Toyota’s headquarters are in CEPCO’s territory, and Toyota and other large power users would be ordered to cut back their power use. That would cause a decrease in automobile and parts production, causing a worldwide (US included) shortage.

The power shortage would not end in the CEPCO territory. CEPCO has been sending about 1M kW worth of power to TEPCO to support TEPCO’s power demand, which cannot be met because of the Fukushima shutdown. If the shortage materializes, CEPCO may not be able to support TEPCO. TEPCO’s other adjacent utility company, Tohoku, was hit hardest by the quake and does not have extra power for TEPCO, either. What this means is that a power shortage this summer in Tokyo, and in Nagoya, has become more likely.

Unlike TEPCO (50 Hz), the power frequency in the CEPCO territory is 60 Hz. So technically, CEPCO could get extra power imported from the adjacent KEPCO (in Osaka), whose power is also 60 Hz. However, KEPCO may suffer from a power shortage as well, because it relies heavily on its nuclear plants. It generates about 45% of its power by nukes. Unlike TEPCO and CEPCO, KEPCO’s nukes are on the coast of the Sea of Japan, where a tsunami is less likely. But many of its reactors are 40 years old, and if cooling stops for any reason, those nukes will be in the same mess as the Fukushima nukes. The governor who hosts KEPCO’s nukes will not approve restarting reactors currently undergoing checkups and may order all reactors stopped until safety is ensured.

Many companies in Tokyo have been moving their businesses west, especially to Osaka. It is getting hard to get office space in downtown Osaka because of this. But if Osaka suffers from a power shortage, then where can they go? IDC Frontier (a Softbank company) recently opened a large data center in Kyushu. You could move your IT equipment there to cope with the power shortage, right? Kyushu Electric Power Co. will stop its nukes for checkups in summer and may then suffer from a power shortage. The three major cities in Japan, Tokyo, Nagoya, and Osaka, are the centers of business, and if you cannot locate your business there, then you might as well leave Japan.

On behalf of the Japan Data Center Council (JDCC), I will talk about post-earthquake disaster recovery at DatacenterDynamics San Francisco on June 30. Before Prime Minster Kan’s announcement, one JDCC representative told me that the situation was much better and they could run their data centers without power interruption. I wonder what they will do in this new situation. 

Instability is not limited to power generation. The prime minister is very unpopular (barely a 20% approval rating), and pressure on him to resign is mounting by the day. Two unstable situations! Is this a checkmate for Japan and its businesses?

At the recent Networked Grid 2011, I heard a keynote speech by Campbell McCool, chief marketing officer of SmartSynch, on how cellular players like AT&T and Verizon are positioning themselves in the smart grid market.

Campbell McCool

SmartSynch develops and markets devices that use public cellular networks for smart grid. Even with the company’s bias towards cellular networks, it was a good opportunity to find out what cellular guys are doing in the smart grid segment. You can also check my previous blog post on what AT&T is doing in smart grid.

By the way, I heard from someone that utilities and telecom companies do not get along when they talk about network communications on the power line (power line communications, or PLC).

I am not sure if that is one of the reasons for utilities’ reluctance to use the services of incumbent wireless telecom players. Campbell pointed out that utilities historically have built and managed their own communications infrastructures, largely for economic reasons but also to meet new communications requirements as smart grid grows from smart grid 1.0 (AMI) to smart grid 2.0 (beyond AMI).

Regarding economics, several years ago telecom companies charged $10 to $15 per meter for communication. The price was way too high for utilities, and they decided to build their own systems. Fast-forward to 2011, and the price is now down to 25 cents or less. Cost is no longer a reason to dismiss the telecom companies’ services.

What about the new communications requirements? Smart grid 2.0, as David Leeds said earlier in the conference, has moved beyond the era of smart meters and AMI and into applications that require high-bandwidth and low-latency communications like demand and response. Campbell quoted the latency requirement of less than 50 ms point-to-point that David had presented and said that the cellular guys could provide point-to-point connectivity of around 10 ms. Besides, he added, cellular carries IP, which is the protocol of choice for smart grid.

Campbell further reinforced his argument by quoting from the recent white paper by Duke Energy, which is probably the largest utility in the US. (I’ll update this post with the URL to that paper.) Duke listed seven reasons why they used an incumbent cellular provider for their communications:

1. To exploit cellular players’ expertise in an area that is not Duke’s core business.
2. Proven technologies and operations for more than 5 billion connections.
3. Economies of scale.
4. Internet protocol (IP) support.
5. 3G backward-compatibility with 2G, covering a large number of existing nodes.
6. Provider’s constant investment in hardware, software, and services.
7. Significant influence over technology providers and others.

He also talked about a project with Texas–New Mexico Power. The project, which lasted about six months, included 10,000 smart meters with cellular connections. During that time, connectivity was maintained at 99.6%, nearly 100%, and the project was a success.

Another interesting trend from the communications perspective is machine-to-machine market growth in the utilities field. Campbell talked about SmartSynch’s project with Qualcomm, another incumbent wireless cellular provider, to make a smart meter really smart—as smart as a smart phone. That meter can run multiple applications downloadable from a remote server at Qualcomm. Patches and bug fixes are also downloadable automatically without human intervention. He cited an interesting statistic: the market will see anywhere between 2 billion to 10 billion new devices in the next five years. Moreover, according to some estimates, 65% of those devices will be run by utilities. This is potentially a huge market for utilities, and they want to focus on their core business rather become a network provider.

Campbell presented two caveats at the end. One is that a company like Duke Energy is a trendsetter, but many utilities are slow in adopting new trends. He thinks the mainstream smart grid market will move to cellular in one to three years. That remains to be seen. The other is that although Campbell thinks the growth rate in cellular adoption in smart grid will soar, other protocols like mesh and PLC will not go away.

In spite of some marketing pitches here and there, it was an informative speech about an example of outsourcing. Everyone knows that if something is not strategic to your core business, you would like to outsource it to someone you can trust. If you can avoid it, you do not want to build, operate, and maintain a large communications network. Also, you do not want to worry about extra buildouts, security, updates and upgrades, or disaster recovery. It all makes sense. It all comes down to trust between utilities and telecom service providers.

One of those trends was distribution automation (DA). David Leeds of GTM Research gave a talk on DA at the recent Networked Grid 2011.

David Leeds

He started with five top smart grid trends:

1. The growth of distribution automation
2. Consumer engagement
3. Network infrastructure foundation
4. Solar and PV as driving forces for smart grid
5. Utility consolidation and M&A

He focused on DA, saying that smart grid 1.0 is smart meter and smart grid 2.0 is distribution automation. DA is for the following four areas for improvement:

1. System reliability
2. Grid optimization
3. Effective distributed generation (DG) and EV integration
4. Asset utilization

David said that, as in the theme of the conference, utilities increasingly emphasize the network infrastructure foundation.

Smart grid consists of three elements: power, communications, and IT. I can handle communications and IT, but when it comes to power engineering, my knowledge is pretty limited. As I’ve mentioned a few times in the past, in my electrical engineering study in college, I made every effort to skip high voltage classes because they were not sexy at the time. Now I wish I’d studied more about it. In NIST’s description of smart grid, below, the bottom four clouds are real power engineering.

David talked about applications such as:

• Fault location and isolation and service restoration (FLISR)
  
• Volt/VAR optimization and conservation voltage management
  
• Load balancing and emergency load shedding

He then discussed economic benefits (reliability benefits, advanced asset management, and effective DG/EV integration) and noneconomic drivers (policy, DG, and EV adoption). DA includes hardware upgrades, and we need to learn about new things like capacitor banks, voltage regulators, tap changers, and reclosures.

He showed the size of the smart grid market in the following picture. It shows healthy growth.

US Smart Grid Market Forecast (you can find a better resolution of the same graph here)

For more information, see his presentation here (it’s about 34 minutes). Between this presentation and Pike Research’s report, you’ll get a good look at what is going on in the smart grid market.

It was easy to talk about smart grid because it was OK to talk only about smart meters. As smart grid 1.0 is moving rapidly into smart grid 2.0, the many moving parts are moving their own way but in complex interdependency. The only way to keep abreast of the smart market segment is to talk to the experts who are moving smart grid.

Japanese society is very conservative, and changes are very slow to come. When I was growing up there, I felt as if I were being choked by an invisible force that held me in compliance. Maybe that is why I am here in the US now. For example, in Japan you are supposed to be at work no matter what. Telecommuting is something that is happening somewhere else but not in Japan. Office workers who were stranded at work on the night of the major quake in Tokyo went home the next day (Saturday). But they were back at work on Monday, getting there on trains that were made much more severely crowded by streamlined service. There was no provision for working from home at all, and for most office workers, not going to work was not an option.

One person who has been trying to change the status quo is Masayoshi Son, President and CEO of Softbank. For your information, Yahoo Japan, one of Softbank’s groups, is bigger than Google in the search market in Japan. Son has challenged the monopoly of NTT (the US equivalent of AT&T) in broadband by starting Yahoo BB. They cut prices to make DSL access available to many people. Recently, he fought with NTT to open up their fiber networks. He did it again by announcing Softbank’s energy consumption behavior change.

Although TEPCO is regaining most of their generation power (minus nukes) to the level of the usual summer demand, it may not be able to satisfy power needs in summer. Initially, the Japanese government mandated a 20-25% consumption cut for businesses and asked for a 15% voluntary cut for homes. This figure may change as TEPCO revises their supply figure. (As of this writing, the figure is being revised down to 15%.)

Softbank will cut their office power consumption by 30% through several changes. For one thing, they will let people work at home. As I said, this is a very rare development in Japan for a company of Softbank’s size. The Softbank group employs about 20,000 people. If many of them choose to work at home, power savings at offices could be very large. Telecommuting will let the company cut back on air conditioning and lighting offices. The telecommuting system will be put in place in May. Softbank said that employees will use their version of cloud service to conduct business at home.

This is a welcome trend. With more telecommuting, trains will not be overcrowded in rush hours, and more people with children can work. Again, changes in Japan come very slowly, but hopefully other companies will follow Softbank’s lead.

It begins with Christine Hertzog, Managing Director of the Smart Grid Library and Smart Grid Executive in Residence at Plug and Play Tech Center, introducing David. The video did not capture his slides, but I have inserted several into this blog for your information.

Christine Hertzog

David began by comparing the telecom and utilities markets and pointing out their similarities:

The tutorial material prepared by the Department of Energy contained the following passage:

If Alexander Graham Bell were somehow transported to the 21st century, he would not begin to recognize the components of modern telephony—cell phones, texting, cell towers, PDAs, etc.—while Thomas Edison, one of the grid’s key early architects, would be totally familiar with the grid.

As shown in the slide, utilities can learn something from the telecom industry:

• Increase customer relationship
• Mobility
• Renew networks (it is like changing tires while a bus is in motion)

One of his slides summarized well the differences between the legacy power grid and the new grid, a.k.a smart grid. He called them 20th century and 21st century power grids and pointed out their differences:

20th and 21st century electric grid comparison

He then pointed out areas to concentrate on for now:

Smart grid areas to focus on now

Noteworthy comments:

• AMI will peak and will be replaced by distribution automation (DA).
• Meter data management needs to support scalability and analytics, as my recent blog on the panel discussion said.

Although security was not included in the slide, it is expected to be become an important element in smart grid.

DA has been declared in several places the likely hot area after AMI. But it is not easy to understand what is involved in the distribution network. One of David’s slides clearly showed what is involved:

DA and its components

The talk was well structured and included very few AT&T commercials. If you want to get some feel for where smart grid stands these days, it is worth your time to watch the video.

Scott oversees Schneider’s entire smart grid strategy rather than individual components. One of his corporate division functions is to lead an integrated energy management solution for both the demand and the supply side of power in the smart grid. His role includes building consensus among several business groups on such things as partnership selection and business model development, and coordinating Schneider’s business divisions as a cohesive group. I asked him for an overview of the company’s vision for smart grid. I also asked him about its BMS and BEMS strategy. All I knew about Schneider is that is big and the parent company of American Power Conversion, whose information on data centers has been very useful in my research. 

First, Scott gave me an overview of Schneider, including its business areas. It is a large international energy management company with five areas of concentration. (Several of the company’s products are known by other brand names, and Schneider is renaming them to reflect its ownership.) These are Schneider’s five business areas:

1. APC, in the IT and data center market.
2. Power of less than 600 V for residences and commercial buildings (known as Square D in the US). 
3. Energy with medium voltage sizes (a result of the acquisition of Areva Distribution).
4. Building automation previosly under the brand name of TAC.
5. Industrial automation.

The company’s annual revenue from all five businesses is about $26B. Schneider is headquartered in France and employs around 120,000 people worldwide. Its largest revenue market is the US, followed by China, but the revenue from China may soon overtake that of the US. Schneider touches everything from power generation to consumption, although none of its businesses generate power or manufacture appliances.

Scott described five areas of the company’s vision for smart grid:

1. Smart generation: This is mostly renewables plants, and more solar than wind. The company also can service old thermal plant equipment and components.
2. Smart industry: This concerns energy services and solutions for big businesses, including energy efficiency contracts, and earns Schneider $500M annually in the U.S..
3. Smarter homes: A contract with the city of Naperville, IL, is to pilot home-based energy management automation. It is interesting to learn that in Europe, D/R is driven by consumers, while in the US, D/R is driven by utilities.
4. Demand Management and Demand Response: For this piece, Schneider purchased RETX Energy Services in 2008. Demand Management and DR applications, services, and consulting are provided.
5. Flexible distribution: This is automation in a Distribution grid. One application models the power lines connecting wind farms and modualates the power output to deliver the maximum possible. It can be applied to the transmission grid as well.

Regarding BMS, I asked if Schneider is also moving towards IP like everyone else. The company recently released a controller that can interface with IP. With it, BMS can interact with multiple entities in a building and with other components that speak different protocols. Recently, Schneider installed a control system for the BMS at the McGraw-Hill Building in Manhattan, NY. With that, the BMS now interacts with the utility’s D/R system by implementing six different scenarios with different degrees of automatic power shedding.

Scott favors IP consolidation for two reasons. One is that the other software, tools, and services necessary to implement the integrated BMS are based on IP. The other is that customers are demanding that IP interfaces not be trapped by proprietary protocols. If they are, companies like Cisco, IBM, and Accenture may come in to Schneider’s territory and eat its lunch. Scott sees IP consolidation as a big opportunity for Schneider. The company is good at providing midrange solutions. If a project is very large, a company like IBM or Accenture may be awarded the contract. But if a project is in the middle range, those big companies may want to partner with Schneider. After all, IBM is an IT company and not a power specialist or a developer of power solutions, but Schneider’s expertise lies in power. So some kind of coopetition may occur.

Because Schneider’s name is not well known in the US, I was not aware of what the company actually does. It is well versed in many smart grid areas from the power engineering perspective. This was a good opportunity for me to learn more. Certainly, Scott was the right person to talk with. Like Schneider, incumbent building management companies are adopting IP, so the trend seems to be continuing. I wonder whether IP will ever dominate every aspect of networking in smart grid and if so, how soon? I will keep researching this subject.

Recently, GreenTech Media’s David Leeds, who published a report on smart grid (free download here in 2009, mentioned that distribution automation is gaining momentum as the next area of focus in smart grid. Also, Pike Research reported on six application trends (D/R, analytics, EV charging, HEM, DA, and carbon management) in smart grid at the recent Green Net conference. (See my blog post on it here.)

I wanted to find out what the fastest-growing areas are by speaking to a smart grid visionary. Who is the best person to give me that information? I have been to several meetings and conferences and heard Eric Dresselhuys of Silver Spring Networks (SSN) talk. He represents SSN, but he is also a visionary in smart grid. I wanted to hear where smart grid stands and what SSN’s smart grid status is, so I sat down with him for a casual conversation.

Eric Dresselhuys of Silver Spring Networks.

When SSN gained its fame overnight, I used to check their website often, but over time I stopped doing that. Earlier at Green Net, Katie Fehrenbacher, editor of Earth2Tech, GigaOM, introduced Eric in a panel session and mentioned that SSN is a smart grid networking and application company.

First, I wanted to make sure that that was a fair description of SSN. Eric said that the key focus of SSN has not changed: it is focused on providing network platforms. Over time, many more adjectives were added on top of "coms” because they provide networking platforms, including software, firmware, and services to create networking infrastructures that allow utilities to provide their services.

Today SSN has many customers, nationally and internationally, working on large-scale projects with a variety of applications, including metering, demand/response, energy efficiency, distributed generation (on an earlier panel, Eric discussed this from SSN’s perspective), and controlling EVs. These applications are consumer oriented. But for utilities, grid reliability matters a lot. SSN’s utility clients use its platform for distribution automation and consumer engagement. (Eric was a panelist at the SVLG/Stanford smart grid conference on this topic.) Grid reliability is the responsibility of utilities, and it is becoming difficult because the distribution grid is aging and its components, such as 20-year-old transformers, fail more often than before. Even without any changes, the distribution grid has a lot of problems. But on top of those, more loads are expected with distributed generation (DG) and the addition of EVs to the grid. Because of these new developments, managing the distribution grid is expected to become even more complex and difficult.

SSN helps end-to-end connectivity applications and also connects the components in the middle. One such example is microgrids, considered a development for the future but already in place in some basic forms. SSN is working with clients and partners to make these applications and services a reality. In the current smart grid field, we cannot buy a piece and plug it into the grid to implement a new application. An application is implemented by working with multiple players. SSN provides a network platform in that mix.

What about analytics? SSN collects and analyzes data to obtain information on power quality and device status from 150 billion data sets. Eric gave me that number from memory, so it may not be accurate, but the point is that there is a huge amount of data produced by smart grid alone. Remember Big Data?

SSN deals with these large data sets to provide information on basic networking, such as connectivity and connection reliability, and it is now adding analysis of metering data and device status information (predicting when a device might fail). Another example is temperature sensing to tell which part of the wiring may go bad. High temperature pinpoints the location of failure with high probability. Analytics is an area that will grow very big and is suitable for many incumbents and startups in Silicon Valley to tackle.

My next question was about their IP (Internet protocol) strategy. Like Cisco, SSN envisions connecting everything with IP. As I have reported in previous posts, many more networking protocols are available and actually in use, especially in the fields of building and industry.

I have talked to several building management systems vendors and building managers. Although the general trend is towards IP for consolidation, especially in the backbone, it is still too early to rip everything out and replace it with IP. When SSN first started preaching IP, it was met with a good dose of skepticism. But now, several years later, many other legacy protocols are working to interface with IP, such as BACnet/IP and ZigBee 2.0 (ZigBee IP).

SSN is working in the building field with a focus on the home. home. (I think he means to say they are working on the home with their purchase of Greenbox, now called CustomerIQ)

What they do is to provide connectivity to BMS. But the BMS area is still dominated by Johnson Controls, Honeywell, Siemens, Schneider that I talked to later in the conference, and system integrators. Pike Research indicated that the building space could be a place to integrate carbon management with ERP and networking players with D/R. However, SSN is not currently in this space. Strategically, this is a good move. Although Cisco with its Mediator is entering this space with some forward-thinking clients like NetApp, the market has not crossed the chasm to make everything IP in the building field yet. Speaking of Cisco, Eric does not think SSN is competing directly with Cisco at this time. Cisco is concentrating on substation automation and building management, an area that SSN has not entered. Eric sees Cisco’s push for IP as very positive for SSN’s IP-centric view.

Overall, SSN provides a network platform from substations to consumers, a.k.a power distribution networks, by being a conductor in smart grid applications mixes on that platform. As I had imagined, Eric is a visionary and knows the smart grid market very well. He knows SSN’s core strength and does not enter the market when it is not ready for him. When SSN considers entering the commercial building market, it will truly be time for legacy protocols to be consolidated into IP. I will keep watching SSN’s progress in this and other areas.

• Energy Storage Applications
• Energy Storage Mandate by California Assembly Bill 2514
• Energy Storage
• Lithium: Foundation of Smart Grid and EVs?
• Smart Grid: Pumped Hydro Energy Storage at San Luis Reservoir
• Batteries and EVs

In here,  I wrote about the application areas for energy storage, including arbitrage.There are several different technologies for energy storage. In here,  I listed:

1. Fuel cells
2. Lithium-ion batteries
3. Ultracapacitors
4. Compressed air
5. Pumped hydro

One thing I was not certain about was how utilities that need utility-scale energy storage for their day-to-day services look at each technology. Luckily, at the recent GigaOM Green Net in San Francisco I had the opportunity to discuss this with John Zahurancik, VP of Operations and Deployment at AES Energy Storage.

This is a summary of my chat with him. My objective was to find out:

• Which technology is the vital one for utility-scale energy storage?
• What needs to be done to promote and advance energy storage?

John was nice enough to answer my naive questions in a pleasant way. AES, the parent company of AES Energy Storage, is an independent power generation and distribution company that has been in business for 30 years. John emphasized that AES is not a traditional utility but an independent power generator with the latitude to try several different energy sources for cost-effective clean power generation, including coal, gas, solar, and wind. Energy storage is an extension of that.

As a service provider, the company does not develop new technologies but uses viable technologies to deliver power, keeping track of 115 technology companies on a regular basis. I had thought only compressed air and pumped hydro were applicable to energy storage on a utility scale. These two technologies are great but really depend on geography. For pumped hydro, you need to have a river or a lake or whatever so that you can take advantage of water for power generation. Such ideal locations are pretty rare, and even if you find one, lots of regulations, environmental concerns, permits, and approvals are necessary before these technologies can be put in place. It’s the same with the compressed air method. It used to be that the air was compressed in a hole in the ground then used later to move a turbine to generate power. But now this method is above ground and containerized to control scalability. Of the 115 companies John follows, some rely on compressed air, but the majority of them do not.

His choice of batteries over other methods surprised me. I did not think batteries were actually being used for energy storage on a large scale. I thought batteries were for small woltage, like 12 V for a car. John told me that his company implemented a 12 MW facility in Chile with batteries—using on the order of a million battery cells. AES Energy Storage has also implemented 20 MW facilities in New York, and a 32 MW facility is coming out later this year in West Virginia. Note that he added these batteries were advanced lithium batteries but not the ordinary ones.

With 1 or 2 MW, we can power a medium-size data center. After all, UPS battery banks sustain power for data centers when the power grid fails.

John gave me a list of battery merits. A battery:

1. Stands by to kick in in case of power failure without emitting any GHG or consuming any fuel.
2. Scales well from 1 MW to 100 MW, as needed.
3. Provides necessary power with no delay.
4. Is highly controllable for space and configuration.

I asked what drives energy storage and the batteries that support it. In 2007, it was not even conceivable to produce 1 MW with batteries. In the IT area, people wonder why a particular technology emerges at a certain time and why, when it does, a few companies provide it at about the same time. The explanation involves many factors, including technology progress, market shifts, and regulatory pressure. The new technology emerges when all these factors cross a certain threshold, and many innovative people know when they do.

John’s explanation was similar. Battery technology has progressed over the past 20 years, mostly in consumer electronics. As battery capacity grows and volume starts to move, the supplier chain is established and it gets easier to source them. When he started this, only startups were available to deliver batteries for this type of application. Now big guys like Sony, LG, Samsung, and Panasonic are ready to deliver them. Sanyo even said that the size of the battery market for energy storage is bigger than that for consumer electronics. This is very noteworthy because none of these guys have delivered a single battery for energy storage yet.

Being a green/sustainable person, I asked John if there is any e-waste problem with battery disposal. When volume moves and the supply chain is well established, recycling is also well established. Also, useful components can be harvested from lithium-ion batteries.

Finally, I asked for more written information of what they are doing, in addition to the precise, short descriptions on the company website. John’s answer was that what they do is pretty specialized and highly technical, not for typical consumers. Terms like "frequency regulation” and "spinning reserve” tend to turn ordinary people off. Luckily, I knew those terms. He said that the only way to get more information is to talk to him. But he gave me a link to find more information, Energy Storage Association. As I age, my memory gets shorter and shorter. But I will remember your offer, John!

The half-day conference consisted of presentations by smart grid experts and by startups housed at Plug and Play Tech Center. The program is given here.

I will report on the first half of the conference; I could not attend the second half—the startup presentations. These companies presented at the conference:

• Tropos
• Sun Reports
• Object Security
• IAP Solutions
• Growing Energy Labs
• Gridata
• POW Solutions
• Volta
• EnerSave
• Awesense Wireless
• Intelen

Pike Research has just published Smart Grid Apps: Six Trends That Will Shape Grid Evolution, through GigaOM Pro. This timely report discusses six smart grid areas that are gaining market footholds. The report is available from here and Pike Research briefed on the report here (Video about 6 minutes).