Re-thinking things

Profiling Economic Actors for Transactive Energy

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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

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Start with a Zombie Fortress

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In smart energy, it is easy to get distracted by utility incentives and demand response and other tariffed actions. Utility tariffs are set in stone months or years before an actual set of market conditions arise. Demand Response events miss the supplier’s pain-points while ignoring opportunity for the building owner. “Running a meter backward” is a silly demonstration project that works only so long as very few people do it. All of these are regulatory fantasies that violate the laws of economics and physics. For a smart energy engineer, it is better to start with a more realistic fantasy. Smart Energy starts with a Zombie Fortress.
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Solar Consultants are a Big Barrier to Smart Energy

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Smart energy names the techniques and technologies needed to manage energy flows and energy supply and demand when energy generation and energy storage are as distributed as energy consumption is today. During the early years of distributed energy, distributed energy resources were so small as to be losable in the noise of the grid. Installations were treated by utilities as if they were just another utility installation. This design approach has become the single largest barrier to distributed energy. So when are we going to get smart about distributed energy?...
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Forget Efficiency and Demand Response, Load Bank for the Grid

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All the Smart Grid attention is on Demand Response, that is, on the half dozen times a year when the grid runs out of energy or has to turn to expensive energy sources. All the building attention is on efficiency, using the least energy inside the building possible. Neither approach supports renewables, or distributed energy resources. Efficiency may reduce the ability to respond to Demand Response signals. Buildings should turn to...

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