Hope they crash some day too so you can stop tracking people :). How long does it take until this get -votes
Our data centers now work harder when the sun shines and wind blows
151–160 of 195 posts
Re: Our data centers now work harder when the sun shines and wind blows
#152Earlier quoted context omitted.
How much of energy consumption even is by households though? I think people have a strong bias for thinking the things they see and touch during the day are environmentally important. But most "pollution"/energy use happen out of sight from our everyday lives. Or so I think. Happy to be disproven!
~20% is residential—still significant. Plus ~30% transportation, which as we transition to EVs become more and more relevant to residential energy use. But even commercial and industrial could be optimized in the same manner. I've been thinking: If electricity is much cheaper during certain periods, would factories be built to only run during those times? https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/use-of-energy/
This is already a thing in Australia
Re: Our data centers now work harder when the sun shines and wind blows
#153This is the future. Using algorithms to optimize usage of renewable energy. Not only will it be lower carbon, it will be cheaper. What's interesting is they describe it working on forecasts (for wind and sun) instead of instantaneous renewable production. I wonder what the rationale for that was? Basing the algorithm on instantaneous information should be more accurate and thus give better savings, but maybe it varie…
The future is nuclear power, and when companies buy hardware they use it at max performance around the clock because energy is cheap and does not depend on weather. There’s huge lie (by omission) about renewables: nobody explained how to convert the world to 100% renewable energy without coal backup.
Coal backup is incompatible with renewables. The coal plants clog the grid and prevent the usage of renewables. If you had said gas then those same gas plants could be used to convert hydrogen back into electricity.
Re: Our data centers now work harder when the sun shines and wind blows
#154Earlier quoted context omitted.
Octopus energy in the UK with the beta agile tariff is based on 30 minute pricing and prices have been so low at times such as yesterday that the price per unit has been negative, for example on Sunday and Monday I was paid 4.2 pence per unit to take electricity off the network.
Their web site advertises support for IFTTT. Has anyone here hacked on Octopus APIs? Looks very cool.
Yeah I have a bit. I'm on their Agile energy with half hour pricing intervals (this is what the smart meter standards give).
It's really cool. Sometimes the price goes below zero - "plunge pricing" - if there is too much production and too little use. They give you the pricing info for today and tomorrow ahead of time, not sure how they predict future pricing - probably based on weather forecasts, since they only use solar and wind?
I have WiFi smart sockets on things like electric heaters to turn them on when electricity price is below my threshold level. It's a nice feeling being paid for using electricity. If you have an electric car you could also programmatically only charge it when electricity price is below a certain level. Octopus also have an EV leasing company, thinking of selling my current car and leasing one from them after covid19 is gone to a degree that I still need a car again.
Here are their dev docs:
https://developer.octopus.energy/docs/api/
They even have an open graphQL API and a storybook - how many utility companies you know who do this? Looks like Octopus hired the right people!
https://api.octopus.energy/v1/graphql/
https://octopus.energy/static/common/storybook/account-manag...
Re: Our data centers now work harder when the sun shines and wind blows
#155Earlier quoted context omitted.
The pessimist in me says that they're only doing this in case a carbon tax passes, they'll be able to keep their pricing competitive.
I think this has very little to do with a carbon tax and everything about external and internal marketing. They are committed to using renewable power.
They bought enough carbon credits to offset their emissions but it still left a bitter taste because data centers run 24 hours a day.
Re: Our data centers now work harder when the sun shines and wind blows
#156Imagine climate modeling super computers that are carbon neutral.
Re: Our data centers now work harder when the sun shines and wind blows
#157This is the future. Using algorithms to optimize usage of renewable energy. Not only will it be lower carbon, it will be cheaper. What's interesting is they describe it working on forecasts (for wind and sun) instead of instantaneous renewable production. I wonder what the rationale for that was? Basing the algorithm on instantaneous information should be more accurate and thus give better savings, but maybe it varie…
And stop the train when the wind is not blowing or it is cloudy.
Re: Our data centers now work harder when the sun shines and wind blows
#158Earlier quoted context omitted.
How much of energy consumption even is by households though? I think people have a strong bias for thinking the things they see and touch during the day are environmentally important. But most "pollution"/energy use happen out of sight from our everyday lives. Or so I think. Happy to be disproven!
~20% is residential—still significant. Plus ~30% transportation, which as we transition to EVs become more and more relevant to residential energy use. But even commercial and industrial could be optimized in the same manner. I've been thinking: If electricity is much cheaper during certain periods, would factories be built to only run during those times? https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/use-of-energy/
This is already a thing, but it‘s only done at “enterprise scale”. Meaning account managers meet with energy purchasers at large manufacturing plants to negotiate “interruptible supply” contracts. The notice periods, levels and tariffs are all negotiated individually. “Pricing managers” on both sides of the negotiation spend a long time modelling the deals in Excel. If algorithms could replace the pricing managers that would save both sides some time and money though, not to mention making it available to the residential and SME market.
Re: Our data centers now work harder when the sun shines and wind blows
#159This is the future. Using algorithms to optimize usage of renewable energy. Not only will it be lower carbon, it will be cheaper. What's interesting is they describe it working on forecasts (for wind and sun) instead of instantaneous renewable production. I wonder what the rationale for that was? Basing the algorithm on instantaneous information should be more accurate and thus give better savings, but maybe it varie…
> Imagine when your fridge can do this I've been posting for years that an effective grid "battery" is internet connected refrigerators, water heaters, A/C, car chargers, etc., that only run when power is cheap, i.e. when solar/wind is providing excess power. A great deal of our demand for electricity is elastic and shiftable, which will eliminate a huge chunk of the need for grid batteries. Glad to see this finally…
The problem is that with modern fridges energy consumption is already low enough that steering that through smart meters probably isn't worth the investment. Large companies could use that, esp with electric heating. But in residential areas, I think energy efficiency can still yield greater results.
Re: Our data centers now work harder when the sun shines and wind blows
#160Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Imagine when your fridge can do this I've been posting for years that an effective grid "battery" is internet connected refrigerators, water heaters, A/C, car chargers, etc., that only run when power is cheap, i.e. when solar/wind is providing excess power. A great deal of our demand for electricity is elastic and shiftable, which will eliminate a huge chunk of the need for grid batteries. Glad to see this finally…
The problem is that with modern fridges energy consumption is already low enough that steering that through smart meters probably isn't worth the investment. Large companies could use that, esp with electric heating. But in residential areas, I think energy efficiency can still yield greater results.
There should just be a common protocol for all electical devices - heaters, washing machines, vacuum cleaners, computers, TVs, toasters - everything. Some devices might ignore it, but they should still have the data port and the microcontroller responding with "power regulation not supported". The state should regulate that like it regulates normal power sockets, it's a net benefit for everybody and the cost is minimal.
We can just add usb port to regular wall sockets and make a new power plug with that.
Of course the socket should be backward compatible, but any new devices would require the full plug and responding to the protocol.
Over 10 years we could have an effective grid-wide gigawatthour battery. And everybody would only pay for it like 5 USD every time they buy a new device :)
The cost of a cheap microcontroller, power regulator and an usb plug is like Want to make sure you switched off that iron when you went to a party? No problem - connect with a smarpthone and check (and switch it off if needed).
There could be several categories of devices with different priorities and default power settings that you could change if you want to:
- background, critical
- background, optional
- background, opportunistic
- interactive, critical
- interactive, optional
- interactive, dangerous if left alone
- bidirectional (like Tesla wall, or a car charger if you want to power your house from your car battery when there is a blackout)
And the house could detect if you're home, and disable the iron if you're not and throttle the freezer and all heaters to optimize the power usage.
Automated vacuum cleaners nad chargers could start by themselves when the energy is effectively free and stop for a moment when there's a shortage.
This will get especially important when electric cars are more common - you don't want everybody to start charging them when they get back home.