Load Shifting in Chicago's Commercial Buildings
They think big in Chicago.
Last year, BOMA/Chicago—the Building Owners and Managers Association (BOMA) chapter in the Windy City—sought a $93 million smart grid investment grant from the U.S. Department of Energy.
The grant could have paid half the cost of enabling BOMA/Chicago members' buildings to do load-shifting for fun and profit.
The grant didn't materialize. But last week the group announced that—with assistance from the Illinois Science & Technology Coalition (ISTC)— it had signed a memorandum of understanding with the Korean Smart Grid Association to pilot load-shifting by nearly a dozen commercial buildings.
The Korean association has enlisted KT Corporation and LG Electronics—two of that country's largest energy and technology companies—among others, to deploy technology and services valued at $20 million to $30 million to conduct the pilot. Illinois' Citizens Utility Board (CUB) will oversee a related residential smart grid pilot as well.
In BOMA/Chicago's vision, a successful pilot over the next few years could lead to full involvement by its membership, which could be replicated by the nation's 90 other BOMA chapters.
Let's flesh that out.
BOMA/Chicago's membership operates 260 commercial buildings in downtown Chicago totaling 125 million square feet, or 80 percent of the city's commercial space. Peak demand reaches 1,000 megawatts. If the pilot is successful and a program is fully implemented across BOMA/Chicago's membership, which achieves 20 percent energy savings, that would represent 200 megawatts of capacity, the output of a mid-sized, coal-fired power plant. Do the math on 90 other cities and you begin to glimpse one of the practical outcomes of a smarter grid.
Commercial buildings, said to be one of the prime candidates for energy savings, would cut operating costs and share in revenue from selling unused capacity on the wholesale market. Some say hurdles remain; see our column on doubters.
The pilot plan calls for "intensive technology assessments" within 90 days, which means energy audits and analyses of how heating, cooling, ventilating and lighting are accomplished. Retrofits and system programming are to begin shortly thereafter. The goal is to conduct initial transactions—swapping a shift in peak load for dollars—by year's end. Participants want a fully functioning pilot by next summer, which would presumably include a network operating center, or NOC, that would act as go-between BOMA/Chicago's participating members and the whole sale electricity market.
The Korean angle certainly is an intriguing one. It was described to me by Matt Summy, president and CEO of the ISTC—a membership-driven nonprofit focused on attracting research-and-development investment to Illinois through public-private partnerships.
"We thought it was an innovative proposal," Summy said of BOMA/Chicago's initial grant request, one that aligned Chicago's and Illinois' interests that aligned with Korean interests in proving technology in an investment-friendly setting that would "unlock market opportunities."
Illinois entities in total have secured some $175 million in smart grid-related grants and, coupled with major energy efficiency funding, the state represents attractive, "aggregated market power," in Summy's words.
According to Mike Munson, CEO of Metropolitan Energy, the technology consulting arm of BOMA/Chicago, "[The Koreans] seemed to be on their toes."
So were BOMA/Chicago members, who've already over-subscribed the pilot program.
"Commercial buildings are not well-suited for the capacity market," Munson said. "Tenants won't stand to have their electricity shut off for eight hours at a time. This has to be much more refined and sophisticated load-shifting.
"Our theory is that commercial buildings are well-suited for the balancing services—the PJM demand response ancillary services, as opposed to being used as a last resort to avoid blackouts."
The pilot will employ smart meters, variable speed drives and digital controls for more granular systems operations—dimmers versus on/off switches, if you will.
"That provides flexibility to maintain comfort," Munson said. "I want to emphasize that any changes absolutely must maintain comfort in the building."
Or, as Michael Cornicelli, executive vice president of BOMA/Chicago, put it a few weeks ago in a conversation with me:
"These office buildings are filled with huffy lawyers who will call the management office if the temperature varies two degrees. We need to enable these response mechanisms to allow us to make adjustments when and where they're needed in ways that don't inconvenience or aggravate the tenants."
Phil Carson
Editor-in-chief
Intelligent Utility Daily
pcarson@energycentral.com
303-228-4757
Comments
Pre Cooling By Any Other Name...
I'm a bit familiar with the Chicago territory and early attempts to do load shifting with commercial buildings. The method they propose to implement is known as pre-cooling, and it involves running the HVAC plant at night to cool the air inside the building and the structure. Their objective is to reduce daytime energy use. The basic idea is embodied in adobe homes and has been known for many years.
It's not an easy thing to do, but there have been some very successful implementations. I've employed the idea for more than 20 years using fans to move cool air throught my home at night. Several building owners in the Chicago suburbs have employed it to great success. Google Jim Braun and Purdue to find Braun's research papers on the topic.
Combining precooling with time-sensitive pricing can save building owners a lot of money. Motivating them to try the idea is going to be a huge challenge, though maybe they'll be more receptive today than they were five years ago.
If part fo the project involves variable speed drives throughout the HVAC plant, then these folks really need to talk to Optimum Energy in Seattle, which has a secret sauce that allows them to save even more energy, and money.
This Should Be Interesting
I'll be interested in seeing the follow-up article this fall. Absent something like thermal storage, "shifting" will be a daunting task. It's one thing to install devices like occupancy sensors for lighting control (conservation), it's another thing altogether to "experiment" with the working environment of live bodies (shifting). The notion that 20% can be cut off the peak seems wildly optomistic. Seriously, what do you go after? The richest targets sit in the central plant but a 2 degree swing is likely to bring howls from the inmates....and I still don't see how "shifting" applies.
One problem in all of this that "energy guys" frequently fail to see: cannibalizing a core business in trade for energy efficiency is a big-time loser. To be clear, if energy in commercial buildings is "over-managed", the owner's return-on-investment will very likely suffer. An energy efficient building with 50% occupancy is not exactly a sustainable.
You said it
Interesting, indeed.
The participants appear to know what they're up against. And, yet, the building owners are pursuing it. I doubt the latter will be in favor of cranking that dial down if it meant losing a tenant. But let's get the details from the energy audits before leaping to conclusions. I have a feeling that doing robust EE work and perhaps updating systems might get them the margin they seek. They're not pie-in-the-sky folks in Chicago, let me tell you. I lived there for awhile and they're mighty pragmatic.
Count on us to follow this one.
Regards, Phil Carson