Between the Poles

The Integrated Grid: Integrating distributed power generation and new consumer devices into the grid

At the American Public Power Association (APPA) annual conference in Denver, Michael Howard, President and CEO at EPRI, gave an overview of the major challenged facing the electric power grid and a way forward based on what EPRI calls the integrated grid.

First of all we are going to see a lot of new devices.  Michael analyzed the rate of adoption of technologies such as electricity, refrigerators, telephone, radio, TV, the Internet, and mobile phones before and after 1977.   He found that the rate of adoption since 1977 is about 2x the rate prior to 1977.  (1977 is about 36 years ago about the same as 2050 is ahead of us.)

He also looked at the annual number of new patents a proxy for innovation.  He found that the rate of new patents in the US since 1977 is about 3.5 the rate prior to 1977.  Internationally it is even more dramatic, about 5x since 1977.

All of these devices will require electricity, and they are going to change electric power usage patterns just as air conditioning did in the past.  Digital devices require high quality power.  And as we depend on these devices more and more, we will require much higher level of reliability in our electric power system.

But things are going to change on the generation side too.  Currently the grid is comprised of large, central power plants interconnected via grids of transmission lines and distribution networks that feed power to customers.

But this is beginning to change with the rise of distributed energy resources (DER) such as small natural gas-fueled generators, combined heat and power plants, electricity storage, and solar photovoltaics (PV) on rooftops and in larger arrays connected to the distribution system.  DER already has had an impact on the operation of the electric power grid and its role is likely to become more important in the future.

Together the new consumer devices and increasing penetration of DER mean that in the future the grid is going to be less dispatchable, less forecastable, and more variable.

Looking forward, each new device will have its own demand profile.  For example, in the U.S. average household demand is about 5 kW, but after 6 pm it typically rises to 7 kW.  But the details are important.  When you turn on the air conditioning (AC), demand can rise to 25 kW for a part of a second.  How is the grid going to handle that kind of peak in the future ?  This means that we have to look not only at energy consumption (kWh), but also at demand (kW).  Some utilities are already looking at rate structures that are based on demand not just energy consumption.

Another issue is "hosting capacity" which refers to how much PV a feeder is able to accommodate without issues like overvoltage on the distribution system.  Last year something like 25% of power in Germany came from intermittent sources.  Smart inverters extend the hosting capacity.  Germany is currently replacing all of its inverters with advanced inverters for this reason.

The successful integration of DER depends on the existing electric power grid. The current grid, especially its distribution systems, was not designed to accommodate a high penetration of DER while sustaining high levels of electric quality and reliability. The technical characteristics of certain types of DER, such as variability and intermittency, are quite different from central power stations. To realize fully the value of distributed resources and to maintain standards of quality and reliability, is going to require that we think more holistically about the grid.  EPRI calls this the integrated grid.  Basically EPRI foresees a future grid architecture that will combine large central generation plants with distributed generation.

In EPRI's view to achieve this vision of the future of the grid will require

1. Grid modernization - intelligent devices and bidirectional communications
2. Communications standards and interconnection rules - interoperability, basically support for plug and play
3. Integrated planning and operations - we can't separate transmission and distribution, power consumer and power generator
4. Informed policies and regulations - we need to help legislators and regulators understand the issues and put in place reasonable legislation and regulations.

More details of EPRI's vision of the future grid can be found in the report The Integrated Grid: Realizing the Full Value of Central and Distributed Energy Resources.

MultiSpeak interoperability standard for utilities approved for SGIP Catalog of Standards

MultiSpeak was developed under the auspices of the National Rural Electric Assn (NRECA) and is intended as an industry-wide standard for the exchange of information for electricity distribution utilities and all vertically-integrated segments except power marketing and generation.  It is used by more than 725 electric coops, investor-owned, and municipal utilities in 19 countries and is widely recognized and supported by North American software vendors.  Multispeak incorporates the OGC Geography Markup Language (GML) 2.1.2 standard for geospatial location.

The MultiSpeak Specification is one of the leading standards addressing the demands of enterprise application interoperability required to achieve smart grid objectives.

The members of Smart Grid Interoperability Panel (SGIP) are responsible for resolving  interoperability coordination issues and gaps that hinder seamless connectivity. By clearing these roadblocks, SGIP accelerates the digital modernization of the electric power grid and expands supplier and service provider markets in both the United States and internationally.

The SGIP Catalog of Standards (CoS) is a compendium of standards and practices considered to be relevant for the development and deployment of a robust, interoperable, and secure Smart Grid.

The Smart Grid Interoperability Panel’s (SGIP) Participating Members voted to add two new entries, Multispeak 3.0 and  MultiSpeak Security V1.0, to the SGIP Catalog of Standards.

Are APIs copyrightable ?

Last week U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit in Washington DC ruled that Oracle can copyright application programming interfaces (APIs) for the Java programming language.  In a unanimous ruling the appeals court held that a district judge in California erred in 2012 by declaring that the APIs were simply a function or an idea, and not an expression subject to copyright protection.  The appeals court found instead that, despite the fact Google had written its own code to implement the software, it had infringed copyright by using Oracle’s headers (declarations).  According to one of Oracle's lawyers "Google copied 7,000 lines of code and the structure and organization of whole packages of highly creative software. To say that this is protected is not the same as saying that anything that might loosely be called an API is protectable under copyright law."

Korea's BIM on GIS project is developing a platform for spatial interoperability

At the Geospatial World Forum in Geneva, several geospatial-related projects from South Korea are being highlighted.  One of the most important is a five-year project conceived, sponsored and funded by the Korean Institute of Construction Technology (KICT).  The objective of the project, called BIM on GIS Interoperability Open-Platform, is to develop a software platform that enables GIS and BIM interoperability.  The project is being carried out by Korean software company Gaia3D.

Gaia3D has been prototyping a software architecture comprised of application plug-ins, desktop and web clients, 3D BIM/GIS object server, spatial RDBMS, and spatial data including BIM and GIS models.  The main functions that the software platform supports are BIM format conversion (rvt to internal) for improved performance, simultaneous spatial query and analysis for geospatial and BIM data, application APIs for facility management (FM) and energy management, interactive navigation inside and outside of buildings, control over transparency (making walls transparent, for example), and 3D visualization.  It supports large data volumes including BIM, digital terrain models, orthoimagery, photorealistic 3D visualization, textures, augmented reality, both BIM and GIS models and international standards IFC and CityGML.  The application is intended to be vendor neutral with respect to both BIM and GIS vendors.

The current prototype relies on open source geospatial software including GeoServer, World Wind SDK for Java, OpenLayers, and PostGIS.

An example that was demonstrated to me at Geospatial World Forum by Heegu Park of Gaia3D was KOPRI (Korea Polar Research Institute), who maintain a research station called King Sejong in Antarctica.  BIM models were developed for the 35 buildings of the research station and integrated with geospatial data including a digital terrain model and satellite imagery.  Navigation inside and outside of buildings was demonstrated, looking outide through windows, as well as removal of walls and rooves to visualize inside infrastructure.

Progress on the Dutch 3D geospatial standard-integration with open source geospatial tools

At the Geospatial World Forum in Amsterdam two years ago, Jantien Stoter of the Delft Univeristy of Technology and an advisor to Geonovum, gave an overview of the work on a Dutch 3D standard, which has been piloted by about 100 organizations in the Netherlands.  The Dutch 3D standard integrates CityGML and the Dutch IMGeo standard.  A recent Safe blog post gives an interesting account of how FME was used to provide integration with open source tools.

The Internet of Things forecasted to include 26 billion intelligent devices by 2020

In 2009 there were about 10¹⁹ transistors shipped in 2009, or over 1 billion per person.  It is estimated that the  number of smartphones, tablets and PCs in use will reach about 7.3 billion units in 2020.  It is projected that component costs will become so inexpensive that connectivity will become a standard feature even for devices costing less than $1.

According to a Gartner report, the Internet of Things (IoT) which Gartner defines as the "network of physical objects that contain embedded technology to communicate and sense or interact with their internal states or the external environment" and which excludes PCs, tablets and smartphones,  will expand to 26 billion units installed by 2020 up significantly from 0.9 billion in 2009. 

According to Gartner the IoT includes the devices (hardware), embedded software, communications services and information services such as geolocation associated with the things. Gartner refers to the companies that provide the hardware, software and services as IoT suppliers.   Gartner said that IoT product and service suppliers will generate incremental revenue of about $309 billion, mostly in services. 

The economic value-add which represents the aggregate benefits that businesses derive through the sale and usage of IoT will reach $1.9 trillion across all sectors in 2020.  The verticals that are leading the adoption of IoT are manufacturing (15 %), healthcare (15 %) and insurance (11 %).  The IoT includes sector-specific technology such as automated manufacturing systems and more generic technology such as "smart building" technologies.

A recent study by Cisco of the Internet of Things (Cisco calls it the Internet of Everything) estimated that it represents a $19 trillion global opportunity over the next decade.

Standards for the Internet of Things

Geospatial information is a cross-cutting requirement of many intelligent devices participating inthe IoT.  The Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC, which creates and manages standards that enable geospatial interoperability, and the International Telecommunications Union Telecommunication Standardization Sector (ITU-T) are jointly collaborating on the advancement of standards for the Internet of Things (IoT).  As part of this effort the OGC has submitted the OGC Open GeoSMS standard for adoption through the ITU.  In addition the ITU-T has just published a ITU-T Technology Watch Report: Location matters: Spatial standards for the Internet of Things, written by staff and members of the OGC in collaboration with the ITU Secretariat.

Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) celebrates 20 years of progress in geospatial interoperability

Last night in Crystal City the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) celebrated its first 20 years.  To appreciate the OGC's remarkable achievements it is valuable to look back to where geospatial was before the OGC was formed.

The Canada Land Inventory, which is considered the world's first GIS, was designed in the late 1960's and implemented between 1967 and 1977.

In the early 1980s, U. S. Army Corps of Engineers' Construction Engineering Research Laboratory (CERL) developed GRASS (Geographic Resources Analysis Support System). Subsequently several U.S. government agencies including the Corps of Engineers, the Department of Agriculture Soil Conservation Service, and the National Park Service standardized on GRASS. Like Unix GRASS was freely available and universities around the world adopted it.   In 1992, the GRASS user community formed a non-profit organization, the Open GRASS Foundation (OGF),  intended to stimulate private sector support for GRASS and to create a consensus-based membership process for management of GRASS community affairs.

To put this in context Richard Stallman founded the Free Software Foundation in 1985. Development of the NCSA HTTP Server began in 1995. Subsequently a group of eight developers working on the NCSA HTTP Server came to be known as the Apache Group and the legal entity, the Apache Software Foundation (ASF), was founded in 1999. The Open Grass Foundation preceded the ASF by about seven years.

But GRASS did not provide a basis for comprehensive interoperability between different geosoftware packages. The OpenGIS Project envisioned diverse geoprocessing systems interoperating directly over networks by means of a set of open interfaces based on the "Open Geodata Interoperability Specification" (OGIS). To implement this vision, in 1994 the Open GIS Consortium (OGC) was founded with eight charter members Camber Corporation, University of Arkansas - CAST, Center for Environmental Design Research at the University of California – Berkeley, Intergraph Corporation, PCI Remote Sensing, QUBA, USACERL (US Army Corps of Engineers Construction Engineering Research Laboratory), and USDA Soil Conservation Service.

Today OGC standards comprise a platform for geospatial interoperability.  They have been implemented in hundreds of commercial geoprocessing products, both proprietary and open source,  and are being implemented by governments and non-government organizations around the world.  An indication of their success is that other industries look to the geospatial sector and the OGC as a model for implementing interoperability.

Earthcube - Community-led cyberinfrastructure for data sharing across the geosciences

EarthCube is community-led cyberinfrastructure that will enable data sharing across the geosciences. Its aim is to develop a framework to assist researchers in understanding and predicting the Earth system from the sun to the center of the Earth. The goal of EarthCube is to create a community-driven cyberinfrastructure that will enable global data discovery and knowledge management and achieve interoperability and data integration within and across disciplines.

The Earthcube vision is to transform research and data management practices within the geosciences community over the next decade in order to provide new capabilities, including access to data and visualization tools, to researchers and educators.  This initiative will provide a knowledge management framework for the geosciences that will result in improved productivity within the geosciences community and accelerated research on the Earth system.

EarthCube is a collaborative partnership between the National Science Foundation's (NSF) Directorate of Geosciences (GEO) and the Division of Advanced Cyberinfrastructure (ACI). It’s also a virtual community with over 2,500 participants, including atmosphere, ocean, computer, information, and social scientists, as well as educators, data managers, and other contributors.

This community has done a great deal of collaborative work since EarthCube was launched in mid-2011. As of September 2013, a new round of NSF awards was made to develop key technologies, promote community building, explore integrative systems, and prototype a governance structure.

In addition to the funded project teams, several Special Interest Groups are in place as virtual teams working together on EarthCube-related projects.

Early in March of this year an EarthCube IT/CS/FOSS Stakeholder Assembly Workshop was held in Boulder, CO.  The workshop was intended to bring together members of the computer and information science communities, as well as representatives from industry and free and open source software communities.

Thanks to Rafael Moreno for pointing me to this.

UK Government aims at BIM Level 3 potentially supporting whole lifecycle modeling by 2018

The UK Government's goals for construction industry is to reduce the CAPEX for public construction (design and build) projects and to reduce the UK's carbon intensity in line with its EU carbon committments. To reach its goal for the construction industry the UK Government has undertaken several initatives, one of which is a commitment to embrace Building Information Modelling (BIM) in Government projects over a 5-year time frame, to encourage industry to participate in this effort, and to position the UK to become a world leader in BIM.

The UK Government has explicitly targeted Level 2 BIM in the maturity ramp, defined as “file based collaboration and library management.”  Level 2 BIM is a series of domain specific models (e.g. architectural, structural, services etc)  where structured data can be shared based on COBie UK 2012.

The inital focus is on the design/build part of the lifecycle, but the government has said that "the 20% saving refers to CapEx cost savings however we know that the largest prize for BIM lies in the operational stages of the project life-cycle"

BIM Level 3

The UK Government is projecting that Level 3 BIM will be introduced in 2018. BIM Level 3 is not yet clearly defined but according to Peter Hansford could include big data, support for intelligent infrastructure including smart grid, and enabling smart city models. It could go beyond several subsystem BIM models in BIM Level 2 to a single model.  Most interestingly according to Peter Hansford it could provide the basis for whole lifecycle modeling, allowing a building design to be optimized for the whole life cost and whole life carbon footprint.

According to Paul Morrell, Former Chief Construction Adviser, UK, although some companies are claiming to use BIM Level 3, no one is delivering its full potential of this technology.  A recent poll of 410 live webinar participants found that no one is operating at BIM Level 3 at present. 

Whole Lifecycle

In a panel discussion on BIM Level 3, Rich Saxon, the UK Government's BIM Ambassador dor Growth, pointed out that some aspects of BIM Level 2 are incomplete which makes talking about adoption of BIM Level 3 extremely ambitious.  In agreement with Peter Hansford, he see an important goal of BIM Level 3 should be to go beyond projects to whole lifecycle.  In the future he foresees that firms will offer whole life projects including design, build, and maintain. For example, Phillips will design, build and maintain building lighting which is leased to the building owner.  He warned that the emerging Internet of Things (IoT) is poised to be disruptive.  We can imagine buildings with sensors and analytics able to monitor, analyse and dynamically respond without human intervention to building situational awareness.

Interoperability across the construction lifecycle and the need for standards

Ian Chapman, Director of the National BIM Library, said that part of BIM Level 3 should be standards - because these make it possible for software to interoperate, which enables data integration across the construction lifecycle (plan, desing, build, O&M).   It also makes it possible to find efficiencies by direct comparison of different projects and project outcomes.  Software interoperability requires a BIM geometry standard like IFC, a clasification standard like Uniclass 2, an information delivery manual (IDM), and a data dictionary (DD).  For example, ISO 29481-1:2010 specifies a methodology and format for the development of an information delivery manual (IDM) and is intended to facilitate interoperability between software applications used in the construction process, to promote digital collaboration between actors in the construction process and to provide a basis for reliable information exchange. The data dictionary as Ian Chapman presented it appears to be very close to the concept library (CB-NL) sponsored by by the Dutch Council on Building Information (BIR) that maps the same objects with different names across the construction lifecycle.

Enabling the right people to make decisions

Anne Kemp, Director of BIM at Atkins Global, argued that there needs to be conversation at the national level to deicde what do we really want from BIM Level 3 ?  .Her perspective is that the most important goal of BIM Level3 is that it  needs to enable the right people to make decisions.  For example, in 2007  Tewkesbury was flooded, but not in the most recent flooding because changes were made – the right people were enabled to make the right decisions.

Candidate OGC IndoorGML standard available for public comment

Indoor mapping is already supported by Google and Bing.  Micello is in the business of creating indoor maps of major venues around the world.  Most of the activity seems to be focussed on consumers and locations such as malls, airports and department stores.  A typical indoor application would help you find particular products in a mall or department store.

The major problem that distinguishes indoor from outdoor location and mapping is that there is no widely recognized indoor equivalent of GPS.  When you are outside of buildings on most of the Earth's surface you can use GPS  to determine where you, other people and things are.  As soon as you walk into a building, GPS no longer works and it is difficult to automatically track people and objects.  For example, to be able to track a firefighter in a building  that has not been prepared in advance remains a challenge.

There have been a number of attempts to solve this problem.  Wifi signals from transmitters with known locations can be used to triangulate locations to with an accuracy of 10-15 feet.  Other technologies involve tracking cell phone location by triangulation, RFID, accelerometers, or tracking by low frequency radio frequency waves that are not as affected by walls as high frequency waves.

Another challenge is 3D location in tall buildings, translating an elevation in meters or feet to a particular floor and vice versa.

The business benefit of indoor location is significant because it increases the value of your assets - when you can locate equipment and facilities easily, you will use them more.  In the case of hospitals it can be a matter of life and death to find the "crash cart" in seconds rather than minutes.

The Open Geospatial Consortium's  IndoorGML Standards Working Group has released a candidate  IndoorGML Encoding Standard.  The  IndoorGML Encoding Standard has been developed to provide a common schema framework for interoperability between indoor spatial applications such as indoor location services, indoor web map services, indoor emergency control, guiding services for visually handicapped persons in indoor space, and indoor robotics. The IndoorGML Encoding Standard is intended to provide a cross-platform, vendor-neutral way of communicating indoor spatial information. The IndoorGML Standards Working Group worked in collaboration with other standards groups including ISO/TC204 and IEEE Robotics & Automation Society (RAS).

IndoorGML has been implemented as an application schema of the OGC Geographic Markup Language (GML) Version 3.2.1. IndoorGML's set of geometric and semantic data elements intended to be iconsistent with other standards such as the OGC's CityGML standard and buildingSMART's Industry Foundation Classes (IFCs).

IndoorGML specifies conceptual models and XML schemas for

• Geometric and semantic properties of spaces and connectivity
• Navigation context and constraints
• Space subdivisions and types of connectivity between spaces
• Navigation networks (logical and metric) and their relationships

The OGC is requesting public comment for a month ending on March 21, 2014.  You can download the standard here.