Cortexo thoughts...

Smart Grids Workshop

Fri, 16 Jul 2010 18:00:00 +1200

I was priveldged to listen to IEEE Fello and Distingushed Lecturer Dr Bruno Meyer deliver 4 workshop presentations on the Smart Grid. This was the last of an Australia/New Zealand four city roadshow by Dr Meyer (Deputy Director Key Accounts, RTE France) and took place at the Electric Power Engineering Centre, University of Canterbury, Christchurch New Zealand.

Dr Meyer coverd the folowing four topics with humour and enthusiasm;

Smart Grids (And are they so dumb today anyhow?)
Smart Grids Demand Side Management and Distribution, where it all started
Smart Grids Demand Side Management and Transmission
What will the future be like?

There is real fear regarding grid age and its effect on distributed generation (reversing the normal flow on electricity) as well as its capability to handle more and more load and so a myriad of techniques and features are emerging (have emerged) to help with this problem as well as trying to kerb our determination to use as much of the Earths resources as possible. This hodge podge of activities around generation, transmission, distribution and consumer use appear to be the basis of this slipery thing called the "Smart Grid". What I took from the presentations is that there is no real clear picture about how this will evolve, but evolve it will and fast. The Smart Grid (whatever that is) defines a new game with new business models, new technology and new players. Incumbents will be replaced and probably they will come from the fast moving and innovative Information technology sector. Already the big (Cisco) and not so big (Cortexo!) are working in this space wirth thousands of others, trying to define the benefits.

Clearly interoperability is they key, new systems must talk to older legacy systems (nothing new for IT systems) but they must also talk to each other. It is pointless for a VHS/Beta or Windows/Mac type standards clash unless data and control can easily flow from one system or provider to the other. In the home smart appliances must appear on the same platform, portal or In Home Display (IHD) as microgeneration devices. Consumers want one view of home energy use as well as any generation. Utilities should be able to shave peaks and fill troughs with one instruction through common platforms, reducing demand and well as instigating local generation. Above all the consumer must be in control of the information the houshold is willing to share as well as receiving some reward for his contribution.

We think we are on the right track here at Cortexo, we have an open platform that can connect to generation (microCHP, PV, Solar Thermal etc) as well as smart appliances and in home devices such as smart plugs. We provide portal access but are happy to work with others who can provide richer user interfaces or IHD's and we can accept smart application components to cary out specific third party (partner) instructions as well as our own very smart modules.

Open, interoperable and extensible, thats the Cortexo Platform vision

Quick Trip to Europe

Wed, 23 Jun 2010 17:09:00 +1200

I've just done a whistle stop trip to Amsterdam and to London to make up for the shambles of April when I got caught in the European Airspace closure because of the volcanic ash cloud. That trip was 2 weeks long with only one meeting appointment being kept (Efficient Home Energy in Spain) and 6 days in Malta while I waited for a flight back to New Zealand.

This latest trip was based around attending the 5th Annual ‘Micro-CHP in Europe’ Summit run by Delta Energy & Environment. Every year they say the microCHP is close. This year they could say its REALLY close! Both the WhisperGen stirling engine and its competitor the Ecogen are "on the market", whether they will be delivered to you house tomorrow is another story although both products suppliers insisted they were available.

The good thing for Cortexo is that we have the platform to monitor and control both microCHP units and provide engineering and support information back to the distributor/manufacturer as well as providing the consumer with remote access and control tied in with any other smart appliance or plug device they have in their homes.

From Amsterdam it was a short flight to London and a catch up with some companies in the Solar and Home boiler markets, if it produces or consumes energy, we can monitor it and make our energy grids more efficient.

So after 7 days on the ground in Europe I was heading back to New Zealand via a small 32 hour flight on Emirates Airlines (London - Dubai - Sydney - Christchurch). I think I'll look for a shorter route like Air New Zealand (Auckland - Hong Kong - London). Anyway it was better than the last trip.

Demand Side Management

Mon, 25 Jan 2010 09:10:00 +1300

On Friday I visited our technology partner SENZTEK to look at the smart devices they have built for home owners to use to understand and control their home energy use. All these devices connect to the Cortexo service and provide real demand side management; but there is much more! The smart hot water controller, that also acts as a hub or base for the Zigbee like Home Area Network (HAN), understand if there are solar thermal panels in the home and can divert extra hot water from the solar to say a spa pool or swimming pool instead of wasting it. Today there's an excellent article about SENZTEK's hardware in the New Zealand Herald.

Cortexo provides all the communications and central server software to enable the home owner to see, through the Cortexo portal, the power consumed by the devices plugged into the SENZTEK smart plug as well as the ability to immediately, or through the home users pre-set choices, turn those devices on or off allowing better management of home power. Tie that into the smart meter in the home which can pass power consumed and actual cost to Cortexo service and the home owner has good control and knowledge around his power use.

Power companies can also benefit (with the home owners permission) by being able to reach into a home and control power demand during times of peak energy requirement.

This is very exciting stuff, available now, that brings the promise of smart devices, smart homes and smart meters to New Zealand consumers now.

Cortexo and SENZTEK will be demonstrating this technology at Power & Electricity World, Sky City Convention Centre, Auckland, New Zealand from 15-18 Feb 2010. See you there!

Going to the Europe to see whats going on

Thu, 05 Nov 2009 12:18:00 +1300

I'm going to the Europe to see whats going on this month. I'm off to UK & Europe at the end of November to meet with clients and to understand how Europe is doing at the moment and where they intend to move with distributed power generation and smart meter use. It will be interesting to compare where they are to New Zealands approach.

NZ's move to smart meters is being driven by the power companies not the government, a fact which concerns the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment. Her report on smart meters (tabled in Parliament in June 2009) criticises the Government for allowing utilities to roll out dumb meters, meters that only deliver the smart part on the supply side (automated reading, dynamic pricing etc), also in NZ there are no feed in tariffs so the incentive to make use of the smart meters 2-way ability is not there.

It will be interesting to see the European view. I note that the UK government has decreed that every home will have a smart meter by 2020 but again the consumers are saying, whats the benefit to me (see the comments on the BBC web site!)

As part of my trip I will be attending

CHPA Conference (Combined Heat & Power Association Annual Conference Wednesday 25th November 2009)
Smart Metering Conference - 'Structuring the UK Market' Thursday 26 November 2009

and I'm quite looking forward to seeing ow far along the UK are with both distributed generation and smart metering.

We at Cortexo (like most industry players) think these systems go hand-in-hand. The much vaunted Smart-Grid, but there is much more, much more of whats in it for the consumer and other stakeholders and this is the bit that's missing at the moment. The power industry need to understand a couple of simple points;

Consumers don't trust them (utilities)
Consumers want (a sense of) control
Control comes from being able to decide who you buy power from, how you use it and even generating it yourself

Energy utilities are seen by many consumers as a monopoly that charges what they like for something you don't know the cost of till some time in the future. Its frustrating for the home budgeting process! But if the consumer saw day to day, hour by hour what they were using, on all their various power consuming components then what a benefit that would be. Also if they could switch providers to make the most of energy prices that suited their lifestyle what true control that would give them.

This is the promise of smart meters, but its coming too slow. Utilities say, the consumer wont pay for demand side monitoring. There no agreement on standards for Home Area Networks (HAN), no utility want to develop the wrong demand side product.

Solution? You bet, this is where the utilities should engagewith software companies like Cortexo (and there are many others) working in the area of Demand side management. Opening connectivity to outside 3rd party players like us allows innovation to flourish and reduces risk to the utility (if you like it carry on, if you don't cut it off). Let us worry about attracting the consumer and making revenue, just reap the rewards of being able to offer your customers (and potentially your competitors customers) more products and better service for minimal investment.

I'm looking forward to telling potential partners in Europe that Cortexo has a platform provided as a service that can connect and control power generating or power consuming devices in the home giving the home owner more control and the utility the ability to deliver a granular supply side management of peaks etc, not the sledge hammer approach of "all hot water off" (like NZ's ripple control system), but smart control such as "turn all hot water cylinder withmore than 50% hot water energy off now along with all refrigerators for the next 10 minutes.

This field is going to get very interesting, I'll let you know what I find.

Smart technology comming

Mon, 26 Oct 2009 15:45:00 +1300

Working with our technology partner SENZTEK in Auckland, New Zealand, we are developing some very interesting new technology to make energy management in the home something available now.

The simple stuff (and one I can talk about now) is embedding our remote communications software (RCU) into the very smart hot water controller (the EcoStat) made and distributed by SENZTEK. Not only will this allow manufacturers, distributors and installers of Solar and regular hot water cylinders the ability to remotely diagnose and service their equipment it will allow the home owner to see the performance of his hot water and/or solar system and control it remotely.

There is much more, but you will have to wait to see the technology which will be launched at Power & Electricity World, Sky City Auckland 15-18 Feb 2010.

Come and talk to us about smart demand side management.

Energy Roundtable - Wellington 20 October

Wed, 21 Oct 2009 13:37:00 +1300

I attended a very interesting conference in Wellington, New Zealand.The Energy Roundtable had representitives of all the major power companies as well as other players.

I was very interested in the workshops around consumer behaviour and feedback. Basically the power retailers were saying there is no interest in significant numbers of consumers for demand side management (the ability to control your own power usage and cost) and that in home demand side control was "some time away" in New Zealand. I was then pointed out by some outside players that if the power companies were not careful they would discover power being sold and managed over the Internet by software companies.

I had to agree and suggested it was time in New Zealand that power companies stopped working alone in their silos and enguaged with industry players, especially in the Home Area Network field, and provided the consumer with the two things it wants from the utilities, choice and control.

An excellent presentation by Kathryn Tholin, CEO of Center for Neighborhood Technology, Illinois, USA showed us that the consumer is not necessarily interested in "Demand Side Management" because they have no idea what it can do for them and the amount they pay for electricity until they experience it. This is true green flieds technology, like the humble text message which never would have existed if consumers were asked beforehand if they want to send 160 characters from their mobile phone ("No, I'll just ring the person up").

Cortexo is working on linking current in home technology that can read power consumption from devices as well as Smart Meter output and making that available remotely to users through the Corteso Service giving control to the user. If the user chooses to allow it (for reduced power fees) they may also allow energy utilities the ability to control the supply side by reducing demand on the grid by shutting off unnecessary appliances for short periods such as fridges/freezers (auto defrostimng as well as cooling).

Talk to me about smart demand side management!

New Factory Commissioning

Tue, 09 Jun 2009 22:44:00 +1200

New Factory Commissioning "Hot Test" application release.

Key new features for Commissioning: Now capable of handling a hierarchy of commissioning areas very efficiently so that production testing can scale up in modular manner. A manager can now see the status of commissioning across all of his areas. See screenshots "Commissioning - Status Summary" and "Commissioning - Status overview". Enhanced details page with easy navigation to view the history of each test run.

Simplifies reviewing of the engines test history.

Factory commissioning software

Sat, 09 May 2009 22:36:00 +1200

Factory commissioning software for microCHP production updated

This version 2.0 release is a big step forward from version 1 releases of the Commissioning system in that it not only adds functionality but it is much easier to use.

Enlarged Scalability

The main commissioning pages are now completely hierarchical. This allows commissioning bays to be easily be broken up into multiple test areas. Multiple areas make it easy to test different versions / types of product and also to structure large test environments. Operators can be responsible for their own areas only.

When in a test area an “updating” test status of all devices is shown on the screen together with any errors that have occurred. Lists of devices are paginated for areas with large number of devices When viewing at any levels above a test area a summary table is shown that summarises how many devices are on test, how many bays are available, how many errors exist etc.

Integration with Cortexo Monitoring Service

Integration with Cortexo Monitoring greatly simplifies device set up and traceability Devices that have been Commissioned are known to the Cortexo Monitoring Service allowing automatic configuration when they first connect When it comes to on-site commissioning the factory test status of the device is already known / confirmed to the site commissioning engineer. If desired, devices can be allocated to distributors and regions at commissioning time. This can also be done later if unknown at time of commissioning.

Improved user interface

Much improved look and feel All the user interface benefits from the improved Monitoring Service V3.5 are also present in the V2.0 of Factory Commissioning System.

Cortexo is pleased to announce the release version 3.5

Fri, 01 May 2009 08:54:00 +1200

Cortexo is pleased to announce the release version 3.5 of its monitoring service and version 2.0 of its factory commissioning system.

Both products offer innovative and exciting improvements that will benefit all levels of the monitoring chain.

Cortexo Monitoring Service

This release contains significant improvements in the way it supports volume monitoring and in user ease of use.

Volume monitoring
Improved hierarchical navigation and search facilities
Support for auto configuration for new devices when they fist connect
Users now have an email address with their profile. This can be used for automatic login recovery (forgotten password / login).
Reference / Serial Number Management

Blocks of References (e.g. Serial Numbers) can be created. References can then be allocated to particular organisations and areas prior to the devices connecting in for the first time. Devices can easily be moved between different areas / regions as required (even after they have first connected in).

Commissioning System integration

Full integration is now available with Cortexo Factory Commissioning system. Blocks of serial numbers can be created on the Commissioning system (or the Monitoring service) and this information is shared (“Synchronised”) between both systems so that the monitoring system is fully aware of devices that are in existence and what test state they are in.

This means that when a device connects in to the monitoring system from the field for the first time, the monitoring system knows all about it and is able to automatically configure the device. User Interface Improvements Multiple views of devices. Multiple views can be set up for a device type that shows the device in a manner suitable for the user viewing it. For example there may be an “End User View” (which home users would only see) and an “Engineering View” which is suitable for an engineering user. Support and Engineering users are able to see both views so that they are able to see what the home user is seeing (important while answering support calls) while also being able to see a more detailed view.

Extended Administrator Support

The OEM administrator (Original Equipment Manufacturer) now has extended management of their own Distributors and sub Organisations including adding and configuring new Organisations Distributors and sub Organisations can now run audit reports for their own organisations

Cortexo at CeBIT

Mon, 02 Mar 2009 08:48:00 +1300

Terry (Managing Director) and Jonathan (Director of Product Development) are currently at CeBIT in Hannover Germany on the New Zealand government trade pavilion. Interest in our remote monitoring has been high especially from providers of smart metering solutions.

Cortexo has arrived

Wed, 17 Dec 2008 14:46:00 +1300

Cortexo Limited was launched on 20 November 2008 by its parent company Bootstrap IT, a software development company based in Christchurch New Zealand.

Since 1994 Bootstrap has been providing practical, efficient software solutions in monitoring and work allocation systems. Bootstrap has specialist expertise in building solutions for keeping track of people and plant that is mobile or remote. PCGum Server is a remote monitoring application and MyRoster is a human resource application for rostered staff. Bootstrap also undertakes custom development projects.

Cortexo has licenced the PCGum Server software from Bootstrap IT to use as the core of its LiveHMI (fully hosted monitoring service). Cortexo's mission is to provided hosted monitoring in the microCHP, environmental and industrial sectors. Cortexo specialises in microCHP monitoring and currently provides monitoring for the WhisperGen stirling engines world wide.