In one of my earlier posts, I have already elaborated at length about why I do what I do: truth, goodness, and beauty! But, what do I do exactly? Today, I would like to share a little example of the many type of projects that I participate in: making decisions about electricity use at home.
My old flat in Madrid
Many among us have heard about the marvellous and ever-elusive "smart grid". I will not list the many wonderful qualities that have been attributed to the smart grid, but, one of the things that it should be able to achieve for you and me, is a better, smarter way of managing our own energy consumption, helping us making decisions that are informed by the real-time price of electricity. In this project (completed within my curriculum at ICAI in Madrid), I wrote a simple linear optimization model that decided for me what is the best time to do laundry, cook, take a shower, and to turn the heater on (or simply leave the apartment), based on the hourly price of electricity in Spain, the specifications of the appliances in the flat that I lived in, and the price I am willing to pay for staying warm.
Trivial this example may be (we are talking about a monthly electricity bill of 39 euros!), I am hoping that, in the not so far future, active demand response will be enabled, and we will all make more intelligent and informed decisions about whether to turn that heater on.
Also, I have been putting off an extension to this model, which is the addition of an home energy storage system (like the Tesla Powerwall), which, as you can imagine, is not that useful for such the daily consumptions of an energy miser like me... When I move to a bigger house then (not likely to happen soon)!