Taking Energy Management to Societal-Scale

Randy H. KatzUniversity of California, Berkeley

LoCal Winter RetreatTahoe City, CA10 January 2012

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Sustainability

• Strategies that meet society’s present needs without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs

• Satisfaction of basic economic, social, and security needs now and in the future without undermining the natural resource base and environmental quality on which life depends– Energy, Water, Natural Resources, Environment, … – Green Manufacturing, Transportation, Agriculture, ...– Increase efficiencies and minimize bad side-effects

• Use less, use what you need, use it better

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Energy Sustainability

• Keep energy consumption flat (or declining) on a per capita and/or sq. ft. basis – Given growth in population– … Growth in economic activity– … Growth in building stock

• Energy efficiency in what people do and where people live and work

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How to AchieveSocietal-Scale?

• Observe and analyze at societal-scale, in order to manage

• Individual building deployments are Herculean efforts

• Scale to millions of structures and 100s million of people?

• Exploit existing information sources!– Crowdsourced information– Scrape on-line databases

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Steven E. Koonin(former) Under Secretary for Science DOE

“Rejected energy—energy that is essentially wasted—is about 60% of our total primary energy use. We consume roughly 95 quads of energy: 55 quads are rejected, and the remaining quads are useful energy. … Rejected energy in the residential, commercial, and industrial sectors appears to be 20% of total rejected energy; these numbers were probably calculated because, truthfully, we do not have reliable data on where energy is being wasted. This situation calls for better instrumentation and data collection of these end-use sectors.”

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California CommercialEnd Use Survey

• How they do a comprehensive study of commercial sector energy use now …

• Random sample of 2,790 commercial facilities• Stratified by utility service area, climate region, building

type, energy consumption level• Twelve common commercial building types: floor

stocks, fuel shares, electric & natural gas consumption, energy-use indices, energy intensities, 16-day hourly end-use load profiles

• See http://capabilities.itron.com/ceusweb/

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EIA Residential Energy Consumption Survey

• How they do a comprehensive study of residential sector use now: nationally representative sample of housing units

• Interviewers collect energy characteristics on the housing unit, usage patterns, and household demographics

• Information combined with data from energy suppliers to estimate energy costs and usage for heating, cooling, appliances and other end uses

• See http://www.eia.gov/consumption/residential/

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Alternative Approach: Google Earth

• Crowd sourcing: Harness volunteer efforts to create Google SketchUp 3D building models

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SketchUp 3D Warehouse

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Google Earth

• Sufficient information to …– Estimate building square feet– Building orientation– Construction materials

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Google EarthBerkeley Campus

• Number of floors• Orientation of windows• Roof facing• Other analyses

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Google EarthBerkeley Campus

• Not just “landmark” buildings, but apartment buildings, shops, residences, …

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Mining AdditionalInformation Sources: Zillow

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Residential Informationand Real Estate Analytics

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Residential Information

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Liveability Scoring

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Walkscore.comnear Berkeley Campus

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Walkscore.comnear Berkeley Campus

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Walkscore.comnear Berkeley Campus

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Walkscore.comnear Berkeley Campus

Recommendation Scoring

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Walkscore.comnear Berkeley Campus

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Summary

• Computer Scientists’ contribution to sustainability: energy efficiency

• Energy awareness: observe-analyze-act to reduce energy usage in computers and buildings

• Overarching Strategies: energy proportionality, aggregation, supply-following loads

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Conclusions

• The Challenge: Achieving Societal-Scale– Exploit crowd-sourcing

• User generated 3D models• Exemplar buildings and automated model building• Games with a purpose?

– Exploit alternative information sources• Satellite photos• Real-estate databases• Your creativity here

• Making the information actionable: energy analytics– Liveability scoring– Walkability and transport– Other social analytics