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ENERGY & SUSTAINABILITY
Sense and sustainability One small step for smart meters, one giant leap for climate change in Australia. An international leader in home intelligence and real-time smart electricity monitoring, Sense is setting up operations in Australia to help the country achieve Net Zero emissions sooner. Michael Jary, the International Managing Director for Sense, announced the establishment of a local operation in Australia within a year, where the company sees strong potential for its AI technology to be embedded with the next generation of smart energy meters. Sense will establish local electricity retailing and manufacturing partners for its AI technology that uses machine-learning algorithms to analyse high-resolution electricity data, providing a breakdown of individual domestic electricity consumption to an appliance level in real time. “Whilst first generation smart meters have made huge strides in digitising the energy sector, they have not fulfilled their true potential. With an excessive focus on the unit cost of the meter alone, these first wave devices could have done much more,” says Jary. “But second wave meters can and must do so much more. They will be affixed to walls until 2040 so they need to be future-proofed.” Sense technology, which can be embedded into the smart meter, provides data vital to flexible grid management including provision of energy disaggregation information in real time that radically advances grid management to increase flexibility and cut infrastructure costs. “This will be critical to the electrical energy transformation happening now in Australia, in which individual homes and the grid will be called upon to facilitate the move away from fossil fuels, while accommodating growing trends such as full electric vehicle penetration, heat pumps in most homes, widespread distributed generation, and fluctuating renewables,” says Jary. Australia’s existing smart meter technology needs to be upgraded to deliver a low carbon energy transformation to domestic homes. Real-time device detection at the individual appliance level is in the national interest, and it reduces household power bills. Jary said embedding of Sense’s AI technology into smart meters, where it processes high-resolution waveform data in real time, would be a relatively small step for each of Australia’s approximately ten million households, but would have a major impact collectively on reaching Australia’s Net Zero goals sooner. “Modest upgrades to the next generation of smart meters will allow them to embed Sense technology and run sophisticated AI algorithms. By deploying AI to the grid edge, homes can become more efficient and flexible and we can cost-effectively accelerate the energy transition now happening in Australia,” said Jary, adding that homes account for 25% of total electricity consumption in Australia. “Sense’s AI technology, which can be readily incorporated into next generation smart meters produced by Australian manufacturers, helps consumers save energy, enables demand-side flexibility, and identifies anomalies on the grid. It also prepares homes to cope with the coming household electrical transformation, including full electric vehicle penetration, heat pumps in most homes, widespread distributed generation, and fluctuating renewables. For a relatively minor investment to incorporate this technology into next generation meters produced in Australia, the benefits will be outstanding, providing consumer-controlled savings, and competitive advantages for electricity retailers and meter manufacturers, and a new level of grid flexibility that will be vital as Australia progressively transitions away from fossil fuels. “There is huge scope to improve smart metering in Australia by adoption of technology which is already being deployed in the US,” he said in a preamble to Australian Energy Week, a major annual conference and expo for the energy industry, bringing together
AMT AUG 2022
International Managing Director for Sense, Michael Jary
generators, networks, retailers, end-users, and government, helping to shape the energy transition. Michael Jary’s mission in Australia includes introducing the technology to electricity regulators, electricity retailers, and other major organisations involved in the energy transformation. Sense has already formed partnerships with other national and global organisations involved in this process, including Schneider Electric, which is an active participant in the global energy transformation. “Australia needs to provide intelligence in the home that engages consumers, optimises for cost and carbon, and reduces the capital and operating costs of the grid. Such technology needs to be highly scalable, and dramatically more cost-effective than previous offerings. It needs to be able to balance the grid, and reduce and shift the peaks,” he said. “It needs to engage, not enrage, the consumer by making them a partner in identifying energy waste, tracking electricity costs and saving money on their bills.” Sense's load disaggregation samples power more than 10,000 times per second, then uses high resolution waveform data analysis to track device activity in homes down to individual appliances, even those that aren’t smart. “In very simple terms, it ‘listens’ to electricity signals to identify the unique signatures of various appliances and electrical devices in the home. Based on this electricity data, it can tell you where usage and waste is occurring in real time. This is a huge advance on previousgeneration technologies, which were unable to break down usage at an appliance level and couldn’t share information with consumers until the next day at the earliest,” says Jary. “To deliver net zero in time to substantially help avert climate change, Australia’s next generation smart meters have a vital role to play. But decisions made now could make or break the drive to net zero,” says Jary, who is seeking to partner with local energy suppliers to advance smart metering to the next level.” “The energy-saving potential in Australia is huge – that’s why we are setting up here. There are more than ten million homes in Australia, each consuming about 5,000 kWh per year.”
