Open Power Quality

The Open Power Quality project explores open source hardware, software, and data for low cost, crowd-sourced power quality monitoring, storage, and analysis.

In Hawaii, the high cost of energy combined with federal and state subsidies for photovoltaic installation has led to increasing penetration of distributed, intermittent generation in the grid. However, the impact of this change on power quality is not well understood.

Our major project goals include:

• Low-cost, residential-level power quality monitoring. Our target price for the hardware is under $40. Current commercial solutions are $200 and up. Our hardware specifications will be made available under open-source licensing to promote innovation and even lower costs.

• Point-of-use power quality data. Traditionally, utilities were responsible for all power generation, and so they were also responsible for power quality monitoring. Such monitoring traditionally occurs at the substation, with the assumption that this reflects the quality of power experienced by the hundreds or thousands of end-users serviced by the substation. As end-users become both consumers and producers of power, the “substation assumption” is no longer valid, and it becomes important to know power quality as experienced by the end-user.

• Crowd-sourced grid-level acquisition of power quality data. A key feature of our approach is to upload power quality data from end-users to a cloud-based service. Such crowd-sourcing can reveal trends and explanations for power quality not available to individuals.

• Crowd-sourced analysis of power quality data. The creation of open data and its availability through an API to our cloud-based service creates an open-ended opportunity for analyses and combination with other data sources (such as cloud-cover and weather data).

• Protection of end-user privacy. Our approach creates a technical and social challenge: how to allow end-users to share their power quality data with others (to reap the benefits of crowd-sourcing) while not forcing them to reveal more than they wish about themselves and their location? Our software service will provide various privacy protection capabilities to enable end-users to share data in a way with which they feel comfortable.

• We believe our combination of open hardware, software, and data provides a compelling and complementary alternative to traditional, utility-based data collection, analysis, and management. It creates a path to active engagement by end-users in the development of a reliable, high quality grid.