Philippe Maman_ Repurposing Municipal Resource Tech in Residential Development
By 2050, global temperatures will rise by 4-5 degrees Fahrenheit, doubling or tripling the number of extreme heat days in LA County. Along with the strain of an additional 1.5 million new arrivals, this heat will effectively double the load requirements of our electrical grid. The county will also need streamlined methods of water distribution to support its growing population. Given current average consumption rates of 139 gallons per capita per day, Angelenos will require an additional 75 billion gallons of water per year.
As LA County builds new housing, it needs an immediate approach to address stresses to utility infrastructure and integrate new technologies. If advanced metering infrastructure (AMI) is implemented within nodes of high-density development, LA County may have a chance at creating desirable and resource-efficient housing solutions for its predicted future population. AMI integrates smart meters, communication networks and data management systems creating a more efficient feedback loop between utilities and end-users.
The county can simultaneously accelerate public infrastructure improvements by ramping up connections between municipal metering technologies and consumer smart-home products. This new infrastructure can enable automation of energy metering as well as the ability to remotely disconnect service, detect tampering, identify and isolate outages, and monitor voltage.
The city of Los Angeles is already working with SmartSynch to install thousands of intelligent energy meters. Since their first installation, LA has seen a 5% decrease in overall energy consumption. The meters have also begun to generate detailed usage data that could enable more efficient integration of consumer technologies with county systems. When fed into app-connected displays and programmable thermostats, users can automate or consciously reduce their electricity demand. This communication loop also forms a basis for new time-based energy rate programs encouraging customers to reduce peak demand and manage energy consumption and cost.
LA County is also forming partnerships with McCrometer and other private companies to insert full profile insertion electromagnetic meters (FPI MAG) in its water pipelines. These are volumetric flow meters without any moving parts requiring maintenance. They can be wirelessly connected to in-home appliances thereby mitigating excessive water use. When deployed at utility hookups in new residential developments, FPI MAG meters can help automate the distribution of drinking water throughout a building. This reduces consumer cost and helps to redirect water to where it is most needed in the municipal system.
At the national level, The US Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy has developed a platform connecting private and public energy and water use. The Building Energy Optimization (BEopt) software identifies inefficiencies in utility hookups and the design of residential MEP systems themselves. It also simulates optimal energy-tech scenarios for future residential development taking into account urban policy. Finally, BEopt acts as an important middle man making sure that data-security is preserved when involving consumer technologies in government ecosystems.
BEopt software, along with LA County’s various public-private energy and water partnerships are indicative of larger trends towards reducing inefficiencies in resource use. AMI is already being added to an existing network of public and private energy-tech infrastructure throughout the county. Its components have the potential to be easily integrated with city-wide, secure software platforms. This emerging, self-regulating network has the potential to offload the inefficiencies of LA’s decentralized planning structure to new residential development without dismantling the ingrained nodal culture of LA.
