I am fascinated by the Open Energy Initiative, both its existence, and my unawareness of it, and of the way the problem is formulated…
As to the first few, the U.S. National Smart Grid Roadmap prepared by NIST identifies the development of common signals for Price and Product Definition as an overarching issue for the development of smart grids. Price of course, varies as product changes.
Product definition includes time and various attributes typically tied to source..
Just as winter rasberries are more expensive than summer ones, so time of delivery is a critical component of defining product delivery in all electricity markets. Active projects in the IETF (updates of iCalendar, iTIP, et al.) and in OASIS (WS-Calendar) are working to build a common semantic model for time and schedule and interval to be used in many domains as well as energy. The Calendaring and Scheduling Consortium (CalConnect) is a key group bridging the efforts.
Time has special significance because multiple volatile sources of electricity can be delivered over the same wires only so long as each transactions surrounding each volatile source clear in real time. I was surprised that something as deceptively simple as time does not yet have consistent semantics, much less ontology. For example, one of the more valued behaviors is to reduce the current energy use when requested. Shedding this load takes a finite time. In industrial scenarios, it may take an hour, but all load shed must be done in advance of 2:00 for a 2:00 contract. Residential load, on the other hand, would begin reduction at 2:00 on the same contract. There is little alignment of meaning on even the smallest element.
Product definition, though, touches on numerous elements that Mills outlined below. A specific point source is relatively straightforward. Green power is more difficult. California does not accept green power from the Pacific Northwest, as intermittent power from the Northwest is backed up with coal. In other markets, careful lobbying from wind and solar producers have gotten hydro power classified as “non-renewable”. Definitions vary greatly from place to place.
Another challenge of energy accounting is scarce distribution. There are many congestion points in transmission and distribution systems. Those who want to pay for a specific power source, or a specific type of power source, may need to pay congestion fees to reserve a portion of the intervening capacity. NIMBY might have a specific and identifiable cost. It is not hard to imagine a specific desire to buy a remote source consuming the remote transmission capacity requiring more local generation from a dirtier source.
If such distortions as Cap and Trade are included, its gets almost uncomputable. Those difficulties are above and beyond the favored position that cap and trade gives existing technologies and players, an economic shield against new entrants and new technologies. But *that* is a story for another place.
Tc
From: Mills Davis
Cc: [ontolog-forum]
Sent: Wednesday, March 03, 2010 6:30 PM
Subject: Re: [ontolog-forum] Foundation ontology, CYC, and Mapping
I feel some urgency that the Ontolog community should come together on these issues, especially now that increasing amounts of information are being exposed on the web as linked data. To date most of the emphasis (e.g., TBL's rules for publishing linked data) has been on getting more data available on the web. However, linked data is not the same as connected data, where value can increase (beyond what webscale search engines are able to do already) with the density of relationships. For this to happen communities need policies, practices, and tooling to help manage and curate emerging fabrics and data spaces.
Let me give a practical near-term example. The Open Energy Information initiative sponsored by the U.S. National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) seeks to establish a global energy information commons based on linked open data and data commons principles. The initiative has support from multiple government organizations, institutions, industry players in the US, north america, europe, etc., Its mission is to aggregate, organize, and provide open access to the world's information about renewable energy, to help catalyze and accelerate the development and transition of world economies to a sustainable energy future.
Currently, NREL is wrestling with the issue of how best to approach data quality, and what principles, policies, practices and web-based tooling they should advocate and bring to the global energy community. Data quality and data sharing is hardly a new issue. There is a lot that is known, and ample literature exists dealing with related topics. However, what is new is the emergence of semantic web based approaches, the need for collaboration across diverse communities, and web scale information and sharing. These require some rethinking of policies; a new formulation of best practices for data management, data quality and information sharing; and some new tooling.
"You can cut all the flowers but you cannot keep spring from coming."
-Pablo Neruda.
Toby Considine
TC9, Inc OASIS Technical Advisory Board
TC Chair: oBIX & WS-Calendar TC Editor: EMIX, EnergyInterop | | Email: Toby.Considine@xxxxxxxxx
Phone: (919)619-2104 http://www.tcnine.com/
blog: www.NewDaedalus.com |