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The unprecedented lock-downs and stay-at-home orders across the U.S. and the world are exposing a new category of winners and losers – the data “have’s” and the data “havenot’s”
—Jim Meacham in the latest Project Haystack magazine
Good morning!
Welcome to Nexus, a newsletter, podcast, and membership community for smart people applying smart building technology—written by James Dice. If you’re new to Nexus, you might want to start here.
Here’s an outline of this week’s newsletter:
Enjoy!
Disclaimer: James is a researcher at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL). All opinions expressed via Nexus emails, podcasts, or on the website belong solely to James. No resources from NREL are used to support Nexus. NREL does not endorse or support any aspect of Nexus.
Like all of you, I’m continuing to track the impact of COVID-19 on our industry and I’ll continue to share my thoughts here as I have them. If you’re looking for the signal in the noise, here’s the best content I’ve seen this week:
This week on the Nexus podcast: a conversation with the CEO of Facilio on a range of topics:
And much more…
Show notes | Apple Podcasts | Spotify | YouTube | Add to other podcast apps
An article in the latest Project Haystack Connections Magazine, written by authors from PNNL and Paul Ehrlich, echoed many of the points I’ve made in recent writing on advanced supervisory controls.
The article starts by highlighting where current control systems fall short.
Many of the control systems being produced today are fundamentally the same as what was available a decade ago. (…) There are several fundamental changes coming to controls that will drive us toward new control solutions and architectures. This is due to several key drivers:
Need for Predictive Control: Control systems today are largely “rule based” and utilize fixed algorithms to do real time control. An example of a rule is “Enable the economizer when the outdoor air temperature is below 60 degrees”. For most control systems, being rule based is fine, but what it doesn’t do well is to allow the control system to anticipate how the system will react. The ability to anticipate or predict is required both for highly energy efficient, passive systems, as well as for successful adoption of grid interactive buildings. For example, if you were to shift the zone setpoints for all VAV boxes, what would be the reduction in building demand? How long would it stay reduced before increasing again? The technology to make these predictions is called “Model Predictive Control” or MPC.
The use of MPC works hand in hand with semantic tagging to make building control systems more intelligent and also more useful as a source not only of control but for information and optimization.
We need building automation with prediction, optimization, and adaptation capabilities. How do we get there? The authors offered several ideas. My advanced supervisory control deep dive part 2 is coming soon with more.
St. Louis shows that cities do not have to wait for the federal government to lead on climate. They don’t need to wait for states. They don’t even have to wait for bigger cities. Mayors and local City Councils can bring the climate leadership needed right now.”
—Stefan Schaffer, American Cities Climate Challenge strategist at NRDC.
St. Louis, following in the footsteps of Washington, D.C., New York City, and the State of Washington, became the next leader in driving local energy efficiency. This USGBC blog post outlines the details of the legislation. If you’re new around here, I summarized NYC’s version of this standard in Nexus #11.
If the spread of benchmarking ordinances and mayoral commitments to the Paris climate goals are any indication, this law is coming to a city near you.
In other city news, earlier this year Seattle announced an expansion of their MEETS energy efficiency as a service program. I like how they’re calling energy savings “Efficiency Energy”:
Efficiency Energy is metered, not estimated or deemed.
Efficiency Energy is transacted in energy units. In this case, kWhs.
Efficiency Energy is procured, as an energy resource, under a power purchase agreement, just like wind and solar.
Efficiency Energy is sold to the end use customer as an energy resource.
Are these initiatives coming to your neck of the woods? If so, how are you preparing? Carbon Lighthouse is an example of a company that seems to be primed to take advantage.
OK, that’s all for this week—thanks for reading Nexus!
—James
The unprecedented lock-downs and stay-at-home orders across the U.S. and the world are exposing a new category of winners and losers – the data “have’s” and the data “havenot’s”
—Jim Meacham in the latest Project Haystack magazine
Good morning!
Welcome to Nexus, a newsletter, podcast, and membership community for smart people applying smart building technology—written by James Dice. If you’re new to Nexus, you might want to start here.
Here’s an outline of this week’s newsletter:
Enjoy!
Disclaimer: James is a researcher at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL). All opinions expressed via Nexus emails, podcasts, or on the website belong solely to James. No resources from NREL are used to support Nexus. NREL does not endorse or support any aspect of Nexus.
Like all of you, I’m continuing to track the impact of COVID-19 on our industry and I’ll continue to share my thoughts here as I have them. If you’re looking for the signal in the noise, here’s the best content I’ve seen this week:
This week on the Nexus podcast: a conversation with the CEO of Facilio on a range of topics:
And much more…
Show notes | Apple Podcasts | Spotify | YouTube | Add to other podcast apps
An article in the latest Project Haystack Connections Magazine, written by authors from PNNL and Paul Ehrlich, echoed many of the points I’ve made in recent writing on advanced supervisory controls.
The article starts by highlighting where current control systems fall short.
Many of the control systems being produced today are fundamentally the same as what was available a decade ago. (…) There are several fundamental changes coming to controls that will drive us toward new control solutions and architectures. This is due to several key drivers:
Need for Predictive Control: Control systems today are largely “rule based” and utilize fixed algorithms to do real time control. An example of a rule is “Enable the economizer when the outdoor air temperature is below 60 degrees”. For most control systems, being rule based is fine, but what it doesn’t do well is to allow the control system to anticipate how the system will react. The ability to anticipate or predict is required both for highly energy efficient, passive systems, as well as for successful adoption of grid interactive buildings. For example, if you were to shift the zone setpoints for all VAV boxes, what would be the reduction in building demand? How long would it stay reduced before increasing again? The technology to make these predictions is called “Model Predictive Control” or MPC.
The use of MPC works hand in hand with semantic tagging to make building control systems more intelligent and also more useful as a source not only of control but for information and optimization.
We need building automation with prediction, optimization, and adaptation capabilities. How do we get there? The authors offered several ideas. My advanced supervisory control deep dive part 2 is coming soon with more.
St. Louis shows that cities do not have to wait for the federal government to lead on climate. They don’t need to wait for states. They don’t even have to wait for bigger cities. Mayors and local City Councils can bring the climate leadership needed right now.”
—Stefan Schaffer, American Cities Climate Challenge strategist at NRDC.
St. Louis, following in the footsteps of Washington, D.C., New York City, and the State of Washington, became the next leader in driving local energy efficiency. This USGBC blog post outlines the details of the legislation. If you’re new around here, I summarized NYC’s version of this standard in Nexus #11.
If the spread of benchmarking ordinances and mayoral commitments to the Paris climate goals are any indication, this law is coming to a city near you.
In other city news, earlier this year Seattle announced an expansion of their MEETS energy efficiency as a service program. I like how they’re calling energy savings “Efficiency Energy”:
Efficiency Energy is metered, not estimated or deemed.
Efficiency Energy is transacted in energy units. In this case, kWhs.
Efficiency Energy is procured, as an energy resource, under a power purchase agreement, just like wind and solar.
Efficiency Energy is sold to the end use customer as an energy resource.
Are these initiatives coming to your neck of the woods? If so, how are you preparing? Carbon Lighthouse is an example of a company that seems to be primed to take advantage.
OK, that’s all for this week—thanks for reading Nexus!
—James
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