IP: Intelligent Houses

[David Farber <farber () cis upenn edu>]

To: farber () central cis upenn edu (David Farber)
From: Jock Gill <jgill () penfield-gill com>


Dave,


I hope you will consider posting to IP this note on an issue critical to
all of us.


Thanks,


Jock




-------------------  Intelligent Houses  ------------------


Friends,


One of my clients has asked me to think about life 1,000 years 
from now.  What can we say about the way things might be so 
far into the future?


It seems perfectly safe to expect that we will not be burning 
fossil fuels to make electricity.  Further, it is probably true just 
100 years out that all devices will have some form of 
'intelligence'.  Likewise, the Internet experience strongly 
suggests that all things will be networked and thus dynamically 
controllable via the web.  The idea of a 'stand-alone' device, be it 
a house, car, or cook stove, will be a curious relic of the late 20th 
century. 


 How could these changes in conditions change housing?  


        1.  Electricity will come from Co-generation systems built 
            into each building and the real time energy markets their 
            interconnection develops;
 
        2.  All devices in the house will be have 'intelligence';
 
        3.  A key aspect of Community becomes the shared, co-
            dependent, network of houses and devices.


Intelligent Houses should have these attributes:


        *  superior housing w/ lower life cycle costs
        *  be insurable
        *  create most of their own electricity
        *  be able to provide a source of clean water 


Properly engineered Intelligent Houses could be mass 
customized, thus allowing a substantial range of 
individualization.  


Why should we be thinking about the Intelligent House now?


Consider that currently most 'stick built' houses are dumb, poorly 
engineered, and have life cycle costs which are too high while 
being energy gluttons.  Today we are, for the most part, building 
industrial age relics.  In more than a few states these 'homes' do 
not even qualify for insurance.  Can we any longer afford to build 
such dinosaurs? 


Another question we must ask is: How much longer can we 
sustain the current industrial system for generating energy with 
very large scale, centralized, carbon burning power plants with 
their inefficient distribution grids?


There are a lot of reasons for finding an alternative energy 
system:


        Imported oil is bad for economies 


        We must reduce greenhouse gases


        Centralized mega plants are national security risks
        
        Mega plants and their grids are at least 50% inefficient


        Mega plants are hard to site


        Mega plants are capital intensive


        Mega plants may never be NET energy contributors
        if all life cycle energy inputs/outputs are considered


        Mega plants will not be built for the 40% of the
        world's population currently without electricity


        The world's carrying capacity will not support
        a carbon-based solution for bringing the pre-industrial
        world to a post industrial economy.
        
A further consideration is the likelihood that a 'green' economy is 
going to be key to the development of successful and sustainable:
        
        *   economics
        *   politics
        *   cultures


The first major economy which goes 'green' may well:


* Drive down the price of  oil on the world market - less 
  demand for the commodity;


* Dominate the market for 'Green' economy 
  infrastructures.


This may have the effect of locking older industrial economies 
into their oil dependencies as well as creating barriers, cheap oil, 
to their making the transition to 'green'.  'Green' trumps 'Black 
Carbon' and leaves it in the dust bin of history.


So what might a few of the features of a green Intelligent House 
be?


I envision the scaleable CO-generation at the core of the 
Intelligent House as being a mix of photovoltaics, fuel cells, 
small gas turbines, small scale hydro, wind ... in locally 
appropriate mixes.


The expectation is that in the Intelligent House every energy 
consuming device will be web enabled and able to actively 
participate in the local real time energy market.  If the price on 
the local community network goes above $X, to be individually 
determined by each owner, then some, or all of, the units would 
shut off and SELL their now released energy to the community.  
Below $Y, then the units would turn on.   Of course each device 
could have different time and value windows set to determine 
their participation in the market.


In this view, each Intelligent House is plugged into all of its 
neighbors. The Network is the Community!  Just as with any 
network, the more members the more value the network has.  The 
Internet and the telephone networks have shown that this increase 
in value is a nonlinear function.


In the future,  electric cars, when they are not in use on the road,
will also be plugged into the house/car/community network grid!
Amory Lovins, amongst others, have been thinking about this.
See the work at:   www.rmi.org


Just some ideas I am currently exploring.  Any thoughts?


Regards,


Jock


PS:  An Altavista search on "smart house" yields over 200 
references.  In general, these earlier concepts are grid
dependent and do not include Co-generation in the core 
design of the solution.












________________________________________________________________________
Jock Gill
Penfield Gill, Inc.
Boston,  MA
jgill () penfield-gill com           
<http://www.penfield-gill.com>


________________________________________________________________________