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Thoughts from the National Town Meeting and Symposium on Demand Response

From theory at MobiSys to practicality at the National Town Meeting on Demand Response, June has panned out to a very full month of meetings. I spent Monday understanding the practical side of Demand Response at the National Town Meeting and Symposium on Demand Response. This event proved to be a gathering of who’s who in the DR playground, with many opinions bouncing around during the panel discussions. Standards, or the lack thereof, seemed to be the theme in many discussions throughout the day. Spanning from hardware performance requirements to XML data structures for DR events, it was apparent that much of today’s activity lacks coherent guidelines on actually how to implement DR in a scalable and extensible manner. And while standards can facilitate adoption of technology, the overwhelming concensus that the process of developing these needed standards as a commercial endeavour is troubling — should the next generation of electrical grid reliabilty be left to such market forces — I sure don’t want a “VHS” system. With that said, the positive attitude of all the people I was fortunate to meet during the event set the tone for progress. And for a researcher at UC Berkeley, a very educational experience in the “real world”!

MobiSys 2006 discusses Wearables, Mesh, Cellphones, and Wireless Sensor Networks

Three days at MobiSys’06 have been a whirlwind through wearable computing, mesh technology (mostly in WiFi), cellphones, and wireless sensor networks. The two keynote speakers captured much of what MobiSys is about. Dan Siewiorek from Carnegie Mellon University discussed the history of wearable computing using many design iterations he has been through over the years. Dan showed design patterns that have emerged from the different wearable applications, such as user impatience with rebooting and data access while standing as opposed to sitting. A key obersation was too much virtualization can adversely reduce awareness of what’s really going on around the user. Erik Ekudden, VP of Technology for Ericsson, provided an interesting overview of three “waves” of communication that frame the mobile space. Erik suggests the mobile industry is entering the third wave of communication that ecompasses the “Internet of things.” All told, the evolution of wearables and mobiles provides a rich set of lessons for the emerging WSN space, especially in the consumer/residential fields.

REALWSN 2006 a success, sun never set

The workshop was a success, and well worth the travel. Interacting with a variety of international researchers was a highlight of the workshop. One of the more interesting features of the workshop was the diversity of software and hardware platforms. As a researcher at UC Berkeley, designs often default to Tinyos and Telos implementations. Jan Beutel from ETF Zurich presented his research on sensor node design metrics and really got the point across that there are a other platform options to consider. Jan has started recording this in an online Sensor Network Museum. Another reoccuring point, both in the presentations and conversations, was the difficulty in learning and effectively developing TinyOS applications. An interesting option is an Eclipse plug-in, YETI, that provides an option to the well-loved Cygwin methodology.

The MobiSys conference starts today, and looks equally as interesting as the workshop — at the least I get to hang out in a castle where the conference is being held.

REALWSN 2006 getting started, sun not setting

I’m in Uppsala, Sweden this week attending the REALWSN’06 workshop and the ACM MobiSys conference. Tomorrow I’ll present findings on 2.4GHz communication performance of Telos nodes in residential environments. And already, I’ve meet interesting researchers from Rice University involved with mesh networking for metro Wi-Fi deployments and from UIUC working on smart clothing. Things are looking interesting, more to come…now if the sun will just set.

Smart Thermostats needed for energy management, understanding alphabet soup.

The CEC-PIER-DRETD annual meeting was recently…oh, that’s the California Energy Commision (CEC) funded Public Interest Energy Research (PIER) Program project for Demand Response Enabling Technology Development (DRETD)…was recently held to discuss the state of technological progress of Demand Response in the California energy industry. PIER’s Mark Rawson discussed the ailing distribution infrastructure in California, quesitoning the centralized distribution model. A major issue is simply monitoring the condition of the miles of buried power lines…PG&E and SCE have 60,000 miles! The UC Berkeley DRETD group followed with presentations from numerous faculty on ultra-low power radio research, control architectures and strategies for residential demand response, and MEMS based energy sensors. I missed the afternoon sesssions to hang out at my poster to discuss my research on residential energy management and get feedback from members of CEC, PIER, and industry guests Honeywell and Invensys — well worth it. Two big points that emerged addressed the fact that many houses are needed to equal the demand response impact of one large industrial or commercial customer. Also, the industry needs a standard data schema for distributing dynamic energy prices to residential customers. Look for advances in both areas as residential demand response progresses.

Seeing the Big Picture at the UCB Berkeley Wireless Research Center Retreat

Twice a year, I get the chance to attend the UC Berkeley BWRC retreat and hear about the wonders of ultra low power radio technology. This summer’s retreat had a decidely Big Picture perspective. Professor Jan Rabaey introduced the retreat with his talk about very dense networks, where the communication medium blurs the line between radiated RF and inductive connectivity. He used smart surfaces as motivation for this technological direction, going from large smart aircraft surfaces to furniture fabric embedded with sensors, and way out to left field with a vision of dense networks within the body. While the size may be decreasing with each example, the privacy and invasiveness seem inversely proportionate…oddly enough. Professor Paul Wright followed with a “societal scale” message relating the impacts of wireless sensor networks in addressing the California energy challenges, health care, and tangentially enabling services as a business model.