Electricity. In the developed world, electricity is simply interwoven into our lives to the point where most people don’t think about it unless it’s suddenly not there. Although it often gets a bad rap for when blackouts and other disruption events occur, let’s not forget that national and international electricity systems (especially the one in the US and Canada) are often called the largest “machines” in the world. Considering their size and the number of interconnected parts, electricity systems work impressively well. The fact that most people don’t think about electricity except for the moments it’s not there is arguably evidence of that. In recognition of this impressive “machine”, ‘electrification’ was named the top engineering achievement as ranked by the National Academy of Engineering’s ‘Greatest Engineering Achievements of the 20th Century’!
So, is the electrical grid broken? Arguably (which I will not do here), no.
Is there a strong desire to upgrade the system so it operates better and more efficiently? Yes.
The so-called “smart grid” is a hot topic now, with a major influx of investment coming from the 2009 American Recovery and Reinvestment Act’s Smart Grid Investment Grants. However, the grid will not change overnight. In my mind, upgrading the largest “machine” in the world will be a continuous evolutionary process.
For me, this is the connection to the Design Impact blog, and I’d like to thank Dr. James Allison for inviting me to write a guest entry about the smart grid. The smart grid will ultimately have many levels of design. How should we design the smart grid? How should we design the consumer products that will interact with the smart grid? How do we design the evolution to the smart grid while continuing to operate the grid in whatever state it is currently in? With apologies to whoever said this originally (as I have forgotten), an analogy I particularly like is that upgrading the current grid to the smart grid on the fly is effectively equivalent to changing the engine on a commercial jet while it’s flying.
Designing and managing the smart grid evolution will be a huge challenge, although not insurmountable. Ultimately, designing the underlying enabling infrastructure for the smart grid will be key. At the moment, we simply aren’t sure which technologies or systems will work best for the smart grid. To address this, I am a firm believer in experimenting and trying new technologies in demonstration projects, which is precisely the point made recently by Patricia Hoffman, DOE’s assistant secretary for electricity delivery and reliability. The Smart Grid Investment Grants are certainly a solid start at funding some experimental smart grid designs. Some ideas will work, some won’t. As these demonstration projects progress, there will be a desire to keep what works and jettison what doesn’t on the fly, meaning that the smart grid will always be in a state of transition. So, how do we design the smart grid to continuously operate under continuous change?
I return to my point earlier that the underlying enabling infrastructure will be key. One effort to help support this goal is the monumental task being spearheaded by NIST to establish communication standards for the smart grid. Among other things, smart meters, utility energy management systems, home energy management systems, and even appliances will need to be able to ‘talk’ with one another. The full spectrum of devices that will connect to the smart grid will almost certainly come from more than one manufacturer, much like a multitude of devices connects seamlessly to the Internet. Establishing communication and interoperability standards is thus critically important for innovation to flourish on the smart grid just as it has on the Internet.
Smart meters are also undoubtedly a key enabling piece of the smart grid’s evolution. Electricity usage is read off of older meters at a frequency of at most once a month, whereas these smart meters will be read on the order of a few minutes to hourly. With this more frequent feedback of electricity usage, electricity customers will have a better understanding of how much electricity they use and at what times they use it. However, smart meters are just a starting point, and as a few utilities have found out, there will be some growing pains along the way as we transition into the smart grid.
These growing pains are likely part of what was behind a recent announcement that had the smart grid world buzzing: the Maryland Public Service Commission (PSC) turned down Baltimore Gas and Electricity’s smart meter rollout proposal. Personally, I think the Maryland PSC made the right call for reasons along the lines of what Chris King discusses in an article for SmartGridNews (which is a smart grid newsletter that I recommend perusing for anyone interested in easy reading and quick introductions to the many movers and shakers in the smart grid space). It’s not that the Maryland PSC doesn’t support the smart grid. Quite the opposite, I believe. My interpretation of their reasoning is simply that ‘we like where you’re going, but we think your smart grid system design should be better.’ Designing these systems is, frankly, going to be hard. Some pieces, like smart meters, are necessary enablers of the smart grid, but there is much more to truly make the system work. There are many questions to answer as well. Among them, how will customers react in the long run to smart meters, real-time electricity information and possibly time-varying pricing? Will the new smart grid system truly operate more efficiently than the old system? Again, one of the best ways to find this out in my mind is to try out some ideas through demonstration projects, just as Patricia Hoffman suggested.
I’ll stop here for this entry and return at a later date with some thoughts on one or more of the other pieces of the smart grid. I welcome any comments, questions or suggestions of which topic or topics to discuss next.
Once again, many thanks to Dr. James Allison for providing me the opportunity to write this guest entry for his Design Impact blog. Have a great day, everyone!
On the one year anniversary of Design Impact (Earth Day 2010), I thought I would share some thoughts about how my experience as an engineer has shaped my view of the natural world. The things engineers create can be phenomenally complex, challenging and surprising their makers. We know a lot about engineered systems (they were created by people after all), but we don’t understand them completely. It may be easy to understand their constituent parts, but because of the numerous direct and indirect interactions within a system, understanding how the overall system behaves is a more demanding task. It’s difficult to conceptualize how a small change might propagate throughout a system. Engineering experience has taught us that as systems increase in complexity, the consequences of change tend to be more profound. People often get first-order effects right, but some non-intuitive outcomes are the result of a chain reaction several layers deep. For example, engineers thought they understood the behavior of the Millennium Bridge very well before opening day, but were in for a surprise:
In hindsight the interaction between the sideways bridge motion and how people walk is clear, but it eluded engineers until it was too late.
Now take a moment and consider what we know about natural systems. They are resilient, elegant, and essential to human survival. We have studied the natural world and have remarkable (but incomplete) knowledge of it. As with engineering systems, we might have reasonable component-level knowledge, but our comprehension of the intricate inter-dependencies within natural systems is truly embryonic. Lack of system-level knowledge hinders our ability to predict the full consequences of human influences. We were caught off-guard by the results of a single interaction in the Millenium Bridge system - something that we built! What then can we expect when we mess with systems that we did not create, systems with structure only partially revealed through our observation and study?
Humans have several advantages when it comes to understanding engineered systems. We made them and know how they are put together. We can consult specifications and computer models used in their design. In contrast, we don’t have access to design plans for sophisticated natural systems that have evolved and adapted over millennia. We are constantly discovering new relationships and behavior, as well as the importance of seemingly insignificant species in ecosystems. As John Muir once said, “When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the universe.” The intricate links between elements of the natural world are astounding and humbling, surpassing by magnitudes the complexity of mankind’s most sophisticated creations. We can understand and predict correctly the effect of some disturbances on natural systems, but the full ramifications of human impact are likely to be more extensive and deeper than we expect — far more surprising than the wobbly bridge.
Even with modern analysis tools, predicting the results of substantial changes in engineered systems is somewhere between hard and impossible. To avoid unpleasant surprises when designing especially complex systems (automotive design, for example), engineers typically put forward designs that are essentially small perturbations of previously proven systems. We are conservative and resist ambitious changes in engineered systems, yet for some reason (economic externalities?) humans are quick to risk big impacts (pollution, unsustainable resource depletion) on the natural systems we depend on. Some dismiss the notion that humans can have extensive impact, even labeling this idea as arrogant. This convenient rationalization for continued consumption growth is short-sighted and blind to history. Human disruption has caused collapse of ecosystems, even whole societies. While past collapses have been regional in scope, modern society is more populous, resource intensive, and globally interdependent than ever, enhancing our potential for impact.
In summary, we need to recognize the limits of our ability to predict the consequences of human disruption; these consequences are likely to be more profound than we expect. Our interest in the long-term health of natural resources and ecosystems provides incentive to be conservative in our consumption and impact. Our current trajectory cannot be maintained; no system can keep expanding without bumping into limits. Planning and self-imposed restraint are more pleasant options than waiting until we run up against hard constraints such as resource depletion. As the most intelligent and powerful earthly inhabitants, stewardship to preserve is ours. Over the last year Design Impact has addressed ways to leverage our intelligence to provide a high quality of life without applying unsustainable pressure on our world, and will continue to explore how we can create a brighter future for ourselves.
A major theme of Design Impact is how better engineering analysis and design can improve the sustainability of our society. One important way this can be realized is through advancing renewable energy sources, as well as improving energy efficiency. For example, advanced design techniques can help us make wind turbines and solar arrays more effective, as well as bring them online faster. In addition to addressing the resource side of the energy issue, advanced design techniques, such as design optimization, can help engineers develop transportation systems, buildings, and other engineered products that consume far less energy, while still meeting performance demands.
We have an opportunity tomorrow to learn from an impressive array of speakers at the MathWorks Virtual Energy Conference. Anyone can register (free) to watch and listen to the speakers, or to network with other participants. Many of you have probably already heard of or participated in virtual conferences, an emerging trend. If not, the basic idea is to capture many of the benefits of attending a conference in person, but via a virtual environment. You can participate from your home or office computer. I hope to see you at tomorrow’s conference!
This week is National Engineering Week, and today is Introduce a Girl to Engineering Day. There are events across the U.S. throughout this week focused on both encouraging students to consider engineering as a profession, and to help everyone deepen their understanding of what the profession of engineering is about. In Boston we had a two-day long program with design competitions, career guidance, and a career fair. What are some e-week events happening near you?
While I’m certainly an advocate of encouraging more students to consider engineering as a profession, I’m especially interested in e-week as an opportunity for the public to learn what engineering is about: what engineering has done in the past to help humanity, and the potential it has to address some of society’s most pressing present challenges. In fact, emphasis on the role of engineering in society could stimulate more interest in engineering as an attractive career choice. Senator Ted Kaufman (D-Del.), the only engineer in the Senate, explained recently that one of the road blocks in encouraging more students to pursue science and engineering careers is that they “don’t view engineering and science as the way to make a difference”, but then points out several critical issues that depend on a strong engineering workforce, including energy and economic recovery.
A clear theme throughout Design Impact articles is the positive impact engineers have on humanity. What do you see as the most important issues today that call for engineering solutions? How can we communicate best to students that a career in engineering is an opportunity to make an important difference?
An article in last month’s PRISM, a magazine published by the American Society for Engineering Education, discusses the value of a first-year engineering course that exposes freshman engineering students to what engineering is all about. Many engineering programs pack their first year with challenging prerequisite courses, such as calculus, physics, and chemistry, but sometimes neglect helping students get the big picture early on. It’s easy for a student to get lost in the labyrinth of technical topics, and lose sight of what engineering is all about.
The author of the PRISM article, Prof. Henry Petroski of Duke University, advocates including ‘engineering appreciation’ courses in the engineering curriculum, and focuses on the value these courses have to engineering students. Petroski likens engineering appreciation courses to other introductory courses offered in other disciplines that have no prerequisites, such as art or art history appreciation.
I was fortunate enough to experience two different introductory engineering classes at two separate universities. Each of these courses involved an engaging design project and competition that helped students experience the engineering design process covered in class. In the first course the project was to build a trebuchet (a weight-powered catapult) for launching golf balls. In the second class we built a device that could ride down a model roller coaster, and safely rescue an egg positioned below the roller coaster. In each class I learned something about what engineers actually do in a fun and engaging way; I began to develop my own vision for what I wanted my engineering career to be.
I believe that developing a personal vision for what engineering is (as a profession and how it impacts the world) is essential for all engineering students. This vision can help carry students through the demands of their engineering program, and help them derive more relevance from the individual topics they study. Engineering appreciation courses are certainly a valuable in this regard. I would like to take this idea to the next level. Let’s not limit these courses to engineers or prospective engineers. The art appreciation courses in Petroski’s comparison are not limited to art majors. Engineering, science, and business students all benefit from taking classes like art appreciation, which help them develop a more well-rounded understanding of the world. Why not develop an engineering appreciation class open to all students, targeted specifically for non-engineers? Obviously an engineering appreciation class benefits future engineers, but what about an even broader impact? What would it mean to our society if many college graduates had a solid understanding and appreciation for what engineering is? It could do wonders for the public perception of engineers, and perhaps even contribute to restoring U.S. economic competitiveness by inducing deeper appreciation for and stronger cultural value for technical skills and innovation.
My vision for an engineering appreciation class is one with no prerequisites that college students from all majors could take to fill a science general education requirement; students could take this instead of physics or chemistry. It could be centered around interesting applications students can relate to, things like the engineering behind sports, amusement parks, video games, music, etc., and show how basic math and science topics are relevant to engineering analysis and design. If you were a non-engineering college student, would you consider taking an engineering appreciation class in place of physics? What ideas do you have that could make an engineering appreciation course appealing to a broad range of students?
Earlier this week I had the grand opportunity to tour the Genzyme Center in Cambridge MA with a group of engineers. This building is a little out of the ordinary; it was designed using a whole-systems approach to dramatically reduce its environmental impact, while providing an exceptional environment for those working inside. A system of heliostats on the roof track the sun throughout the day, aiming natural light downward through the expansive atrium. Gently swaying prisms suspended in the atrium then scatter this light throughout the rest of the building. Interior gardens, terraces, and pools not only add to the aesthetics, but contribute inviting areas for employee collaboration, and provide ecological services that help maintain quality of the interior environment.
Among the several distinctions awarded to the Genzyme Center is the vaunted Platinum LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) Certification. The building was completed in November 2003, and is now on the elite list of 80 buildings worldwide with the highest LEED certification. You can read more about the Genzyme Center’s LEED profile here. What does it mean for a building to be LEED certified? While reducing fossil fuel consumption is an important consideration, there are several other characteristics evaluated, including:
Sustainability of site location
Water efficiency
Energy and atmosphere (building sector energy use is 48% of the U.S. total: substantial opportunity for improvement here)
Materials and resources
Indoor environmental quality (low VOCs, occupants can control their environment)
Location and linkages (how people will commute to this building: support for bicycle commuting, access to public transportation)
Awareness and education (helping building users get the most from building features)
Innovation and design process (designing the building as a whole system, not a collection of parts)
Regional priority
In addition to capitalizing on natural light, the Genzyme Center utilizes a variety of other innovative techniques to cut down on energy consumption. The building is designed to exploit natural convection currents for heating and cooling. About a third of the exterior has a ‘ventilated double-facade that blocks solar gains in summer and captures solar gains in the winter.’ What was most impressive to me was the flexibility of the systems in the building. The building manager can try out new strategies for heating, cooling, lighting, etc. to adapt to changing conditions. This kind of flexibility makes possible the discovery of synergies between systems that enable even better energy efficiency than what was expected during building design. Building management for the Genzyme Center seems to be an ongoing optimization process. Right now people control the adaptation, but it seems to a be a perfect application for machine learning. Does anyone know of building systems that use machine learning or other algorithms to fine tune operations?
An obvious question LEED certification, and sustainable building design in general, is whether the additional cost for alternative building approaches is worth the investment. According to a report for the California Sustainable Building Task Force, an initial investment of an extra 2% of the building cost will yield more than ten times the initial investment of the life cycle of the building. In addition to energy, water, and other resource savings, companies that invest in LEED certified or other sustainable building practices reap the benefits of increased worker productivity. My tour of Genzyme Center this week convinced me of the reality of this last point.
Sustainable building practices may cost more up front, but are sound business decisions when a long-term perspective is maintained. Greener building design is not only the right thing to do for humanity and our world, but also for businesses.
A central theme of Design Impact is how design engineers can improve quality of life and sustainability simultaneously through better design. Design engineers make decisions about how things work and how they are made, and these decisions have profound impact on our society. One of the most significant areas engineering design has an an impact on is energy use. In addition to reducing consumption, we need to develop and put into service products and systems that use energy more efficiently. By using advanced design techniques, such as design optimization, incorporating more efficient technology, or simplifying systems and processes, engineers can help propel us toward energy sustainability. It’s important to recognize that efficiency alone won’t solve our energy challenges. Without incentive to consume less, energy consumption may not go down. Motorists, for example, tend to drive more miles as fuel efficiency rises. We need policy changes that stimulate energy conservation, which in turn will drive demand for energy efficient products and improved engineering design.
To provide a forum to discuss recent advances in energy efficiency research, I’m organizing a new session (DAC-9) at 2010 ASME iDETC, an engineering design conference organized by the American Society of Mechanical Engineers. The conference will be held August 15-18, 2010 in Montreal. The topic of the session I’m organizing is Design for Energy Efficiency, and I’m hoping to get the word out early about this session to stimulate interest in the topic and encourage strong participation. If you are working on any projects that involve improving energy efficiency through design, please consider sharing what you have learned by contributing to this session. Draft papers are due by January 29th, 2010. If you have any questions or suggestions regarding the session or conference, please feel free to contact me, or post your ideas to the comments section below. Here is a description of the session from the conference website:
Design for Energy Efficiency: DAC-9
The ASME Design Automation Committee invites papers focused on design theory, innovation, or methods that enhance energy efficiency of energy consuming products or systems. Analytical design techniques that reduce energy consumption while maintaining or improving performance are of particular interest. Sample topics of interest include but are not limited to the following:
Using optimization to improve energy efficiency
Reducing energy consumption through process analysis and redesign
Energy recovery and reuse
Advanced/intelligent/alternative transportation systems
Novel control techniques that reduce energy consumption
Efficient energy storage
Challenges in transitioning to more efficient technologies
Thomas Friedman, the author of Hot, Flat, and Crowded, has invited readers to contribute ideas for a final chapter for the second version of the book. He wants to hear our thoughts on how we might ‘grow people’s living standards in a more sustainable and regenerative way’. (If you haven’t yet read HFC, I highly recommend it.) Here is my response to Friedman’s invitation:
In Hot, Flat, and Crowded you discuss the importance of ’smarter’ design; by changing how things are built, how they work, and are retired, we can reduce energy consumption and environmental impact dramatically, as well as improve quality of life and national security. I believe better design is at the core of a green revolution, and we need increased efforts to help others solidify mental links between design improvements and a vision for a sustainable future. In addition to helping citizens deepen their appreciation for the role of design, we must address this issue on two other fronts: public policy and engineering expertise. We need the right policy and incentives to set the stage for a transition to sustainability, as well as the technical expertise to implement the transition rapidly. I would like to address the latter issue.
To realize a green revolution, we can’t settle for products that are ‘good enough’, or green technology that evolves slowly. Instead, we must seek to develop the very best, most efficient designs, and do so quickly. Instead of taking small steps each year with slightly more efficient cars, slightly better wind turbines, let’s make giant leaps! We need the backing of citizens, the support of policy makers, and boldness from engineers and engineering educators to advance our ability to create sustainable systems and products. Researchers have developed impressive new engineering design methods the last few decades that can help us create products and systems that use less energy and other resources, while making leaps forward in performance. Some of these methods are mature and proven, but unfortunately are not yet used widely by engineers. First, let’s have a look at the conventional design process.
Suppose we were designing a car to be very energy efficient, but still performs well at a reasonable cost. Using a conventional design process, engineers would generate design ideas, test these candidate designs, propose new designs, and iterate until they converge on a design that meets (or comes close to) design targets. In the past, engineers relied heavily on expensive physical prototypes for testing. More firms now use computer models that predict how something will perform without having to build it. While this saves time and money, design refinements often are still made by engineers based on test results, experience, and expertise. Managing all these often conflicting design decisions is often overwhelming, particularly as products evolve and become more complicated; engineers stop when they find a design that meets basic requirements, instead of pursuing the best possible, or optimal, design.
One prominent method developed by researchers is design optimization. Other readers have also described optimization as an important solution; I hope to strengthen this position and clarify the link between optimization and engineering design. When using design optimization, engineers work to minimize or maximize some important aspect of a product, in addition to seeking to meet design requirements. In the car example, we might seek to maximize fuel economy, while meeting acceleration, handling, comfort, cost, safety, and other constraints. Framing a design problem in this way allows engineers to use computer models and powerful optimization algorithms together to help generate the best possible design. In this process design candidates to be tested are chosen analytically using mathematical techniques, reducing the number of tests and time to market. It can help engineers learn what is really achievable, opening our eyes to new possibilities. Design optimization also accelerates design evolution by enabling engineers to make more substantial design changes between product generations, instead of just small perturbations of the last version (as is usually the case now).
The design optimization approach is actually a pretty natural fit for how engineers already go about designing things; using formal design optimization is an enhancement that produces better results in less time, and leverages investments many firms have already made in computer modeling. It’s not a push-button solution; it automates some aspects of design, but requires engineering expertise and experience to implement successfully. (In the parlance of The World is Flat, design optimization is a high-level, ‘icing’ activity). Awareness is perhaps the biggest hindrance to the adoption of design optimization. It needs to be taught in undergraduate (not just graduate) engineering courses, as well as in industry training programs.
In summary, design engineers make a lot of important decisions that have tremendous impact on our world. Moving beyond status quo design processes can help engineers deliver sustainable products and systems while improving living standards; these changes in engineering design are essential to a successful green revolution. Right now there is a lot of low-hanging fruit; there are many opportunities to improve our world through better design. Design optimization can help us put new technology into production faster, as well as refine systems that use existing technology. This can help us bring energy efficient designs into production more quickly, and accelerate the transition to renewable energy systems. We have the technical tools, but we need the societal impetus to put them to broad use.
Guest blogger Greg Kushmerek continues his series of articles on bike commuting:
I am the parent of young children, one of which has recently started at public school. As with many working parents, I need to juggle my work schedule with their school schedules.
This week I tried a little experiment: compare a car-based vs. bike-based commute while doing school drop-off for a 15-mile commute.
I was showered and working before 10AM. Had the work VPN been up that morning, I’d have had 30 extra minutes at home to check and respond to messages.
Drive Day
Walk child to school
Drop-off
Walk back home
Drive car
Car commute conditions were a touch heavier than normal, but within the mean. Arrive at work: 9:10
Conclusion
Sacrificing the bike for the car (or forsaking the bike for the car — your call) doesn’t yield major gains, at least not for me. Had it been inclement weather or a good deal colder the car puts in a more obvious advantage. The time gains from the car are even a bit inflated when you consider that on car-day, I arrived at the school five minutes earlier. One could argue that less traffic would lead to bigger time gains, but I know I can get to work faster on my Felt (about 3mph / 5min faster).
Given a flexible work environment where some on-line work or staying a touch later is allowed, the time difference isn’t enough to warrant giving up the bike for the car.
For some people arriving 18 minutes later and sweaty is just a no-go. For those who live a lot closer to where they work, that time gap could practically vanish, and one might not even need to clean up.
Earlier I wrote about the need for educational programs that link technical subjects with other topics so that graduates are better equipped to solve complex problems. We do a pretty good job at training engineers in technical subjects, and are working to improve soft skills as well, but we still have a ways to go toward graduating ‘renaissance’ engineers who are skilled at linking technical aspects with societal, environmental, or other facets of challenging problems.
A proposed program at the University of Windsor would help address this issue. This new program would ‘combine engineering with the humanities and arts.’ This program would culminate in a bachelors degree, whereas many other interdisciplinary engineering programs are restricted to the graduate level. Waguih ElMaraghy, department head of Industrial and Manufacturing Systems Engineering, explains that engineers now must solve ‘not only technical problems, but social technical problems.’ Students of this program would have opportunity to study at the interface between disciplines, and work toward becoming ‘renaissance’ engineers.
