Greening the Grid Meets Greening the Cloud

The grid, the internet, and the cloud could learn more together

Arguably, the American multinational technology company, Google, has the most ambitious industrial sustainability target in the world. It has committed to moving its entire business, including its global computing cloud network, to 24/7 Carbon Free Electricity (24/7 CFE) by 2030. We can learn from them.

To achieve this goal, one by one, the MNC forged links with national grids and energy suppliers in every nation it operates in. Using these links, it now finds out when and where carbon-free electricity is available. The company then charges batteries, morphs work loads, and shifts jobs in time and space to use that green power.

As a world leader in this endeavour, what has the organisation learned? Unsurprisingly, Google concluded that as well as “legal and cost-effective pathways to clean energy,” sustainability requires “access to transparent, granular, high-quality energy data.”

Unfortunately, the overwhelming majority of households and businesses in most nations, including the UK, are a long way from having access to energy data of that quality. In order for these less powerful but more numerous groups to move towards lower carbon electricity consumption and be in a position to take advantage of cheaper renewable power, that situation must change. Everyone needs good data on which to base their energy usage decisions. Providing it will become a key part of every nation’s sustainability strategy. The sooner the better.

Grid diversity has its downsides

At recent estimates, there are over 7,000 different energy providers worldwide, there are almost as many grids, and a bewildering number of customer tariffs. In addition, grid setups vary vastly between countries and regions, even amongst similar developed nations.

For example, in the UK there are a variety of suppliers offering different terms, differing green energy commitments, and varying tariffs to geographically dispersed customers. Those customers can easily change suppliers to choose one with lower prices or, for example, a commitment to 100% carbon offsetting. In the US, however, in many states the grid and the grid electricity provider are essentially the same. They act as monopolies, and customers can only buy power from them.

In addition, there is huge variation in the sophistication of electricity suppliers worldwide, from major corporations to tiny rural cooperatives. This is the diverse environment into which we need to add carbon-minimising intelligence.

When it comes to adding smarts to a network, the obvious analogy from which we can learn is the internet. There, decision-making usually happens in the centre and is driven by companies ranging in size from Amazon to tiny startups. However, the latest internet strategy is to move some of the intelligence to the Edge — i.e. devices closer to, or even owned by, end users. This gives them faster and more detailed access to local data on which to make choices. In order to make use of this data effectively, however, those devices need to be smart.

The key question is, should we add an Edge built of smart consumer devices to the world’s electricity grids and why might we want to?

Where does it all go?

In most countries, domestic use accounts for a significant chunk of the electricity consumed from the grid. For example, in 2020, UK households used 42% of the power.

The good news is that for more than a decade in many developed nations including the UK, domestic consumption has been falling, largely due to more efficient appliances (plus LED lighting). Nevertheless, such appliances still account for a large proportion of the electricity usage in these countries. The desire of most grids is to shift some of that usage to times when there is more green power available.

Let us consider the major drivers of household bills: washing machines, dryers, washer/dryers, dishwashers, electric heating, ovens and, more recently, EV chargers. Their tasks are not always time sensitive. Some can be delayed until the time is right.. Washing machines and tumble dryers usually have to run on demand because you don’t want wet clothes sitting in a machine, but washer/dryers do not. Heating may or may not be time sensitive. EVs sometimes have to be charged urgently, but often that is not the case. The same is true for running dishwashers.

If smarter devices could wait and run jobs at times when the cost and environmental impact was lower, their operation would be cheaper for users and they would contribute to the overall intelligence and sustainability of the grid. Existing major manufacturers would like to add this functionality to their products but, unfortunately, there is a problem. Those manufacturers do not want the headache of custom integrations with those 7,000 suppliers and myriad tariffs. Who can blame them?

In our next post, we will talk about what good, useful data might look like and how to use the internet and the cloud to get it where it needs to be.

FlatPeak.Energy

FlatPeak is a UK and EU startup working to make the grid more intelligent, reducing carbon and cutting costs, using data.

Photo by Charles Devaux on Unsplash