Robert Cruickshank claims his Optimum Load Shaping system can help cable operators cut power costs and put power utilities into position to modernize the grid and speed a transition to renewable energy.

Jeff Baumgartner, Senior Editor

November 8, 2021

17 Min Read
Cable vet aims to whip the power grid into shape

Robert Cruickshank believes the power grid is in trouble. But he also believes that, unbeknownst to them, cable operators are in prime position to lend a helping hand by improving their power consumption efficiency. In turn, that will help power utilities become more efficient while also accelerating their transition to various renewable energy sources.

Win-win, right? Well, the details on how that all might be accomplished are a bit more complicated.

Cruickshank, a cable industry veteran and DOCSIS pioneer who hails from companies and organizations such as Cablevision Systems, Arris and CableLabs, is attempting to address the power problem with standardized Optimum Load Shaping (OLS) signals that are designed to bring a new level of smarts and efficiency to power usage.

The general idea is to get a fix on the "shape" of the power grid based on supply and demand and, when appropriate, to tap into the grid during off-peak hours when general energy usage is low and, therefore, less expensive to produce and consume than it is during peak times. That approach, he says, could apply to electric vehicles that tend to be charged overnight or improve the efficiency of data center cooling.

Figure 1: Robert Cruickshank likens OLS to a symphony conductor that keeps supply and demand of the power grid in harmony and balance. (Image source: Robert Cruickshank Associates) Robert Cruickshank likens OLS to a symphony conductor that keeps supply and demand of the power grid in harmony and balance.
(Image source: Robert Cruickshank Associates)

Cruickshank invented OLS and played a key role in the development of a relatively new national standard. The standard is a result of Cruickshank's PhD work at the University of Colorado and the National Renewable Energy Lab. He's now using OLS to underpin a new business through his startup, Robert Cruickshank Associates (RCA), and "GRIDIoT," its brand for standards-compliant OLS signals.

It's early days, but RCA claims its modeling and work out in the real world have shown that OLS signals can reduce operational costs up to 20% for certain use cases, with the potential for savings to go even higher as technology improves. In one example, he found that charging a vehicle following the Optimum Load Shape could save about 45 cents per day ($1.95 cost per day rather than $2.40 per day) – numbers that could certainly add up once scale is applied.

Light Reading recently caught up with Cruickshank to unpack what OLS is and how it can be applied by cable operators. An edited transcript follows.

Light Reading: Your latest contribution to the industry is nationwide availability of standards-based Optimum Load Shaping signals and APIs. There's a lot to unpack there. Before we drill down on that, let's start at the high level – what's the issue you're addressing, and how does this work?

Robert Cruickshank: In my mind, there's no doubt that the power grid is in trouble, at a great cost to ourselves in the cable industry, but also to society at large. Another important point [is] that all stakeholders in the electricity value chain can benefit from our new standard for Optimum Load Shaping. Certainly we, as the buyers of electricity, would benefit. But it goes beyond that.

To your question on the how does it work, I think the easiest metaphor is like a symphony. If you think about a symphony without a conductor, everyone is sort of doing their own thing, like a bunch of kids in junior high when they go to band class for the first time. They're blowing their horn and doing whatever they're doing. In some ways, that's a lot of what we [as consumers] do. We walk in a house, we flip on a light switch, we plug in our electric vehicle, we turn on the dishwasher, we take a shower – completely autonomously.

With OLS, we're introducing the conductor and the conductor's baton. That's really the orchestration effort across supply, storage and demand. When I say demand, I mean load, like switching on a light switch, basically. Usually, we think of loads as being flexible or not flexible.

Light Reading: Why pursue this now?

Cruickshank: In some ways, we've seen this movie before. When you think about digital TV in the early '90s, that revolutionized digital TV. In 1994, we [the cable industry] got into two-way … and, bang, we got into Internet. A year or so after that, DOCSIS 1.1 came out and we went from Internet into phone. Those are getting the bases loaded. This is sort of the grand slam – we can do the same thing in the grid.

Light Reading: You described it as the conductor in a way of a symphony. Expand a bit more on what that means and how that fits in, technically, with OLS?

Cruickshank: We're basically moving our baton up and down. Take a little more load now, take a little less load now. That's what that movement is about. Basically, every provider of electricity has a sense of what they're going to be providing in the future. They build for the future; they look at the weather forecasts for tomorrow. It's going to be a hot day in Denver, so we're going to need to run all of our power plants. So, they'll forecast by hour. It helps them drive cost out of their business when they do better forecasting.

Figure 2: Cruickshank says OLS signals can help operators determine when it makes the most sense to consume power based on a shape that illustrates when demand is highest and when pricing is lowest. Charging electric vehicles and cooling data centers are among the initial, top use cases, he says. (Image source: Cruickshank and Associates) Cruickshank says OLS signals can help operators determine when it makes the most sense to consume power based on a shape that illustrates when demand is highest and when pricing is lowest. Charging electric vehicles and cooling data centers are among the initial, top use cases, he says.
(Image source: Cruickshank and Associates)

They've got a shape, and it's the same kind of shape that we think of when we say, what's the Internet load. When is peak, for example? Whether it's the water department or the Internet or phone or power, it's got this shape to it.

Because we are all willy-nilly without the conductor, the shape is what the shape is, and nobody really says much about whether we should change the shape. They just say people are going to do what they're going to do and this is what we think it's going to look like.

So, supply is anticipating and being ready for demand. Supply is following demand, chasing it around. That's where we are today.

Light Reading: How can operators put this into action to cut down power costs?

Cruickshank: The operator, in this case, can go to our API and grab this load-shaping signal. It's not the willy-nilly version of the demand; it's the cost-optimized version of demand.

Put your hat on as Xcel Energy serving the Denver area. If you know what the shape is going to be for tomorrow and you could say if the shape was completely malleable and I can make it any shape I wanted to, what would be the cheapest shape? Instead of the willy-nilly shape that's going to happen if I don't do anything, what would be the shape I could specify? What would be the absolute cheapest way to the end of the day? I could use the most renewables. I could run my plants most efficiently because they're not ramping up and down and they're not running at partial output.

In any section of the grid, whether it's a micro-grid or a big grid like Denver, you can figure out what's the optimal shape over those areas. What you get from that API is that optimal shape.

A cable company, by going to the API and getting the optimal shape, can now apply that shape to its uses of electricity – things like cooling data centers or charging electrical vehicles, which are probably the two biggies.

Think about electric vehicles. Someone comes home... and they plug in their vehicle and it charges from 6 p.m. to 7:30 p.m., and they go to sleep. Nobody even thinks about it. But that car's probably going to be plugged in for eight hours, ten hours. Likewise, our service vehicles, when they come in from the field, are going to be plugged in for long periods of time, too.

During the time that those vehicles are plugged in, if they followed this shape for charging versus doing it all at once, they're going to end up saving on their electric bill.

Light Reading: When you say they grab access to those signals, where are you getting that data from? Where is it originating?

Cruickshank: We're working with what's called the Independent System Operators, the ISOs. The names you might know are like ISO New England, New York ISO, California ISO, Midcontinent ISO, PJM, which stands for Pennsylvania Jersey Maryland.

Each of these ISOs has a website where they publish the day-ahead pricing by hour. So, for example, at midnight it's going to be six cents, and at 1 a.m. it will be seven cents, 2 a.m. it will be three cents.

If the load drops, they don't have to run expensive generators. They can run the cheaper generators and run more efficiently. Likewise, when the renewables pick up, like wind in the middle of the night or the sun in the middle of the day, that's depressing the amount of energy that the generators actually have to make because more is coming from renewables.

Light Reading: So, you generate info from that data and you adapt it for the cable operators so they can make some actionable decisions on their power consumption?

Cruickshank: We've got 21,000 locations where we've got pricing for. You can search for any one of these and get that same graph. You can go to a specific node in California. Let's say I'm a vehicle charger at your house. All I have to do is hit this URL and I come back with the same thing. Once you've navigated to a particular signal that you want, it gives you that URL automatically and now that's your API into the world to go grab anytime you want.

Light Reading: This data you're showing from the ISOs – is it just out there or are you paying for it and adapting into your API?

Cruickshank: Some of it is out there and there's different rules around some of it. In PJM, for example, you can't publish the price. In that case, we'll just publish the load shape. But that's really the only restriction we've run into. All of the others you can access it. In some cases, we've already got forecasts for tomorrow. That's important because the device can really plan its future when it can see that far ahead in terms of when it should use electricity.

Light Reading: You mentioned some examples of how this could be applied, such as electric vehicle charging. Can you expand on what you see as the first major use cases for a cable operator?

Cruickshank: I think it's electric vehicles. I think a second one is to facilitate climate control – data centers come to mind, and the air conditioning of data centers. But there's also hubs that need to be air-conditioned and climate-controlled. A lot of times, that equipment could come on five minutes later or five minutes earlier ... to save some money, and it would not affect the climate in those facilities.

Next page: Why standards matter

Light Reading: You announced that GRIDIoT OLS signals are compliant with the ANSI SCTE 267 2021 US National Standard. What's most important about that?

Cruickshank: If you think about where the utilities are today ... there's 50 different regulatory commissions, like the PUC [public utilities commission] in Colorado. There's a little more than 3,800 utilities in the United States, and there's 55,000 electric rates.

So, if you're a cable operator, like a large one, you might deal with hundreds or even thousands of utilities. If you want to save money on charging vehicles or data centers, you'd have to think about what utility I'm being served by in this location and how am I going to interface to wherever they have their pricing signals. You'd have to do that hundreds or thousands of times. It keeps it at the hobby level.

Light Reading: That's not exactly scalable, is it?

Cruickshank: Exactly. That's the reason. We can scale quickly.

Light Reading: Would you characterize GRIDIoT as a product or a service? Is it something that you, as RCA, are going to sell into the cable operators directly or by working with suppliers or channel partners that have sales reach into the industry?

Cruickshank: It's all of the above. We really want to help it get in place as quickly as possible. GRIDIoT is our brand of Optimum Load Shaping. We are happy to license the technology we use in creating optimum load shapes and using optimum load shapes.

It's like a client-server. Think of it as the supply side and the demand side. Supply side-wise we've made this API, so the war is half won. Nobody has to go out and create these signals. We've created them. They are free for educational and research and non-commercial use. We want to get widespread use of them. But when someone wants to use them commercially, we're going to want to get paid for that.

Light Reading: If you're going to license it, would the operator license it or would that be handled by a supplier somewhere in their power infrastructure?

Cruickshank: It could be either. If this is supply side, we've got that part done and the API is scalable, so a lot of people can hit it. When you think about the demand side, this signal then has to make its way to your electric vehicle charger. It has to make its way to your thermostat or your hot water heater. And what does cable do? Cable delivers signals. If you put on the old cable hat, we deliver time, temperature and OLS.

We spent a lot of time developing call center technology, managed router technology. We can see your device. And even if you can't log into your router, we can log in and fix it for you. All of that expertise we developed over the last couple of decades to drive down problems and to drive up the customer experience of Wi-Fi, we just apply that directly to getting these OLS signals to these other energy users in your home.

It allows us to go beyond our internal game, where we're saving money for ourselves, into an external game, where we're actually creating greater value for the utility.

Everyone in the value chain benefits. When we use electricity off-peak, it's good for the utility. That's why it's cheaper for us. It's cheaper for them to generate it, they can use more renewables, etc. And likewise, if you expand the ecosystem to include commercial, residential and even industrial users, now all of a sudden the more people that shape their load, the better it is for the utility in terms of generation, transmission, distribution.

Light Reading: What's the status of your work with the industry with respect to engagement with operators or trials or actual deployments?

Cruickshank:We've already gotten interest from a couple of operators and the partners that they work with. It's budget season, so we're being written into the budgets for next year. And we also have interest from a couple of utilities. Part of the work with the National Renewable Energy Laboratory involves two DoE (Department of Energy)-sponsored projects that fund work at the National Renewable Energy Lab and also at CableLabs. I wrote both of those proposals and we just finished year two on one, and we're into year two with another.

Light Reading: What's the biggest challenge for you early on? Is it about getting the word out or getting operators to put more weight into their power consumption strategies?

Cruickshank: I think it's a little bit of both. On one hand, we're breaking into a new industry. People say, "Why do we care about power. Why do we care about this?"

So, you have to have an educational conversation around that your cost of energy is going up, it's doubled in the last 20 years. Your outages have gone up by a factor of eight in that last 20 years. You've got [states] like California asking you for 72 hours of stand-by power. You need to contain your costs. You have to have that sorta CFO-level, CTO conversation. When you have that, people start to get it. That's pretty straightforward on the industry side.

When you go to the utility space, we're new guys. it's like back in the day when we said we'd do Internet ... or we were going to do phone. They were like, "What?" That's just hill climbing and blocking and tackling, I think.

Light Reading: With some projects the payoff can be super long term and people have to get their heads around that before they make a commitment. It seems like what you're talking about here, results can be had pretty quickly.

Cruickshank: Absolutely, they really can. The kind of electric rate you and I are on is mostly likely a flat rate... per kilowatt hour. But the bigger users, they go to the utilities and say they want a time-of-use rate or want to take advantage of when electricity's cheap.

But that labyrinth of 55,000 rates made it too hard to do it. Now, we can do it at scale. We can start to design a climate control system that can be used in any of our facilities and then go tell the local guys at the system level to tell your utility we want to be on a dynamic electricity rate. We've already got the logic working on the backend. They don't have to build anything new.

If you think about where the utilities are now, they don't know if you and your neighbor all get electric vehicles and come home with them. And they don't know if you plug them all in at the same time. They don't have that visibility down at that level. You'll hear these stories where transformers get hot, they catch fire. They fail. Conductors get hot, they melt.

The long and short of it is utilities are where we were 30 years ago. They don't have the visibility. They are going from one-way to two-way. They've got content creation at the edge. Their question is not how many modems can I put on the network. Their question is: how many electric vehicle chargers can I put in this location? And they have no way of knowing until they catch fire or burn out or fail.

Light Reading: That's not exactly an optimal approach.

Cruickshank: So you put your traffic engineering hat on. That's exactly the conversation. Do we go out there and put new, bigger conductors, bigger transformers? Or can we shape this load so the peak-to-valley ratio kind of evens out so the high peaks are not blowing up our equipment when we could've moved some of that load into valleys?

We're extending the life of our infrastructure with software as opposed to spending money [on more hardware].

— Jeff Baumgartner, Senior Editor, Light Reading

About the Author(s)

Jeff Baumgartner

Senior Editor, Light Reading

Jeff Baumgartner is a Senior Editor for Light Reading and is responsible for the day-to-day news coverage and analysis of the cable and video sectors. Follow him on X and LinkedIn.

Baumgartner also served as Site Editor for Light Reading Cable from 2007-2013. In between his two stints at Light Reading, he led tech coverage for Multichannel News and was a regular contributor to Broadcasting + Cable. Baumgartner was named to the 2018 class of the Cable TV Pioneers.

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