Smart Metering - Consumer Benefits

Smart metering is been sold as a customer boon. Lets look at exactly how smart metering is going to change the way we use our appliances.

With de-regulation of the energy market, utilities have introduced many customer friendly programs over the years for e.g. Airmiles, loyalty, customer is family etc. They have tried to position themselves as a customer-friendly energy provider to increase their market share. Hence one of the primary factors dictating the success of the smart metering program is how the roll out is perceived by the customers and how quickly can the benefits be transferred to them. Let us outline the customer benefits by implementing the smart metering program:

(1) Customers can monitor their usage values on a real time basis which would allow them to keep a check on their energy consumption and budget for it well
(2) With the actual usage value remotely communicated to the utility, customers would now pay for their exact usage rather than some estimated usage values
(3) Since smart meters record consumption on time intervals enough information will be available for a customer to identify their usage patterns and hence opt for a tariff which best suits their usage pattern e.g. Time-of-use. This means reduced energy bills and at the same time saves energy.
(4) Utilities have struggled understanding their customer based on the nature of their consumption. With real time usage data available, utilities can segment their customers appropriately and provide better customer service.
(5) Moving home? Changing supplier? The suppliers and market participants take around a month for the data exchange and processing to be completed. With around 2 million people moving their home annually that is a lot of time spent. With Smart metering customers can experience a speedy transition as data sharing between suppliers and market participants will be streamlined and quicker
(6) Micro-generation is the production of power and heat by individuals typically to meet their own energy requirements. Micro-generation is usually through renewable resources like Solar energy, Ground heat etc and represents a low carbon footprint. Consumers capable of micro-generation are called prosumers. With a vision of increasing the % of renewable resource energy utilities are increasingly looking at promoting and supporting prosumers. Smart metering provides for measuring the outflow of micro-generated power for which the prosumer will be compensated appropriately. Smart meters provide for inflow-outflow netting and reward the prosumer for the surplus which promotes micro-generation.
(7) Changing tariff to suit your schedule? Want to switch payment method i.e. credit to/ from prepayment? The Meter at the customers premise has to be replaced for a tariff or a payment mode switch. Smart metering allows remote switching of tariff and payment mode without having to schedule a field representative visit to the customers address.

Read More

Smart Metering - The Confusion

Continuing the quest on Smart metering, in this post we look at how sometimes smart metering gets confused with some of the existing terminologies in the energy industry. Though there is no clear definition for the smart metering concept, following is a generic interpretation of the energy industry terms:

i. Automated Meter Reading (AMR)

AMR technology allows electric meters to be read remotely and at configurable time intervals. However real time reading with accurate billing is the only remote function supported by AMR meters in comparison to smart meters. AMR technology has been around is the energy industry for quite some time and has measureable proven benefits. Smart meters are sometimes also viewed as an extension of the AMR technology.

ii. Meter Clip on Sensors

Clip on sensors are small devices that clip on to the cables running from the conventional electric meters and then wirelessly transmit the usage information to an in-house display unit. This gives the customer real time consumption information giving them full control of their spending. However there are NO remote functions supported by such sensors and hence Suppliers and Distributors do not have access to the usage information. However the clip on sensor technology is considered to be forward compatible with the smart metering initiative as smart metering infrastructure uses a display unit to present real time usage values.

iii. Advanced Metering Infrastructure (AMI)

Advanced Metering Infrastructure is interchangeably used with Smart metering. It is viewed as an extension of AMR which can remotely read gas, water meters as well apart from electric meters. However smart meters are much more than an extension of the AMR technology which will be apparent later in the document. A new term loosely coupled to AMI/ Smart metering is Automated Meter Management (AMM). AMM is viewed as a system with analytical and technical measurement ability sitting on top of the AMI or smart meter infrastructure managing the data generated by smart meters.

Read More

Smart Metering – The Rationale

A month has gone by and it seems that I have lost the smart initiative. Wrong my friend! Travel kept me from updating my blog. In the next few posts I would like to present a sneak peek into the smart metering initiative going around. Would like to start with the rationale behind the entire program and try to answer "Why Now?"

Smart metering is the current buzz word in the energy retail industry. Some of the energy markets have already started a transition to the smart world whilst some are gearing up their existing infrastructure to accept the new changes. Before we try to dwell into more details around smart metering let us first try to understand the rationale behind the smart metering program. UK Energy industry de-regulation which happened a decade back changed the customer- utility relationship altogether, empowering customers to select a supplier of their choice. However customers never had the ability to precisely identify their usage patterns and take advantage of a suitable tariff thereby saving energy and money.

From a customer perspective, the only way a utility consumer can know their energy consumption is via a Bill. Energy bills are issued by a utility every month often estimating the usage based on a customer’s energy consumption history. Bills present a cumulative usage value and there is no way a customer can check their usage at real time to budget for it better.

From an energy retail industry perspective, their processes are not subject to frequent changes and remain by and large as they were standardised a few decades back. These processes were designed then, taking into consideration the market structure and the technology maturity in those times. With the business process remaining unchanged, energy suppliers and market participants could not leverage the technology advancements to their advantage to simplify the complicated industry architecture.

So the question is “Why the industry processes were never overhauled if there were known benefits?” The answer is simple, there was a never a comprehensive cost benefit analysis done to implement such a high impact change and the existing model was always scalable enough to accommodate newer market regulations and compliances. The next question then is “Why now if the model is scalable enough?” Well Smart metering is considered as the next generation of the energy industry. Not migrating to smart metering is not an option as newer market functions categorically align to smart meters and implementing them in the existing systems implies significant bolt on to an old set-up. Smart metering allows real time data exchange and processing which quintessentially has been an overnight batch job with data exchange between stakeholders taking months. This inherently implies that the existing underlying business processes in the energy industry can be simplified.

Smart metering program is thus a prospect to fundamentally review the market structure, existing business process and the technology development to create a blueprint for the new age market with an appropriate cost benefit analysis. It is been viewed as a perfect opportunity to rationalise the energy industry by addressing some of the current issues making it easier for customers to do business with their energy supplier in a de-regulated market. The implementation of the smart metering program is also proposed to have provisions for future market changes like smart grids, micro-generation, efficient use of energy program like Renewable Heat Incentive (RHI), Feed in Tariff (FIT) etc.

Read More

Smart Metering

There is a lot of buzz about "smart metering" @ my workplace. Well the name itself suggested that the guys were up to some smart stuff :), excuse my sad jokes. So the curious self that I am, have set out to understand the whole rationale behind the smart meter program which by the way has a roll out plan till 2020. Phew!! Now that's called vision. Whilst I am still trying to digest the whole concept there are a few things that concern me out right,

(1) Smart metering aims at ease of data distribution to simplify the industry processes. How is data privacy ensured.
(2) Though the whole idea of a carbon-free economy is catching on, how are customers going to be convinced that the whole process is going to be beneficial or will they be mandated to accept it nevertheless
(3) It is smart METERING, a lot of focus is around metering and the data collection. Hope we do NOT end up with CRM systems which become meter (site) centric instead of customer centric which is where everyone is trying to get to, to serve the customer better

Hope the quest answers the above and much more. As they say it, keep watching this space for more on smart metering.

Read More

AppFabric and BizTalk

"BizTalk is Dead and Out", on overhearing such a statement I was intrigued to know who the slayer was when a new name surfaced "AppFabric". The ensuing discussion was deadlocked but generated a curiosity in me as to what was the fuss all about. Reading through articles from the BizTalk Gurus I summarize the following:

What is AppFabric?
The simplest way of visualizing AppFabric is that it is an extension of Windows Application Server capabilities supporting the developer in implementing most of the non-functional requirements. Application development is not about just writing code but has certain associated quality of service parameters like scalability, availability, performance etc. In some cases the applications are also required to be transactional with a certain degree of administrative capabilities. Traditionally developers have spent substantial efforts in implementing even one of the above parameters whilst or post application development. What we really need is something out of the box addressing or supporting such QoS requirements on the existing infrastructure.
Look no further as AppFabric provides all of the above and more. And the best part is that it is available on the windows server platform installed on most of the development machines.
Windows Server AppFabric is an extension of IIS (Internet Information Services), WAS (Windows Process Activation Service) and .NET Framework 4.0 providing enhanced hosting, caching and service management facilities.

Does AppFabric replace BizTalk?
Finally I cut back to the discussion which actually triggered off my curiosity. Does Windows Server AppFabric replace BizTalk Server, Microsoft’s widely used application integration tool? Instead of trying to answer the question directly, we shall compare both the products on certain parameters and then try to draw a conclusion. Any form of working experience on BizTalk server would be beneficial in understanding the below table:

Features	BizTalk Server	AppFabric
Server type	* BizTalk is an application integration Server * XLANG based workflow engine	* AppFabric is an extension to windows application server * WF based workflow engine
Purpose	Enterprise level integration mediating various transport and message formats across heterogeneous systems	Extend IIS/ WAS providing advanced hosting capabilities for WCF (+WWF ) services
Architecture	Messaging based system with support for services i.e. schema based system	Services oriented system i.e. uses code contracts
Persistence	* Supports Message Persistence and Instance Persistence with suspend/ resume functionality using SQL server * Use of SQL Server introduces higher latency but advantages of disk persistence	* Supports Instance Persistence with suspend/ resume functionality using SQL server or AppFabric in-memory caching services * Use of in-memory AppFabric caching ensures low latency and improved throughput at the cost of risking disk persistence
Rules Engine	* Business Rules Engine (BRE) providing support for dynamic complex business rules * Rules Composer provides a visual representation of the rules for Business Workers	* Very little support via WF Rules for simple business rules * No visibility to Business Workers as rules are modelled In C#
Adapters	Multiple third party adapters available out of the box supporting heterogeneous system integration	AppFabric Connect allows leveraging BTS adapters but does not have a out of box adapter collection
Publish/ Subscribe	* Workflow engine along with the Message Box provides a publish-subscribe model which auto manages multiple concurrent workflow threads for processing messages * BizTalk host provides auto throttling ensuring load balancing	* With the absence of a message box, AppFabric does not provide a publish-subscribe multi threaded model * However there are WF constructs available for parallel execution which has to be managed by the developer
Monitoring and Recoverability	* BizTalk Admin Hub Page provides an overall view of the system health * Health Activity Tracking (HAT) can be used for viewing and resuming suspended resumable instances	Dashboard provides a view to the overall health of services configured to utilize persistence and event collection
Tracking, Archiving and Purging	* Business Activity Monitoring (BAM) provides a rich set of tools for tracking message data and flow through the engine * Dedicated tracking host for moving tracking data to BAM * SQL Server Agent jobs can be configured for purging and archiving tracking data from time to time	* Provides a set of tools which allows selection of a tracking profile to configure message logging and tracing features * Windows Powershell cmdlets are provided for purging and archiving tracking data from time to time
License Cost	Yes, has to be bought independently from Microsoft	No, Currently free and is already licensed with windows server 2008, Windows 7 and Windows Vista (SP2)

What the comparison brings forth is that AppFabric is best suited for low latency, high performant application server services providing non-functional features of service level tracing, monitoring, distributed caching, hosting capabilities etc. out of the box. Such solution architects might have previously considered BizTalk as an option as most of the mentioned features are in-line with the tools and services it readily provides.
However Windows Server AppFabric still has to reach the comprehensive collection of tools and features that BizTalk provides as an integration server. As highlighted in the above table, BizTalk still has a very unique publish/ subscribe model, strong rules engine, a mix of third party adapters to name a few which are missing in AppFabric and which makes BizTalk server a strong integration tool. All these features at an extra license cost obviously means that solution architects will consider AppFabric as an option before recommending any technology to the client which would fulfill their requirements.
To summarize AppFabric instead of replacing BizTalk server complements it well, each leveraging the features of the other. Future developments in each of the areas will try to bring both the products closer making it seamless and easier to use and configure. As put by the Microsoft pundits “Biztalk vNext will transition to be AppFabric based”.

Would be more than happy to get any suggestions/ corrections/ feedback on the above post @ virus.vinay@gmail.com

Read More

Testing & Programming = Oil & Water

I was watching a science program just now and it occurred to me that Testing is very much science. And then I wondered about Programming.

I started in IT over 22 years ago doing programming.  For me, the process of programming broke down to  three parts: figuring out the algorithm to solve the problem, implementing/coding the solution, and cleaning up the code (for whatever reason - e.g. maintainability, usability of UI, etc.).  It gets more complicated than that of course, but I think that about sums it up the major activities as I saw them. (SIDE NOTE: I didn't write those to mirror TDD's Red-Green-Refactor, but it does align nicely that way.)

When I think back on my experiences in programming, I don't see a lot of overlap with my experiences in Science (~ 8 years studying, researching and doing Physics & Environmental Science + teaching Science on top of that).  Science is about answering questions.  The Scientific Method provides a framework for asking and answering questions.  Programming isn't about that.  Building software isn't about that.  I'm having difficulty at the moment trying to see how testing and programming go together.

It occurs to me that schools and universities don't have any courses that teach students how to build software.  It also occurs to me that schools and universities provide students with the opportunities to learn and develop the skills required to build software well.  The schools just don't know they're doing that and consequently the students don't get that opportunity intentionally.

I'm not talking about learning to program.  That's trivial.  Building software isn't about programming.


Building software starts with an idea - an idea that someone will pay money for.  School courses to watch for here include - Economics, Entrepreneurship.

Building software requires people to work together. School courses that may apply - Business, Math/Finances, Psychology.

Building software requires people to work under constraints. "Project Management" is not really taught in schools, but there are many courses available to the public. I found this really painful to learn by doing. A whole world of insights opened up when I took my first PjM course. Reinventing the wheel really is dumb here.  I believe this should be formally taught in schools - in High School actually (the earlier, the better).

Building software requires people to solve difficult problems creatively.

This one is interesting.  I think there are many opportunities for people to learn this skill in school.  I know that we definitely covered this in Science.  I also know that Engineering programs teach students how to do this.  There are many more faculties and programs that this would apply to and they all have one thing in common - there's some formula or method for solving problems for some purpose.

The thing is, that purpose is different in each case.  See, here's where my mind is doing flip-flops.

In Science, when we solve a problem, the outcome is usually more information.  This information feeds back into the original idea to help us check the validity of our initial premise/hypothesis.  Sure, there are moments of free-form exploratory investigation, but I don't believe that happens a lot.  There are an infinite number of paths that any experiment may go in if you don't have a particular question in mind when you start, so unless you are trying to intentionally waste time and money, you will start with some question in mind before you start your experiment or investigation.

In Engineering, solving a problem is different in that the outcome is usually something real, something tangible, some application or system that fills a need.

The purpose of Science is not to build things but to answer questions.  The purpose of Engineering is to build things - and to do so safely, ethically, within desired parameters for intended purpose, and so on.

So where does that leave us in building software?  *Building* software is definitely an Engineering task... and then some. I am temporarily over-simplifying the process of building software to focus only on the requirements gathering, design, coding and deployment phases.

"Testing" comes from and is an integral part of Science, so how does it fit in with these software engineering/development phases of requirements gathering, design, coding and deployment?  Well, it doesn't.  It has nothing to do with them.  And yet, it has everything to do with them.

That is, from one perspective, at no time do you ever need to test anything to get through any of those phases.

That last statement, while true, kind of goes against everything I ever learned in school.  Whenever I did math problems, I always checked that I got the right answers against the solutions in the back of the textbooks.  Why did I do this? Why did I care?

I did it so that I could tell myself that *how* I solved the problem was correct - it got me the same answer that the textbook and my teacher cared about.  I discovered there were exceptions, of course.  That is, there were times when I got the correct answer but my method was wrong in some way.  Dumb luck does play a role in life and that was when I first discovered the evil twins named Type I and Type II errors.  (Side Note: I wonder if that's where Dr. Seuss got his idea for Thing 1 and Thing 2?  Hmm..)

So, the process of checking answers with the "approved" solutions, and handing in assignments for grading by teachers is a feedback mechanism to tell me that I've learned how to solve certain kinds of problems in ways that provide the desired results.  Let's assume for a moment that's a good thing.

Getting back to building software, you can go through requirements gathering, design, coding and deployment without ever once checking that you are producing the desired solution or results.  In the end, this is a monumental waste of time and money, and is completely incongruous with the initial premise that you are building a product/service/solution that someone will pay money for.  That's bad economics.  That's psychotic.

So how do we fix this?  What's the problem here?

Well, one problem is that we now have a question, we have doubt at the end of each of these phases.  We have a desire to learn if the end result of each stage and for the whole process is meeting [our/someone's] expectations.  The answer at the back of the textbook here will be provided by the people who are choosing to pay you and not your competitor for what you produce/release/ship.

Hey! Wait a minute!  Science helps us answers question!  Testing is a small part of that process.  The bigger process starts with a question that stems from some research or exploration of the initial area of interest.  This hypothesis is the part we really care about.  The "how do we go about gathering enough information to answer this question" part is something different and we should get people who know how to do this to either (a) do it for us, or (b) help us do it for ourselves. Then there is the analysis of that data or observations in context of the initial hypothesis.

But this is a different layer now!  We're adding a layer of "science" on top of "engineering".  That's weird.  That's like trying to mix oil and water together.  That is, they don't mix.  If you shake them up together you only end up with some cloudy mess that eventually will separate out again.

So what does this mean for building software? We need people who are skilled at engineering solutions, and we need people who are skilled at identifying and answering questions about the solutions being engineered.  I believe these are two, very separate skill sets required to be successful.

However, my experience in the Software/IT industry over the last 20 years has been that only one of those skill sets has really been identified as important or relevant -- that of the programmer or engineer in building the solutions.

This is a problem.  There's a huge knowledge gap here.

Schools don't teach you how to "test" in the context of software development.  Every single Testing "certification" agency I have met to date misses the mark. They don't teach you the correct skills. They "teach" you superficial documentation skills that produce information *like* the kind of information that is required.  That would be like me handing out Plumbing certificates to anyone who successfully completes the Mario & Luigi video games because these characters are plumbers in the games.  That's just not right.  Likewise, there is no actual "science" performed by teaching people to create scientific-like reports. (Although it happens sometimes that testers learn testing skills accidentally if they pay attention to what they're really doing.)

So, where are we here? Building software requires layers of intelligent, creative effort and problem-solving abilities.  These layers are complementary and require different skill sets.  Just like you wouldn't hire an accountant to deploy your systems, I don't think it's wise to hire a programmer to provide valuable testing insights into the development process.  It's the wrong skill set.

Oil and water, or oil and vinegar - the analogy holds for me. Testing is something completely different from Programming and building software.  It's a layer on top to help you know that what you are doing is on target for what your paying customers are expecting.  Some might call that value.

Read More

Software Testing "Popcorn" button

I made myself some microwave popcorn for a snack just now.  Placed the popcorn bag in the microwave, pressed the 'popcorn' button and then 'start'. Someone next to me said: "There's a popcorn button?" Um, yes, there is.  In fact, there has been a 'popcorn' button on every microwave oven I've ever seen.

I explained to my colleague that the recommended time on the bag (in this case it was 2 min 30 sec) doesn't work on every oven.  Different ovens have different power output and so the actual cook time may vary.  If I go with the default time, it might burn or be under-done and leave too many unpopped kernels in the bag.  You could figure out the correct time in a few ways.


Method 1: Math
Start by taking a look at the power output of the oven. Full-size ovens deliver 1,000 - 1,600 watts of power, and mid-size ovens yield 800 - 1,000 watts. Higher wattage heats food more quickly.  If it's not explicitly written on the bag, assume the default popcorn popping time is for a 1,000 watt oven.

Use a time/power ratio along the lines of: ( t_your_micro_oven / P_your_micro_oven ) = ( 150 sec / 1000 W)

I converted the 2:30 recommended time on the bag to 150 seconds for convenience.  The power of your microwave oven should be written on the back somewhere, probably close to the plug.  This leaves your popping time as the only unknown variable in the equation, so it should be straightforward to solve.

That might work.

Method 2: Brute Force/Iterative
Put the bag in the oven and follow the instructions exactly.  Make no changes.  When the time is complete, take the bag out and put the contents in a bowl.

If you are happy with the result, congratulations! You are done.  If not, we will need to change the cooking time for the next bag.

On a piece of paper (or in a document on your computer if you prefer), make some observations to capture things like: time settings used, quality of the popcorn output, taste, number of unpopped kernels, and so on.  Keep a note next to the microwave oven or on the container where you keep more popcorn bags -- a note to reference these 'test results' so that you can have something for comparison the next time.

Basically, you know where I'm going with this.  Pop the first bag with the default recommendations and keep varying the subsequent popping times until you are happy with the result.  This will require "n" bags to iterate through until you are happy with the end result.

This should eventually produce high-quality results.  It may take you some time and will be costly to do it this way as you may have to go through many bags until you get it just right.

Method 3: Popcorn button

Put the bag in the oven, press the 'popcorn' button, serve and enjoy.

I'm not certain how this works.  I shall call it "magic" for now.  I can speculate that perhaps the microwave oven manufacturer has a team of engineers dedicated to the "Perfect Popcorn Production" using their equipment and are responsible for programming the correct power and time settings into their ovens.

Maybe they use Method 1 above.  Maybe they use a combination of methods 1 and 2 above.  Maybe it's something else.

The point here is that someone has already done the thinking for me so that I can focus on the quality of experience of using their oven.

Wow.  I have so many comparisons and analogies back to Software Testing running through my head right now.

One that jumps to mind is development & testing terminology/jargon.

• When is a test not a test? When it is a check. When it is an inspection. When it is a question. and so on.
• Are your [agile] development sprints 2 weeks? No? Why not? That's the default value, so it should work for you, right?

What if software organisations were responsible for their own 'popcorn' buttons? That is, where the 'popcorn button' is a way to communicate the methods and models used within their organisations that produce the desired 'quality' result.

As a consultant, one of the first things I do is watch and listen to the development and project team members. I need to understand their terminology and way of doing things.  That helps set a reference frame for me.  If I want to make an improvement or change somewhere, I need to have an understanding of how to do that on their terms, not terms according to some industry standard or certification terminology dictionary that may not apply.

What would be the point?  Well, I think it would be handy if we could abstract out some of the desired practices from the terminology and implementation details that are specific and custom to every organisation, team or project.

Now that I think about it.  Maybe, we as consultants are the "Popcorn Programming Facilitators."  That is, the company wants to implement an automated regression testing activity.  What does that look like? How can that work for us? What kind of output do we get?

Some days we identify the required popcorn buttons (e.g. Regression Testing, Bug Tracking System, Produce Status/Progress Reports). Some days we help program them.

What do you think?

Read More