April 2009 Archives

Having finished reading Joseph Tainter's "classic" The Collapse of Complex Societies (Cambridge 1988), I feel compelled to share his advice for contemporary civilization: invest heavily in energy research and development immediately, regardless of the perceived cost of doing so. The cost of failing to invest will be global economic and social collapse.

According to Tainter, social collapse, the reversion of a society to significantly less complex ways of living, occurs naturally when the marginal economic value of increased complexity fails to exceed the cost of that increase. In other words, people willingly give up participation in complex society in favor of smaller-scale, simpler options when the more complex society takes more from the individual than it gives back. Following this theory, Tainter provides in his book a convincing academic explanation of the collapse of three quite different societies: the Roman Empire, the Maya Civilization, and the Chacoan (Pueblo) society.

I recommend this book in general. Despite Tainter's sometimes dry academic style and excessive use of the passive voice, its 200+ pages of timely insight are worth reading first hand.

For those not immediately rushing out to buy a copy, I offer a passage from the second-to-last page (215):

It is difficult to know whether world industrial society has yet reached the point where the marginal return for its overall pattern of investment has begun to decline. The great sociologist Pitirim Sorokin believed that Western economies had entered such a phase in the early twentieth century (1957: 530). Xenophon Zolotas, in contrast, predicts that this point will be reached soon after the year 2000 (1981: 102-3). Even if the point of diminishing returns to our present form of industrialism has not yet been reached, that point will inevitably arrive. Recent history seems to indicate that we have at least reached declining returns for our reliance on fossil fuels, and possibly for some raw materials. A new energy subsidy [i.e. new energy source] is necessary if a declining standard of living and a future global collapse are to be averted. A more abundant form of energy might not reverse the declining marginal return on investment in complexity, but it would make it more possible to finance that investment.

In a sense the lack of a power vacuum, and the resulting competitive spiral, have given the world a respite from what otherwise might have been an earlier confrontation with collapse. Here indeed is a paradox: a disastrous condition that all decry may force us to tolerate a situation of declining marginal returns long enough to achieve a temporary solution to it. This reprieve must be used rationally to seek for and develop the new energy source(s) that will be necessary to maintain economic well-being. This research and development must be an item of the highest priority, even if, as predicted, this requires reallocation of resources from other economic sectors. Adequate funding of this effort should be included in the budget of every industrialized nation (and the results shared by all). I will not enter the political foray by suggesting whether this be funded privately or publicly, only that funded it must be.

There are then notes of optimism and pessimism in the current situation. We are in a curious position where competitive interactions force a level of investment, and a declining marginal return, that might ultimately lead to collapse except that the competitor who collapses first will simply be dominated or absrobed by the survivor. A respite from the threat of collapse might be granted thereby, although we may find that we will not like to bear its costs. If collapse is not in the immediate future, that is not to say that the industrial standard of living is also reprieved. As marginal returns decline (a process ongoing even now), up to the point where a new energy subsidy is in place, the standard of living that industrial societies have enjoyed will not grow so rapidly, and for some groups and nations may remain static or decline. The political conflicts that this will cause, coupled with the increasingly easy availability of nuclear weapons, will create a dangerous world situation in the foreseeable future.

References
Sorokin, Pitirim A. (1957). Social and Cultural Dynamics. Porter Sargent, Boston.
Zolotas, Xenophon (1981). Economic Growth and Declining Social Welfare. New York University Press, New York and London.

Having found this passage at the conclusion of a well-researched and thoroughly fascinating anthropological analysis of social collapse, I thought it was worth sharing. I'd love to hear your thoughts on social collapse as it relates to present governmental policy.

Given what Tainter says about the role of energy in subsidizing the returns of an increasingly complex society, how do we avoid bringing about inadvertant collapse when we attempt to limit energy consumption in an attempt to deal with the climate change crisis? Is there a correct policy path to steer? If so, what is it?

Utility companies and regulators should insist that new smart meters be able to monitor voltage and current with at least 60 samples per second frequency and (ideally) 12 bit precision; any less, and valuable energy management features could be crippled. Similarly, direct consumer access to the meter output is an absolute necessity. I know of no smart meters on the market today with this level of monitoring precision; if you do, please leave a comment telling us about it.

High-precision electricity load data can be analyzed using a technique known as non-intrusive load monitoring (NILM). By comparing patterns in aggregate (whole-house or whole-office) load to known appliance profiles, energy analysis software can provide detailed appliance-level energy consumption data without requiring appliance-level electronics. This approach is far more affordable than instrumenting each appliance and could provide an economical way to track consumer responses to price signals, allowing advanced energy management solutions to be rolled out to consumers who aren't willing to pay for more expensive home automation. At the very least, NILM can give a power consumer an extremely detailed real-time view of his electrical loads, allowing him to intelligently target efficiency improvements and behavioral changes (possibly driven by dynamic or TOU pricing).

This is from a recent paper by Carnegie Mellon researchers*:

While NILM applications require minimal hardware and some instances claim over 90% recognition of some loads, this approach is not without challenges. The requisite hardware must be able to report power readings with at least 1.0 Hz of frequency[13] and ideally calculates at least true power, reactive power, and harmonics. Associating a particular electrical signature with the originating appliance either involves a training period or a large database of known loads. Still, given the continuing decreases in hardware costs and the possibility of distributing software costs and signature categorization, the high quality of data and low labor costs for installation make NILM the most promising technology for detailed end-use electricity consumption data.
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[13] Cole A, Albicki A. Algorithm for non-intrusive identification of residential appliances. In: Proceedings of the 1998 IEEE International Symposium on Circuits and Systems. Monterey, CA, USA, 1998, 3: 338-341.

I'd like to see NIST and EPRI get in touch with these NILM researchers as part of the smart grid standards process. If we don't get high-precision capabilities baked into new meters while it can be done with little, if any, incremental cost, we will be tearing the meters out again in a few years to replace them with ones capable of high-precision NILM. While meter manufacturers may like the idea of built-in obsolescence and rapid product turnover of $300-500 smart meters, rate payers may criticize this waste of their dollars. And from an environmental perspective, we may find that the carbon footprint of the rapidly obsolescent metering and home automation hardware overshadows any energy savings it manages to facilitate. That would be an ironic tragedy, one that ratepayers will not easily stomach.

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* "Training Load Monitoring Algorithms on Highly Sub-Metered Home Electricity Consumption Data" by Mario Berges, Ethan Goldman, H. Scott Matthews, and Lucio Soibelman published in TSINGHUA SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY (ISSN 1007-0214 65/67 pp. 406-411, Volume 13, Number S1, October 2008)

I'm realizing more with each day that the Portland/Vancouver metro area has the potential to emerge as a regional, if not national, alternative energy hub. All the key ingredients are here; from an energy economy standpoint, Portland and Vancouver complement each other nicely.

I'm not a member of the Portland/Vancouver Booster Club, nor do I have anything directly to gain by talking up my city. I've just been piecing some things together that I want to share.

I recently moved back to Vancouver, a bedroom community just north of Portland, after living fifteen years elsewhere (Seattle and Minneapolis, mostly). Vancouver makes its money as a port city, high-tech center, and labor/housing provider for area businesses. What drew me back (in addition to my extended family) was the absence of state income tax, presence of affordable (for the region) housing, on-the-cusp urban renewal, abundant outdoor recreation, and proximity to Powell's Books in Portland... or, more accurately, to all that Powell's Books represents about Portland.

Portland is a progressive city of readers, bicyclists, roller derby fans, skeptics, car-haters, weirdos, hipster alt-conformists, ex-loggers, beer snobs, extreme endurance athletes, econuts, and, perhaps most importantly, a lot of extremely talented engineers. I know because I am friends with some of them.

I know people locally at Intel, Hewlett-Packard, and Tektronix, just three major names with long engineering and fabrication histories in the Portland/Vancouver area. Many newer arrivals fill out the ranks: TriQuint in Hillsboro with its broad RF offerings, Microchip in Gresham with its industry-leading embedded microcontrollers, Sharp America in Camas with its innovative LED technologies. The list goes on.

The products of these companies are the raw building blocks out of which the new smart grid will be built. The people who understand them, both from technical and cultural perspectives, live here.

Portland has a unique culture of eco-awareness and liberal generosity. For many Portlanders, the Big Dream is not to make a billion dollars--it's to "make a difference" while maintaining a healthy work-life balance and a modest income. And perhaps more than anywhere else I have lived, the entrepreneurial culture in Portland is very much in touch with its "garage startup" roots. Take Nike for example, started by Willamette Valley local Phil Knight. According to the Seattle Times, "Knight's first shoes, sold out of the trunk of his car, had soles made on [Coach Bill] Bowerman's waffle iron."

Portland's NedSpace is feeding Portland's change-the-world-on-a-shoestring culture by providing inexpensive workspace and VC networking opportunities to early-stage innovators. NedSpace's focus on international social entrepreneurship and giving back to the community resonates deeply with the Portland ethos.

Because of its larger size (2,159,720 people), the Portland metro area provides a more diverse and flexible work force than smaller metro areas emerging as cleantech innovation centers like, say, Austin (1,652,602 people), Boulder (280,440 people), or Spokane (456,175 people). (Population data from Wikipedia). It also boasts better air, ground, river, and ocean transport connectivity.

Many cleantech companies have begun to take advantage of all this. Some examples:

• "The largest solar fab in the Americas" is being developed in the Portland suburb of Hillsboro, Oregon by SolarWorld. Administrative headquarters is in Vancouver, Washington.
• Iberdrola Renewables, based in Portland, is the the north american arm of Spain's Iberdrola S.A., "the largest renewable energy operator in the world." (quoted from Wikipedia)
• Bonneville Power Administration, the largest producer and distributor of electric power in the Pacific Northwest, is based in Portland. Its transmission business and major switching/intertie station is in Vancouver, Washington. BPA distributes power from 31 hydroelectric dams, numerous wind farms, and forecasts the highest rate of interconnected wind generation capacity (30%) of any US balancing authority. BPA will be forced to pioneer leading-edge techniques in grid stabilization and intermittent renewable power integration. In addition, BPA power keeps Southern California from blacking out in the summer by sending power south over one of the nation's few high-voltage DC transmission lines, the Pacific DC Intertie.
  
• With large contracts from both Siemens and Vestas, the Port of Vancouver is one of the leading importation ports for the massive wind turbines being deployed across the Western US. The Port boasts the two largest heavy-lift mobile harbor cranes in North America, the perfect tools for efficiently transloading turbine cargo from ocean-going vessels to trucks and train cars for distribution to wind farms, many of which are being built in eastern Washington and Oregon. Vancouver is the junction of major Pacific shipping routes, major rail lines, and major trucking routes, giving it a distinct geographic advantage in serving as a deployment hub for wind energy infrastructure.
• Oregon Governor Ted Kulongoski has managed to establish Portland as the first city to receive electric cars from Nissan, and is working with utility PGE to build a network of charging stations throughout the region. Portland has the highest per-capita rate of hybrid car ownership in the United States.

With so much going on under our noses (but mostly off our daily radar), it's easy to see how Portland/Vancouver could stealthily emerge as the nation's leading R&D hub for smart grid building blocks, affordable wind power, advanced power transmission, electric vehicle deployment, and solar panel manufacturing.