Another year passed by: Energy consumption in a passive house

In the first year of living in the new house I kind of read the energy meters more or less weekly, then it turned into bi-weekly to monthly activity. The past year I looked at the meters mostly during the Winter months and almost forgot to read them out last weekend when another year had passed. When you look at the energy consumption, there are surprising numbers:

	2012	2011	2010	2009
Household (kWh)	2597	2605	2473	2244
Heating/Ventilation/Water (kWh)	2713	2713	2858	2782

Even though the past year was a leap year (and had a leap second!!!) the consumption was the same. I had hoped to have a smaller number, but we had some very chilly weeks in February. Household consumption has also stayed constant with most consumers now in place. Most of it should come from cooking, laundry and my home office with computer, monitor, phones, etc.

Our house does not have a smart meter where you can track consumption online and real-time. However, I talked with some "owners" and the bottom line is that after the first few weeks they barely make use of it. It is similar to reading our old-fashioned meters more frequently in the beginning to learn and look for exceptions. Then leaning back once everything seems to run smoothly. Any similarities to a well-tuned database system and regular workloads...?

Passive houses, windmills, clouds, ice saints, DB2, and some nice prizes

Well, what a headline! Full of energy and still kind of energy-conscious, full of nature and still kind of technology-centric, serious stuff and still fun. Let me explain...

As most of you probably know, my familiy is living in a passive house (very low energy house). The Winter in Germany has been long and cold and everybody spent a good chunk of money on heating. Everybody? It turns out that even though our entire house was heated throughout the Winter, we only consumed a little bit more than the year before. Yesterday evening I checked the energy meters (still not smart meters) and we are on track on being only less than 5% higher consumption for heating than last year. We will see the result around mid of July.

After some really warm weeks it is cloudy, rainy, windy, and chilly outside. Seems like the so-called ice saints have an early arrival (this is a weather pattern caused by warm land masses and still cold ocean in Northern Europe). Speaking of wind and clouds: Google just invested in windmills and IBM is buying Cast Iron for cloud integration.

What is left? DB2 and the nice prizes. IDUG started a contest "Do you DB2?" where - if you are based in North America - you can win a Wifi-enabled HDTV or an iPad. To win you need to tell your personal DB2 story. Running a DB2 server in a passive house is probably not a good story ("with product X the house keeps warmer than running DB2 because more CPU cyles are burned and more disks are needed for X and hence more heating is produced") or is it? What is your story?

Shock or Joy? Power Meters and the core of everything: Data

In many countries the end of year also is the time when power meters, or utility meters in general, are read out. When we lived in California the meters were manually read once a month and the monthly bill reflected the previous month's usage - with all its ups and downs. The feedback was more or less immediate which was good, but the amount to pay also significantly alternated between highs in Winter and Summer and lows in Spring and Fall.

In Germany, the meters are typically read once a year and the monthly amount is based on the averaged out estimate for the next year. You can plan ahead for the upcoming months in terms of payments, but for most people there is no direct feedback on their consumption. Our power meters will be read out over the next few days and I am happily expecting the annual statement sometime in January.

In some regions the Utilities have started deploying Smart Meters. In California, PG&E is changing to them, in Germany households are expected to move to them over time, too. I am still waiting for mine.

Why I am interested in it? First, direct feedback is valuable to improve or optimize consumption - monthly data is better than annual, daily or even immediate input better than monthly. Second, it is interesting to see what kind of data could be made available and in what format. My format of choice would be XML because of its flexibility and tooling support. Third, based on finer granularity, better pricing could be available (avoid the peak hours and save). Fourth, based on the data, you or a third-party company could analyze your consumption, compare with peer groups and look into finding ways to improve your monthly bill. Some companies already offer energy optimization services to enterprises and take a share of the savings.

Last, it would be fun to store XML-based energy data in DB2 pureXML and manage and analyze it myself.

What is at the core of all this is the data. Without its availability (in a usable format), there is no insight, no improvement (greener planet), no founding of new companies.

Which payment is greener: Cash or Credit?

The other day I was reading about the energy consumed and CO2 produced for each Google search. Energy efficiency is a hot topic and a lot of numbers (and hot air) are produced. Energy efficient data centers, green computing/green IT, household energy consumption, and much more is what is discussed in the news, IBM's theme is the Smarter Planet.

I am certainly interested in adding CO2 and energy metrics to database benchmarks like TPC-C, TPC-H, and also TPoX. But I am much more interested in the fundamental questions of daily life: Cash or credit (or in the US still check)? Not just only which is faster at the checkout, but what is greener? How much total energy is necessary to pay with cash and how much for paying with a card, including the post-processing?

Smart Metering / DB2 Performance Expert

Since last Fall I am trying to become one of the beta testers for the Smart Metering offering of our local utility company. I was too late for the first batch of customers admitted to the program, then in January I learned that I am using the "wrong" Internet provider and to call back in March. Today I retried, but no luck and another month of waiting as they are still working on a solution.

Why do I want to have smart metering? There are two aspects of it. First of all, I am lazy and the idea of not having to run into the basement to read the meter is nice. Right now I am reading our two meters (one for our heat pump, solar pump, and related consumers, the other for the rest of our house including the computers) once a week to get an idea of how much energy we use. The second reason for getting a so-called e-meter is to have ongoing reporting, to get more data points. With a smart meter, the data about the current consumption is transferred to the reporting server every couple minutes. I would be able to see in graphs and tables how much energy is used and when it is used throughout the days and weeks. Moreover, comparative data is provided to see how we are faring compared to similar energy customers. The overall idea is to get insight into usage, then being able to detect unusual situations and to remove or reduce hidden consumers in our household, or to shift some consumption (washer, dryer, dishwasher, etc.) to the (possibly) cheaper evening hours.

So much for the theory, I have to wait another month to get an update on when I can start with Smart Metering.

BTW: Products like DB2 Performance Expert give you insight into your database server, your operating system and much more. They give you the frequent data points and historic and comparative data, so you can detect unusual situations before they are real problems. It's similar to smart meters: Less running, more insight, smoother system.

Have a nice weekend.