How do you catch a cloud and pin it down?
How do you find a word that means Flexibility?
We’ll get back to answering that question in due course. First some exciting news.
On November 22nd I attended the kick off meeting of a new International Electrotechnical Commission “smart grid” committee. This one is catchily entitled the “System Committee Smart Energy ad hoc Group 11 on Energy flexibility and residential DSR: common ground”, or “SyC SE ahG 11” for short.
If you follow the link just above you will discover that ahG 11’s mission is:
To consider the implementation of international residential flexibility system standards, their compatibility with national requirements, and propose best practice:
* To ensure the compatibility of end-to-end system solutions at international level,
* To identify emerging challenges related to the uptake of residential DSR,
* To consider terminology alignment, and
* To develop an accelerated report containing requirements for residential flexibility. This would give recommendations for alignment of existing national publications and flexibility projects under development with international standards. It would also identify, if relevant, the need for further standardization
Amongst other questions discussed at the kick off meeting was “How do you define the term ‘flexibility'”. Your mileage may vary of course, but since I spent 5 years of my life meeting 2 or 3 times per week on the committee developing the IEC 63110-1 document I will quote from the Committee Draft for Vote (CDV for short) of that international standard:
General concept of elasticity of resource use, (demand, storage, generation) modification of consumption and/or generation of energy/power, on an individual or aggregated level, in 371 reaction to an external signal (price signal or request) in order to provide a service within the energy system
Elasticity of resource use (demand, storage, generation), modification of consumption and/or generation of energy/power, on an individual or aggregated level, in reaction to an external signal (price signal or request) in order to provide a service within the energy system.
If you have strong objections to that definition please do not hesitate to join ahG 11, or failing that to send your preferred term of words to me so that I can bring it to the committee’s attention.
My other main action item before the next meeting in the New Year is to generate a list of existing standards, regulations etc. relevant to my particular area of expertise, which is bi-directional power transfer during electric vehicle (dis)charging (BPT for short). More commonly referred to as V2x. Since ahG 11’s term of reference includes the word “residential” this suggests an emphasis on vehicle-to-home technology (V2H for short) . However, homes are of course connected to the local electricity distribution grid, and are not forbidden from feeding electrical energy back into the grid as long as all the associated rules and regulations are adhered to.
Please let me or any other member of the committee know of any “standards” within your own area of expertise that may be relevant to “residential demand side response” (using the UK’s non standard nomenclature!), whether they be international, national, “industry de facto” or even the learnings from relevant “pilot projects”.
To give you a more graphic explanation of what we’re after, here is an extract from one of the documents on my own (by now rather long!) list; the first edition of the British Standards Institution‘s Publicly Available Specification 1878 (PAS 1878 for short)
Please feel free to suggest candidates for “standards” for communicating across any of the arrowed lines in the diagram, and alternative diagrams for that matter!