Smart Grid Surrogates

Smart Apartments for San Diego, and Green Buttons for Californians - Green Tech Grid

The idea is to make thermostats, fridges and other household power loads available for programs like automated demand response, or to make them responsive to the critical peak pricing SDG&E wants to start implementing for residential customers next year, Krevat said. While he wouldn’t say whose smart appliances would be going into the buildings, GE does make appliances that would fit the bill.

So far, SDG&E has about 120 rental units lined up for the pilot, which will run over SDG&E’s smart meter network. The project itself is part of the “Smart City San Diego” collaborative, which so far has emphasized microgrid and plug-in vehicle charging pilots.

GE has done pilots of its smart appliances in homes, but apartments offer different challenges. One obvious problem is that most apartments have their meters in the basement or outside the building itself. Smart meters equipped with low-power ZigBee radios aren’t going to be able to reach every apartment through all those floors and walls.

Krevat didn’t get into details on how the project might surmount such barriers, but options might include beefing up the wireless signal, using powerline carrier technologies to communicate via apartment wiring, or exploiting existing broadband connectivity.