“We Can Start Really Getting to Grips With Our Original Mission of Balancing the Supply and Demand of the Energy Grid”: CTO, Richard Tolley, Gives the Lowdown on GridDuck’s Advanced Rules

Over the last 6 years, Richard Tolley and his tech team have been developing GridDuck’s all-in-one energy saving solution for commercial buildings. In 2021, the CTO completed work on a new chapter in GridDuck’s software potential: Advanced Rules. 

In short, Advanced Rules are the means by which business owners can control their energy usage in unprecedented detail. But how do Advanced Rules work, what purpose do they serve and why are they a smart investment for your business? Read the full interview with Richard to find out:

Richard Tolley, GridDuck’s CTO

Leah Barron Stevens: Hi Richard. Thanks for sitting down with me today. Can I start by asking you to explain what the Advanced Rules are?

Richard Tolley: Advanced rules are our way of enabling intelligent automation for every device connected to our system. The rules let you set up hierarchical conditions based on telemetry (the automatic recording and transmission of data) received from sensors, batteries, meters or external APIs. We can then make the connected devices turn on and off, automate batteries to charge or discharge and trigger email alerts. 

LBS: Is this an original idea? have you seen other similar systems?

RT: There are a lot of general If-This-Then-That systems but this is the first system I’m aware of which can connect directly in real-time to a variety of energy consumption assets with second-by-second telemetry in electrical consumption and generation.

LBS: How long have you spent developing Advanced Rules? 

RT: Directly, a couple of months, however the simpler rule system they’re built on was trialled for several months before expanding them into a general “anything-goes” case. The system which connects all these devices and sensors has been in development for a few years.

LBS: Please talk about the process of developing Advanced Rules and give some examples of their practical uses:

RT: We’ve spent the last few years meeting a lot of clients who are using our system for more basic monitoring and control. Some of those customers have really interesting pain points which can only be addressed by some advanced automation. 

For instance we’ve been working closely with a farmer who has a large amount of solar generation onsite, and a lot of electricity consumption keeping his coldstores running. By making the coldstores run colder when the solar is generating, and a little warmer when less solar is available, we can save him a lot of money by importing less electricity from the grid and using more of his own energy. 

Another interesting case is that of customers who are installing lots of electric vehicle chargers. There often isn’t enough capacity in their connection to the grid to charge them all at once, so running the chargers intelligently to keep the total grid draw below a cap whilst using all of the onsite generated solar is a good case. With the time engine you can also decide which vehicle chargers need to have completed their charge cycles by various times.

On a larger scale, we’ve also always been aware of local electrical balancing problems and national grid-level balancing. The rules will enable DNO’s (distribution network operator’s) and National Grid or Aggregators to implement demand-side response schemes to balance renewable energy across regions, minimising infrastructure upgrades required for the green revolution.

We’ve ended up realising there’s often a case for combinations of time switches, local balancing between generation and consuming appliances or thermostatic controls.

Controlling Fridge Temperature Using Advanced Rules

LBS: Did you achieve what you set out to achieve and did you uncover new possibilities after you began writing the rules?

RT: The early version of the rules was quite simple, just with basic thermostats, time switches and alerts, and then we spent a lot of time working out how to build the general case which hopefully caters to every customer use case.

LBS: Why do you think these Advanced Rules are valuable?

RT: Effectively the only way we’re going to be able to go carbon neutral in the energy sector is being very efficient at using energy when we have more of it and saving it when we don’t. One solution is to build expensive and polluting batteries and put them everywhere, but the complement to that is to optimise the surrounding energy assets we already have. Every kWh of energy that we can optimise removes the need for more batteries, saving the associated costs in both capital and pollution.

LBS: What challenges have you faced now that the rules are live?

RT: The biggest challenge at the moment is communicating to potential clients what they can do with them and the potential benefits. We’re working on narrowly defining a few use cases that commonly crop up and creating templates which automatically define the rules around that use case. We’re also going to create a calculator to help our clients discover what implementing different rule systems might save in carbon and money.

LBS: What do Advanced Rules mean for the future of GridDuck?

RT: As well as enabling even more general energy saving measures, Advanced Rules means we can start really getting to grips with our original mission: helping to balance the supply and demand of the energy grid. Flatting the California Duck Curve was what we set out to do initially and we are now several steps closer to doing that.

Whether you run a hospitality, manufacturing, retail, agricultural, public sector or property business, GridDuck wants to help you become more sustainable. To learn more about how GridDuck can cut costs and carbon emissions in your buildings, arrange a quick, no-obligation chat with Miles today.