Understanding the PG&E Feature Pack

Intended for use with PG&E Feature Pack V1.0.

What is it

The PG&E feature pack is a software package provided by Cassatt to automate power conservation activities in your data center when you participate in PG&E's Demand Response Program. Working in concert with Cassatt's Active Power Management capability, the PG&E feature pack responds to inputs from the Lawrence Berkeley Lab's Demand Response Automated Server (DRAS), which notifies clients of the PG&E demand response events to curb power usage. Specifically, DRAS notifies clients of the following PG&E events:

• Critical Peak Pricing (CPP) event – a PG&E program that notifies you in advance of when peak utility pricing is going to go into effect, allowing you to adjust power usage accordingly to save money and giving you cheaper utility rates on other (non-peak usage) days.
  
• Demand Bidding Program (DBP) event – a PG&E program that notifies you in advance of utility peak usage and allows you to voluntarily bid on the amount of energy you will curtail. In exchange, you receive a rebate and decreased utility rates.

In response to these events, the PG&E feature pack schedules power usage policies (that are already configured in Cassatt Active Response Policy Manager) to go into effect.

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How it works

The PG&E feature pack serves as an interface between the DRAS and the Cassatt Active Response Policy Manager. The DRAS serves notifications of utility demand-response events, and the Cassatt Active Response Policy Manager schedules power usage policies to be run by Cassatt Active Response. Here's the high-level architecture:

1. The PG&E feature pack includes listener code that polls the DRAS for demand response events. The polling interval is set during the PG&E installation and the default value is 1 minute. Communication with the DRAS is achieved via SSL and uses a password and the cacert.jks certification file provided by PG&E.
2. The PG&E feature pack performs the following operations via the Policy Manager:
   1. Creates and authenticates itself as a Policy Manager user.
   2. Locates a power policy that can be applied in response to the PG&E demand response event.
   3. Schedules that policy to go into effect at the appropriate time.
   4. Allows the normal power policies to resume at the completion of the PG&E demand response event.
3. Policy manager launches necessary actions in Cassatt Active Response.

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Policy manager interactions

If you are using the PG&E feature pack, there are a few user visible impacts to normal Policy Manager use you should be aware of:

• Policies scheduled by the PG&E feature pack must already be defined in Policy Manager. (See illustrations below.) The policy names are inputs to the PG&E feature pack installation program. When there is a PG&E demand response event, the PG&E feature pack then selects the appropriate policy and schedules it to run.
• The PG&E feature pack installation program creates a DRASListener user in the Policy Manager with the necessary authorization to create and delete schedules.
• After the PG&E feature pack has scheduled power policies to go into effect, Policy Manager displays these schedules in the Policy Manager > Policy Editor > Schedule tab. (See illustrations below.) Schedules created by the PG&E feature pack cannot be deleted by any user other than the DRASListener user created by the PG&E installation program.
• Policy Manager users who don't want to participate in a PG&E demand response event can disable schedules created by the PG&E feature pack. This provides a way to opt out of such an event. This is useful if you have high-priority work that must run to completion, despite the peak utility load.

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Let's take a look at how the PG&E feature pack is evident in the Policy Manager user interface. First, look at the circled sample power policies listed in the Policy Manager:

In this example, there are policies for the PG&E CPP and DBP programs. These policies need to be defined in Policy Manager prior to installing the PG&E feature pack. They are required inputs during the PG&E feature pack installation.

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Next, let's look at how the PG&E feature pack schedules are visible in Policy Manager. For comparison, here is sample Policy Manager view of scheduled policies without any PG&E feature pack schedules in it:

There are two policies applied for daytime and nighttime use. Now, if the PG&E feature pack is running, it automatically schedules power policies based on incoming demand response events from the DRAS server. The Policy Manager display will look something like this:

Notice in 1 that the PG&E feature pack schedules override policies, meaning that these will override any other scheduled policy activities. In this example, the PG&E scheduled policies override the Daytime scheduled policies. Also, notice in 2 that the PG&E feature pack names the schedules it has created based on the names of the policies being scheduled.

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Security

Security is established by virtue of encrypted passwords, authenticated users, utility-supplied certificates, and SSL-based communication. Specifically, the PG&E feature pack installation prompts you for the following to support security:

• DRAS Server password – provided by PG&E as part of participation in their demand response program.
• DRAS truststore password and file – provided by PG&E as part of participation in their demand response program. The truststore password is used in conjunction with the cacert.jks file (also provided by PG&E) to set up SSL communication to the DRAS.
• Policy Manager admin password – set during the Cassatt Active Response installation.
• DRAS Listener user password – free-form password set during the PG&E feature pack installation. (The installation program also creates the DRASListener user in the Cassatt Active Response Controller.)

The installation program then encrypts these and stores them in a the file, /cassatt_db/etc/FeaturePack/DRASListener/DRASListener.credentials.

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Error logging

The PG&E feature pack uses log4j to handle logging. The resulting log file is stored in /var/log/cassatt/FeaturePack/DRASListener/DRASListener.log. When a fatal error occurs, the PG&E feature pack sends email to the list of email addresses collected during the installation. The email message indicates that there has been a fatal error and points to the log file.

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For more information

For information on setting up the PG&E feature pack, see Installing the PG&E Feature Pack. For information on setting up power policies, click the Documentation tab on the Policy Manager user interface.

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