http://www.vny.com/cf/News/upidetail.cfm?QID=189025 Saturday, 26 May 2001 3:31 (ET)

'Smart dust' to the energy rescue

By LIDIA WASOWICZ, UPI Senior Science Writer

BERKELEY, Calif., May 26 (UPI) -- An electronic monitoring device the size of a matchbox holds the power to prevent blackouts and save energy-starved California $5 billion to $7 billion a year, scientists say.

University of California, Berkeley, researchers showed off their "smart dust" sensors in a building outfitted with more than 50 of the high-tech marvels that keep constant vigil on light and temperature conditions.

The chip-like device, which engineers plan to shrink to the size of a grain of sand within five years, could cut energy use, particularly when peak-hour shortages require immediate reductions in consumption, keep utility bills in check, forestall outages and curtail the need for new power plants, its developers told reporters.

The idea is to integrate these tiny, wireless motes into power systems that control heating, lighting and electricity use right down to an individual workstation. The sensors, which now run on solar and battery energy, are intended to be self-powered in the future.

Carrying a sensor with a tiny computer on board, smart dust motes will be coupled to electrical circuits in breaker boxes to monitor and manage power consumption. The readings hop from one mote to another until they land at a central Web site, allowing a homeowner or building manager to significantly reduce energy use when prices are high or supplies low.

"The sensors can tell when the window's open, they can tell where the air is going, they can actually have control over the system so they can shut off air-conditioned air to keep it from going out the window," said Edward Arens, professor of architecture and director of the Center for the Built Environment.

"Today we can control an individual sensor (like a thermostat) one at a time. What this technology will allow us to do when it's eventually deployed five to seven years from now is control the environmental conditions in a room or building much more closely than we've ever been able to do before," said Richard Newton, dean of the College of Engineering. He envisions rooms instantly adjusting to the tastes of an entering individual.

"Ultimately you might wear a little wristband that will tell the house what your preferences are in terms of air and temperature, just like we try to do in a rough way by having separate climate controls," Newton told United Press International. "In five to 10 years, we will be able to do that."

In a simulation of a Stage III power alert -- with which Californians are all too familiar -- the inventors demonstrated how the sensors could turn off enough lights and major appliances to diminish the energy load to acceptable levels and, thus, to prevent thousands of people from being left in the dark.

"What we're showing today sounded like science fiction 10 years ago. Our job is to make science fiction a viable reality. If we can create a compelling vision that improves this technology a 100- or 1,000-fold, that time (to do so) is going to become very, very fast," Newton said in an interview."The result will be a profound change on the way we can monitor and manage our energy."

The demonstration of the smart motes' potential power comes as California struggles through skyrocketing energy costs, rolling blackouts and political fallout that has sent Gov. Gray Davis's approval rating plummeting -- with no end in sight. "There was no energy crisis last year. What's so exciting is that we can take the energy crisis and make it disappear as quickly as it came," engineer Scott McNally said in an interview.

Energy conservation -- unheard of when the demonstration building was constructed in 1948 -- has become the rallying cry and impetus for pushing forward with the smart energy technology being developed at UC Berkeley's Center for Information Technology Research in the Interest of Society. "To address the energy shortages, our researchers have developed a prototype energy-management technology that can eventually be deployed for just pennies," Newton said in an interview.

The aim is to create power-aware buildings that could eventually save the state between $5 billion and $7 billion -- and the nation $35 billion -- in energy costs each year, Arens said. "That corresponds to 30,000 tons of carbon emissions a year," he said. "That's the sort of impact this technology can have on that one problem."

The sensors, sporting wireless radio transceivers and their own operating system dubbed TinyOS, were installed last week in office corners, conference rooms and along hallways of Cory Hall, one of the heaviest electrical users on campus. Already, they are supplying information that helps the facility manager control the building's electricity use.

"It seems clear from the experiments we've done already that when we do this right over the entire campus, we'll be able to save at least 5 percent of the power without any impact on people's comfort or operating conditions," said Shmuel Oren, professor of industrial engineering and director of the Engineering Power System Research Center. "That's a saving of nearly $900,000 a year."

At the current cost of $100 apiece, it would take some $200,000 to equip each of the 250 buildings on campus with the smart sensors, said Kris Pister, developer of the sensors and associate professor of electrical engineering and computer science. But then Cory Hall alone burns $1 million of power a year, he told UPI. "People really have no idea where electric power is actually being burned in their homes or office," Pister said.

While temperature- and light-detecting sensors are already in use, they are of the "coarse" variety, Arens said. "This room has a thermostat. If it's off by a number of degrees, I can guarantee the engineers of this building will not know about it for a year, two years, 10 years. They will be responding to complaints from the occupants, but they won't know why," he said. "That can be avoided if you have 10 sensors and the one that goes screwy will be immediately detectable."

Once buildings gain some intelligence, the next step will be to turn passive sensors into more active ones. The next generation smart dust motes could then cut power automatically to certain devices during times of peak power demand.

"Everything should have its own built-in intelligence," Pister said. "Wouldn't people rather spend several hours a day with their power intelligently reduced by 20 percent instead of having a one-in-five chance that they'll be cut off entirely as part of rolling blackout?" "A smart refrigerator could know to fire its compressor only during off-peak periods when power prices are low" -- and that could make a difference, said Jan Rabaey, professor of electrical engineering.

As little as a 1 percent reduction in energy demand can lead to a 10 percent cut in wholesale prices, while a 5 percent load response can slash the wholesale price in half, the researchers said.

"Economists understand market forces, but you need an engineering approach to control those forces," Oren said. "In 1973 (during the energy crisis), California responded and got a 30 percent decrease in power consumption and now in 2001 we have a similar opportunity using information technology to respond and get another 30 percent decrease," Pister said. "I'm very excited to provide the sensor networks that will make that possible."

Already, the University of California, Merced, which will be constructed over the next six years, has agreed to make all of its buildings smart buildings. "This will be used as a greenfield demonstration for the potential of this technology," Newton said.

CITRIS is one of the new UC institutes established by Davis. Next month, lawmakers are to decide the fate of legislation to fund the group. --Copyright 2001 by United Press International. All rights reserved.

-- Swissrose (cellier3@mindspring.com), May 26, 2001