Content uploaded by Toby Considine
Author content
All content in this area was uploaded by Toby Considine on Oct 28, 2014
Content may be subject to copyright.
Ontological requirements of the Service Oriented Grid
Toby Considine
Principal, TC9 Consulting
Infrastructure Analyst, University of North Carolina
169 Durham-Eubanks Road, Pittsboro, NC 27312
Toby.Considine@gmail.com
Keywords: Semantics, Service, e-Commerce, Ontology,
Integration
Abstract
Process oriented integration of the power grid will be unable
to scale out to support future diversity of systems and
interactions. The approaches of service oriented architecture
(SOA), applied to the processes in buildings and in the
power grid, as well as to consumer interactions in
intermittently connected devices and storage, provide a way
around this barrier to smart integration.
Service oriented coordination of building services will open
up new avenues for energy re-allocation and conservation.
Service orientation deals with the diversity of building
systems while providing the building owner/operator with
new understanding of the costs and benefits of controlling
power use.
The service oriented grid (SOG) must apply the same
approaches to its own interfaces. Building-grid interactions
must move past mere availability and consumption to
include cost, quality, and projected reliability. On-site and
microgrid energy sources will use the same surfaces as do
grid-based sources.
Many hope that electric cars and their batteries will be a
means to peak shaving and demand smoothing. Cars could
instead increase demand volatility. Drivers, automobile
producers, and the grid need a common vocabulary for the
acquisition, storage, and use of power for use.
Ontologies naming building-based and grid-based services
will enable applications for enterprise and consumer. The
SOG will use them to enable technical and business
innovation.
1. SEMANTIC MISMATCH BETWEEN
BUILDINGS AND ENERGY
Process oriented integration of the power grid will be unable
to scale out to support future diversity of systems and
interactions. The approaches of service oriented architecture
(SOA) enable orchestration of diverse technologies
managed by different organizations. SOA can be applied to
the processes in buildings and in the power grid, as well as
to consumer interactions in intermittently connected devices
and in energy storage.
1.1. The Information Gap
We do not make effective decisions about things we do not
understand. Deep process information only makes sense
experts within the domain of that process. Facilities owners
and operators are unable to make decisions based upon the
details of building control systems.
Control system integration has traditionally been detail
oriented and process specific. Control system performance
is usually described in terms of process results or code
compliance. Code compliance leads only to minimum
results, ones that the decision maker cannot opt-out of.
Process outcomes are typically expressed in technical results
that do not map easily to business goals. For example,
HVAC CFM is not easily mapped to business goals such as
Tenant Satisfaction and Lease Retention
Because of the information mismatch, building decision
makers are not able to make decisions to produce maximum
response to economic signals such as Demand / Response.
This leaves engineers to design minimal responses with the
goal that the tenant does not notice.
1.2. The Engineers Perspective
Building operations are described in procedural or
algorithmic terms. Information is siloed so there may be no
direct way to measure performance; systems traditionally
report only their internal metrics. These metrics are likely to
be reports of measurable physical qualities, free of business
context.
Examples are reporting air conditioning performance in
terms of CFM of air or battery status in terms of crystal
degradation.
1.3. The Building Owners Perspective
To the facility manager or leasing agent, service curtailment
can only have bad results. Customer Complaints will
increase. A tenant may not renew a lease. A single month of
vacancy coupled with between-tenant renovations could
easily swamp the benefit of demand-response during the
year. It is better not to take a risk.
1.4. The Building Tenant’s Perspective
Sustainable operations have value only as tie-breaker
between equivalent properties. There is no way to see or to
understand building system operations on a daily basis.
Without a way to audit performance of buildings, my
comfort, right now is the only effective measure of
competent operations.
1.5. Barriers to Innovation
Process-to-process interactions require that the integrator be
aware of the operations of each system or domain. Changes
in one system require re-integration with the next.
Traditional integration leads utilities to specify a single
brand of a single component, often a twenty year decision.
Complexity is managed by eliminating diversity.
The largest source of diversity on the grid is the end nodes.
Different purposes and individual tastes are served by
different vintages of equipment. Traditional grid integration
has simplified this interaction to the single point of the
dumb meter and perhaps a signal to the water heater or air
conditioner. As the future grid becomes the intelligent grid,
this one way non-interaction will not be enough.
Future build technologies are likely to be more diverse than
now. Each building may have a different mixes of systems
for energy storage, energy conversion, energy recycling, and
energy generation. Site-based decisions will support
different technologies to support each of these functions. It
is in all our interest to encourage innovation and
competition between developing technologies to support
these functions. This requires that we minimize integration
costs between different technologies. We cannot afford for
difficulty of integration to be the single largest source of
market friction blocking innovation.
Integration patterns must support greater agility while
requiring less deep domain knowledge of emerging energy
technologies.
2. DEVELOPING BEST PRACTICES IN
ADJACENT DOMAINS
Service definition and service alignment are the key
concepts in IT systems integration and in facilities design.
In either case, best practices are to define the service
deliverables expected from each system and not the
techniques and technologies to deliver the service.
Once the service is agreed upon, then one can define useful
metrics as to how well that service is delivered.
Measurements that are incidental to that service delivery are
not interesting to those procuring the service. Alternative
technologies and approaches that deliver those new metrics
become acceptable alternative, spurring innovation.
The entity with the domain expertise to create, maintain, and
evolve a given capability may not have the expertise or the
desire to create, maintain, and evolve its service access.
Visibility, interaction, and effect define the service.
2.1.1. Service Orientation: the IT Perspective
Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) is a paradigm for
organizing and utilizing distributed capabilities that may be
under the control of different ownership domains.
Capabilities to solve or support a solution for the problems
they face in the course of their business. SOA provides a
powerful framework for matching needs and capabilities
and for combining capabilities to address those needs.
Visibility, interaction, and effect are key concepts in SOA.
Visibility refers to the capacity for those with needs and
those with capabilities to be able to see each other. This is
typically done by providing descriptions for such aspects as
functions and technical requirements, related constraints and
policies, and mechanisms for access or response. The
descriptions must be in a form (or must be transformable to
a form) in which their syntax and semantics are widely
accessible and understandable. Whereas visibility introduces
the possibilities for matching needs to capabilities (and vice
versa), interaction is the activity of using a capability.
SOA practitioners distinguish between public actions and
private actions. Private actions are inherently unknowable
by other parties. Public actions result in changes to the states
that are shared between at least those involved in the current
execution context. Real world effects are couched in terms
of changes to this shared state. A cornerstone of SOA is that
capabilities can be used without needing to know all the
details.
SOA is not itself a solution to domain problems but rather
an organizing and delivery paradigm that enables one to get
more value from use both of capabilities which are locally
“owned” and those under the control of others. Although
SOA is commonly implemented using Web services,
services can be made visible, support interaction, and
generate effects through other implementation strategies
2.1.2. BIM: Enabling Owner Participation
Building Design approaches and business models are being
re-written using the standards-based Building Information
Model (BIM). BIM can include all information related to
the design, procurement, and operation of a building,
including the three dimensional Building Model. In the
U.S., BIM as been codified in the National BIM standard
(NBIMS). Internationally there is an effort to adopt NBIMS
operating as buildingSmart. BuildingSmart is a
transformative peer organization whose goals, scope, and
reach can be compared to GridWise.
A core value of buildingSmart is granting authority to the
Owner of a building to make design decisions by expressing
them in terms of business deliverable early in the design
process. For example, when reviewing the three dimensional
rendering of alternate building design options, the owner
can directly compare projected costs per square foot and net
leasable space for each. This changes design selection into
esthetics, capitalization, and revenue, and puts the business
decision maker in charge.
BIM has many other benefits, especially in the areas of
construction planning and process, but those are outside the
scope of this article.
Today’s BIM lacks any language to unambiguously discuss
the desired system performance of a building. Building
system performance relies on knowledge sets that are not
possessed by most architectural firms. This has negative
effects on commissioning and operations. This also
precludes the owner from specifying and obtaining the same
level of control over building operations as over the other
design criteria.
3. ONTOLOGIES AND SEMANTIC
DEVELOPMENT
If we cannot agree what to call it, we cannot compare
services to provide it; semantics are an essential part of
SOA. For the grid, semantic alignment will open up
interoperability without locking in technology. When people
can name it, then they can buy it on an open market.
But the intelligent grid will require intelligent partners. We
must develop business and tenant oriented semantics for
building services in parallel with the grid efforts to enable
full interoperable responsiveness on both sides of the meter.
3.1. Grid Semantics
Availability, price, and consumption are essential
components for any service. For any but the least interesting
markets to develop, the semantic interface needs to allow
for more meaning:
Capability & Reliability: Capacity / Capability /
Availability (including time windows) / Anticipated
Reliability / Marginal Price
Market Operations: Power Use curves, Negotiation &
Contracts, Offer and Acceptance, Scheduling options,
Periodic price curves. Settlement. Contracted Curtailment
DR
Multi-party & Mobile transactions: PHEV, Non-Utility
vendors, identity, transactional charge override
Tariffs: Distance charges, transmission, carbon taxes…
Attributes & Amenities: Carbon, Wildlife, Location…
Optional attributes for later definition and market building.
3.2. Building Semantics
Buildings are occupied by different enterprises each with its
own values. There will not be common ontology for all of
them.
Efforts are underway in the building areas, particularly in
the buildingSmart process, to define value semantics for
owners and tenants. These standards are defining the
services provided by building-based systems and creating a
semantic of service performance.
To a business, an ontology is a business value proposition;
each business has its own. The common semantics defined
as above create a common way to discuss that proposition,
and to elevate the quality of those services into core
business concerns...and that which a business can name and
measure, it will control.
Building-based ontologies, though, will not be brought to
the grid. They are domain specific. Building-side semantics
are used to bring internal energy use under management and
control.
Buildings will use the demand side of the grid semantic
interface. Capacity / Capability / Availability become
market demand. Market Operations become symmetrical
negotiations. Multi-party & Mobile transaction become
federated identity management. Attributes & Amenities
support the businesses internal ontology. These semantics
will enable the Service Oriented Building (SOB).
3.3. Cross-over semantics
Zero net energy buildings are buildings that manage internal
generation, storage, conversion, and recycling of energy.
Zero net energy buildings will use diverse site-appropriate
technologies to accomplish these ends. Zero net energy
buildings will require internal interoperability standards and
support internal energy negotiations.
The principle of parsimony suggests that at least some of
these negotiations can best be performed using the
semantics or energy scarcity and value, of supply and
distribution for these internal negotiations.
3.4. Plug-In Cars, Hybrid and Otherwise
Many hope that electric cars and their batteries will be a
means to peak shaving and demand smoothing. Cars
without management are more likely to increase demands
on the home, office, and local distribution.
Drivers, automobile producers, and the grid require a
common vocabulary for the acquisition, storage, and use of
power. There is no need for this vocabulary to be different
than that outlined above as the cross-over semantics for
buildings.
3.5. Semantics enable Security
Traditional power grid security has been based on isolation.
New two-way interaction patterns require that energy
systems no longer be isolated. This requires that security be
reconsidered
Security without context is meaningless. Security without
context can only say no. Key opportunities in energy
management are lost because current business models do
not share even such basic information as consumption data
in real time. At the same time, non-granular security puts all
operations at risk from any intrusion.
Where possible, systems should not share deep process
information, but present only the information required for
interoperation and safety. This informational interface
presents a smaller attack surface to the outside world. Each
such system defends its own mission first, and responds to
the outside world only in defined ways.
As we standardize these simplified modes of
interoperability, interactions move from the low level
process to the higher level business function. Different
technologies, such as small point-generation systems may
present the same business function. A storage system may
present two business functions, one as a consumer of power,
and one as a sporadic producer of power. The deep process
of each technology would be hidden from the operational
interface. This in itself provides one layer of a defense in
depth security.
The vocabulary that names these business functions maps
more easily to business rules of who may do what. These
rules are more understandable to the observer or security
auditor, another source of security. The business semantics
become one layer of a multi-layer security model.
4. CONCLUSION
Future energy technology will place more technical
diversity than today in closer interaction. Process oriented
integration of the power grid will be unable to scale out to
support such diversity of systems and interactions. Service
level integration will be applied to both the processes in
buildings and in the power grid and to consumer
interactions and intermittently connected devices.
Service oriented coordination of building services will open
up new avenues for energy re-allocation and conservation.
Service orientation deals with the diversity of building
systems while providing the building owner/operator with
new approaches to controlling power use.
The SOG will apply the same approaches to its own
interfaces, those between Generation, Transmission,
Distribution, and Consumption. Building-grid
communications will move past mere availability and
consumption to include cost, quality, and projected
reliability. On-site and microgrid energy sources will use the
same surfaces as do grid-based sources.
Service based integration is the way to expand intelligence
and interaction of the grid and its end-nodes. Service
definitions will prevent integrations from becoming enmired
in atomic interactions. Ontologies naming building-based
and grid-based services will enable applications for
enterprise and consumer. The SOG and the SOB will hide
complexity to enable technical and business innovation.
References
[1] “Better Behavioral Description for Dynamic Semantic
Web Services Collaboration” Zhangbing Zhou; Bhiri, S.; Ke
Ning; Vasiliu, L.; Foxvog, D.; Gaaloul, W. Semantics,
Knowledge and Grid, Third International Conference on,
Volume , Issue , 29-31 Oct. 2007 Page(s):338 – 341, IEEE
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/SKG.2007.57
[2] “Reference Model for Service Oriented Architecture
1.0” OASIS Standard, 12 October 2006 Editors: C. Matthew
MacKenzie, Ken Laskey, Francis McCabe, Peter F Brown,
Rebekah Metz, Location: http://docs.oasis-open.org/soa-
rm/v1.0/
Biography
Toby Considine has been integrating building systems and
business processes for longer than he cares to confess. Since
the Y2K push ended with the post-midnight phone call from
the University of North Carolina Cogeneration Plant,
Toby’s focus shifted to standards-based enterprise
interaction with the engineered systems in buildings.
Toby has been chair of the OASIS oBIX Technical
Committee. oBIX is an unencumbered web service designed
to interface between building systems and e-business. In the
summer of 2008, he became co-chair of the OASIS
Technical Advisory Board. He is active on the NIST Smart
Grid Domain Experts Group and works to promote applying
information technology to with groups such as
buildingSmart and FIATECH.
Before coming to the university, Mr. Considine developed
enterprise systems for technology companies, apparel
companies, manufacturing plants, architectural firms, and
media companies old and new. Before that, Toby worked as
a biochemist following undergraduate work in
developmental neuropharmacology at UNC.
Mr. Considine is a recognized thought leader in applying IT
to energy, physical security, and emergency response. He is
a frequent conference speaker and provides advice to
companies and consortia on new business models and
integration strategies.
