This post is part of the continuing Paths to Transactive Energy series. You can find them all listed by clicking on the matching metatag at the bottom of each post. These posts were written because the GridWise Architectural Council's Transactive Energy Conference begins tomorrow.
p>The communications defined in the common transactive services (CTS) can be used by every actor in transactive energy.The needs of particular environments may require an actor to use different communications profiles. Security needs will be different for different environments. Security standards will change over time. Actors that participate only in small non-critical negotiations where both parties share a common owner may opt for lighter-weight standards to record transactions. These communications requirements will be expressed as profiles. These communications profiles will change over time without changing the fundamental information exchange between each actor.
There is profiling along a different dimension, profiling systems as economic actors, which can assist the system developer, the system integrator, and the system owner. These profiles describe the type of ends the actor has for participating in the market. They help system owner to understand how a new actor will affect the resource market.
Basic business interactions start with knowing who is a supplier, and who is a buyer. A similar distinction might distinguish the wholesaler from the retailer. A buyer approaches the farmer’s market and the supermarket chain differently, even when the goal is fresh produce either way. One is intermittently available in certain locations, one is available on a wide schedule and in many locations. It is useful to the seller to know which he is when designing his business. It is useful for the buyer to know whether transactions will be in cash or by card, and how to find the market location. Although the economic interaction is the same, these economic actor profiles help each market participants to meet his needs.
The purpose of the agents in the home (or in the office) is to enable meta-drivers to reduce complexity. I run windows. And when I plug in a device, and watch closely, I can see a human interface device arriving, being replaced by a pointing device, being replaced by the mouse I am using. My computer quickly drills down past the general to the specific, with specific devices offering specific functions. In the same way, a transactive energy capable device registers with the brain. In my model, it then describes what kind of abstract device it is. In this analogy, it goes as far as the “pointing device” but need not go all the way to device and control specificity.