After more than a century of stagnation, electricity must change if it wants to keep up with the rapid expansion of digitally connected devices, systems, and applications.
By Steve Eaves
As technology faces rapid change, one thing has managed to remain the same: the power-distribution methods we rely on to fuel this progress. But we’ve reached a tipping point: After more than a century of stagnation, electricity can no longer keep up.
To understand where electricity is headed—and why these changes are so significant—we have to go back in time. (It’s an interesting story, I promise.)
Power: Unchanged for a Century
Many people don’t realize that electricity has worked the same way since the late 1800s, when the proverbial battle was fought to determine whether alternating current (AC) or direct current (DC) would be the standard for power distribution.
In 1893, Nikola Tesla and Thomas Edison went head-to-head to determine who would win the contract to light up the World’s Fair in Chicago.
Although Edison’s proposed DC solution was much safer and relied on a lower voltage, thick copper wires were required to reach any distance. This made DC very expensive.
Tesla’s technology revolved around AC generators. Transformers were the only practical way to convert between low and high voltages. Because DC power doesn’t work on a transformer, Edison was out of luck. Tesla’s boss, George Westinghouse, combined transformers with Tesla’s AC generators and won the bid for the World’s Fair. More than 630 acres were illuminated by 160,000 AC lightbulbs, putting an end to the DC vs. AC dispute.
Fast forward 130 years: Nothing has changed. We’re still using AC power, and it still works the same way it did in 1893.
Adapting to the Times: Electricity Now Has No Choice But to Change
While electricity has remained stagnant, information technology has done the opposite as it surges ahead with innovation.
Here are just a few examples:
- 1945: The first digital computer was built for the military.
- 1969: The first two computers were linked on the Advanced Research Projects Agency Network (ARPANET) between UCLA and the Stanford Research Institute, building a foundation for the internet.
- 1973: Xerox’s Bob Metcalfe invented Ethernet technology.
- 2003: Ethernet takes over computer networking. The first Power over Ethernet (PoE) standard was released, which provided up to 15W per cable in 1 Gb/s networks. It was integrated into applications, such as VoIP phones.
- 2020: The Sinclair Hotel in Fort Worth, TX, marks the first hotel to use PoE to power and control everything—from LED lighting systems to mini fridges. The technology brings up to 100W per cable in 10 Gb/s networks (the present PoE standard).
Despite the great progress that PoE has enabled over the past few decades, it has specific power and distance limitations. These limitations prevent it from keeping up with the rapid expansion of today’s digitally connected devices, systems, and applications.
Consider some of the latest advances:
- Electric vehicle (EV) chargers currently consume 500 kW but will likely reach 1 MW by 2030.
- AI data centers are approaching power-consumption levels that are equal to half of a nuclear plant.
- Heat pumps offer an energy-efficient way to heat and cool buildings and demand more electricity than data centers and EVs combined.
- Building decarbonization and electrician efforts involve steps like replacing gas stoves with electric stoves across entire multifamily facilities to reduce emissions.
Energy demand is on a sharp incline. By 2050, according to McKinsey, the world will use twice as much energy as it uses today. But no one knows where to find the additional power that will be needed—or the qualified people to install it. Plus, lead times for electrical equipment have reached two years and are becoming longer.
In other words: After more than a century of stagnation, electricity must change if it wants to keep up.
The Constant Compromise Between Safety and Power
I’ve always been interested in the symmetry between energy and data.
While energy represents the potential to do work, data tells us how to do that work effectively. Until now, however, the equipment and people involved in these two industries have operated in separate spaces. Electrical energy may provide the potential to do work, but the industry divorced it from the data that tells us how to do it best. Historically, the only time data and power came together in the same cable was to power analog phones from central offices.
There are many reasons for this separation, but it mostly comes down to this: Electricity is infamously “dumb,” meaning it can’t tell whether it’s powering a factory or burning down a town. And this creates safety risks.
Because it isn’t safe, AC power requires expensive and complex barriers between it and the people and buildings nearby. These barriers come in the form of equipment, intense training, complicated procedures, and safety standards like the National Electrical Code (NEC). To maintain safety, electricians who understand these complex barriers work on high-energy circuits in one space, while data people work on low-voltage or limited-energy circuits in another space.
Traditionally, when there was a need for more power, the solution was to add more power plants, transformers, wires, and outlets. Nothing was digitally connected.
Today, however, this approach isn’t possible. Digitally connected devices grow more complex and require much more power than the legacy AC format can keep up with. Adding new transmission lines today is rare due to challenges associated with regulations, cost, and land. On top of that, it’s hard to squeeze more wire into existing buildings.
Smart buildings need smart power, as a deeper understanding of power utilization becomes more important. Building loads need to be managed intelligently to avoid overloading supply. Increasingly, a building’s energy use will be controlled autonomously using data inputs from appliances and sensors. And EVs will soon be able to give energy back to the grid during peak periods.
This is where the critical connection between energy and data becomes clear: Energy is the potential to do the work, and data tells you how to do it best.
So how can the industry meet the demand for more power when expanding the existing infrastructure isn’t practical or possible? It’s time to break the historical compromise between safety and power. But, as it turns out, one doesn’t have to be sacrificed for the other. When electricity is as intelligent as the connected devices it serves, it’s possible to achieve safety and high levels of power at the same time.
Fault Managed Power—a new class of electricity—makes it possible.
Understanding the Uniqueness of Fault Managed Power
The first patent for Fault Managed Power was issued to VoltServer in 2014. Its original purpose was to allow EVs to charge along exposed, electrified roadways at power levels of between 300V and 400V. To charge safely, the EV charging device needs to be able to differentiate between a person being shocked as they touch the road (which could generate as little as 30 mA) and the EV itself, which draws about 3,000 times that current. It’s like being able to detect the squeak of a mouse during a rock concert. But Digital Electricity™ can do it.
A Powerful Differentiation Technique
Digital Electricity’s ability to differentiate is not unlike what early analog computers (like hourglasses) needed to do: tell the difference between the data they measured and the noisy world outside.
Digital computing reduced this problem to tiny bits, considering each bit in isolation on a yes/no basis (1 or 0). The bit state is a voltage suspended in a tiny capacitor in the computer memory (like an electrical air tank holding pressure). Once loaded with a 1 or 0, the tank valve is turned off, isolating it from the noisy world outside.
- 0 = anywhere between empty and almost empty
- 1 = anywhere between almost full and full
Known as “quantization,” the technique is so powerful that it allowed the Apollo 11 guidance computer to take people to the moon and back for the first time.
Constant Monitoring and Control
Digital Electricity works similarly. Its “bit” is represented as the voltage stored in a tiny capacitance on the wires between the transmitter and receiver. The ends of the wires act as ports in the air tank. Using power semiconductors, the ports are closed for 500 millionths of a second. During this time, tank pressure is evaluated. The tank holds pressure unless a person or building material touches the wire, which acts like poking a hole in the tank: It no longer holds pressure.
If the test fails (the tank loses pressure), then the circuit is disconnected using power semiconductors. The person or building that encounters the wire is exposed to a very small amount of energy (an amount that isn’t harmful and doesn’t cause damage). Once the fault is removed, the circuit automatically heals and returns power, maintaining safety at all times.
The pressure in the tank is modulated to send binary, lower-bandwidth data back and forth between the transmitter and receiver for monitoring and control.
An Inherently Smart Power System
Like PoE, Fault Managed Power accommodates high-speed Ethernet on the same copper cable and is qualified to be in the same cable jacket as fiber for distances of up to 2 km.
After formalization in UL and the NEC, other companies have entered the Fault Managed Power (FMP) market. The National Electrical Code refers to Fault Managed Power as Class 4 power.
As an inherently smart power system, FMP a connected and monitored solution. The data sets that require special hardware and software overlays with traditional power systems already exist within the Digital Electricity platform so the operators can use it to improve building efficiency, provision new services, commission services, and decommission services that are no longer needed.
The Quickening Pace of Fault Managed Power
Fault Managed Power is applicable across many markets and applications.
There are already 1,000 large buildings and venues across the United States relying on Digital Electricity, often exceeding 100 miles of power distribution.
The following areas are currently seeing accelerated expansion and interest in Digital Electricity:
- Data centers
- Enterprise security
- Indoor agriculture
- Manufacturing facilities
- Smart buildings (hotels, offices, condos, schools, stadiums, medical buildings, and warehouses)
- Transportation
- Wireless densification
Safe Power Changes Everything
Besides food, water, and shelter, access to power is the single most important resource for humans. It means the difference between simple survival and a modern existence. Access to power has the potential to lift entire countries and their people out of poverty, create jobs, and drive economic development. It connects people to business, education, healthcare, transportation, and entertainment—and to one another.
And in this quest for modern energy access, safe power changes everything:
- Where power can be deployed
- How power can be installed
- The materials required to install power systems
- Who can install power systems
- Concerns about installing power systems
- The impact of power on users
A Path to Replace AC
VoltServer believes that Fault Managed Power not only breaks the long-established compromise between power and safety but also completes the symmetry between energy and data. Because of that, it’s on a path to replace AC in new building designs within the next two decades. After that, expansion could continue to grid distribution.
When you can get the right technology into the hands of the doers and problem-solvers, they will continue to find ways to use it. And that notion holds true with Digital Electricity. Every day, our customers, engineers, and installers inspire VoltServer with the many ways they find to test and use Fault Managed Power. And this is only the beginning.
Learn more about Fault Managed Power at www.voltserver.com.
Steve Eaves is the founder and CEO at VoltServer.
