I don’t see another post here about software-defined electricity and the “company” 3DFS, so I’ll toss this out. The technology involved and its implications are, potentially, a very big deal.
David Roberts, in a very comprehensive piece for Vox, lays out the basic problem: electricity, as we currently make, store, measure and use it, is chaotic, dumb and so poorly managed that it’s nearly two-thirds waste. And, by “poorly managed,” I’m not talking about power companies, but the electricity itself.
We sort the movement of electrons neatly by voltage, current and power, but pay little attention to other attributes which determine its efficiency for use, because we’re used to analog metrics that function reasonably well measuring voltage, current, power, phase, etc. down to about 60 times a second.
Even the “smart grid” and “smart panel” tech with which we’re getting familiar is still largely monitored and controlled in analog.
But hardware and software can now monitor waveforms of moving electrons digitally to much higher resolutions and adjust the power and the devices using it for maximum efficiency.
3DFS, something of a hybrid between a long-running research lab and small-cap startup in Pittsboro, North Carolina, is currently testing and commercially installing technology that does exactly that, keeping tabs on 26 separate parameters of electricity, (voltage, phase angle, phase imbalance, harmonics, etc.). Not just monitoring the power, but optimizing it for use.
Using nanosecond-level data, it makes microsecond-level predictions about how to correct the signal, “noise canceling” along all of the 26 parameters it measures, yielding perfectly synchronized electricity.
It does this with its flash energy storage system (FESS). Using the real-time analytics, the FESS can inject or extract microamps of electricity from the three-phase signal, radically boosting power quality.
For analogy, think of the difference of efficiency and usefulness of light from a flashlight and coherent light from a laser.
3DFS’ owners and investors want their technology widely adopted, not hoarded by a large corporate interest, so they have been releasing products first in targeted sectors. One with great potential is the data farm industry, which not only uses a humongous amount of electricity, but burns through tons of hardware.
3DFS installed their Vector Q power controller at the Freudenberg IT data center in Germany. Michael Heuberger of Fredenberg’s US division describes the instant result.
“I remember the moment and I get goosebumps,” Heuberger recounted to me. “We hooked it up to our system — it took maybe 30 minutes until it was all installed — and [the 3DFS engineer] said ‘I’ll turn it on now.’ Click.”
Power consumption dropped by 20 percent, server temperature dropped by 20 degrees, and PQR reached the high 90s.
Just by using available measuring and adjustment tools. Tools that can be applied to any power generation-delivery-use system. In the Vox article, Roberts points out one example: ships, big old microgrids lumbering across the world’s oceans, wasting power and burning out relays and gear all the way.
Another important application: batteries. More efficient and durable batteries are key to the widespread adoption of renewables and resilient smart grids. Batteries and battery-grid interfaces are just the sort of electrical systems with high conversion loss and high wear and tear (burned out batteries) due to unoptimized electricity.
3DFS’ monitoring and adjustment technology can be scaled up or down, from large generation and transmission to a front-end power-conditioning chip making every electronic device more efficient.
Right now, the company is fueling its attempted organic growth with big power consumers, where its tech can be easily demonstrated to be economical.
For now, the work begins by retrofitting current infrastructure. “Heavy, physical use of power, motors and compressors, are going to immediately reduce their energy consumption maybe 20, 25 percent,” Doerfler says, “in IT loads and computers, it will be 10 to 15 percent.” But he stresses that those are initial savings; as the AI system learns, it gets more efficient. He thinks a fully SDE network can eventually reduce consumption by 30 to 35 percent for most applications, more for heavy industrial processes.
With a producer-to-consumer grid fully-optimized by software-determined electricity, 3DFS’ developers believe they can cut the 62% of power wasted in conversion loss by half.
Roberts’ article on the unusual company and its potentially world-changing technology is a bit long and took me a bit of mental chewing. It’s worth the read.
This may be one key to a very changed world.