In a famous scene written by Paddy Chayefsky for the movie Network, Howard Beale is summoned by Arthur Jenson who explains to the crazed newsman that when he clings to his outmoded notions of how the world works, he is messing with the primal forces of nature. In transactive energy, the transactions are the only primal force, and notions of specific controls, and detailed manipulations of devices are out of date. Systems communicate only by the transactions, by prices to devices. To be consistence, future guidance to autonomous energy systems must be based on financial communications about energy transfers and energy resilience.
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Back to basics: Some Definitions
Today I am restating some definitions of terms, reflecting how my own understanding has changed over time: Transactive Energy, Transactive Resource Management, Microgrids, Micromarkets, the Common Transactive Services, and Cyber-Physical Systems.
Read MoreSpontaneous Order on a Continental Scale
A recent conversation about European power markets and some “glitches” in early June shown a light on profound issues in cybersecurity, in system architectures for big infrastructure, and to an extent the scalability problems with many of the hottest applications for the Internet of Things (IOT).
The specific observations was a plea for direct central control, even as it used an example that showed the shortcoming of infrastructure architecture based on assumptions of central control. It then learned the wrong lesson, that spontaneous order is too “risky” at large scale.
Read MoreLaminar Control and Transactive Energy
Laminar control is drawing a lot of attention from utilities today, and it may just clear the way be the basis for distributed transactive energy (TE). The problem of smart grids boils down to adapting to intermittent power sources while reducing the operating margin. In power distribution, the operating margin is the amount of “extra” power available at any time. It is the operating margin that protects power delivery from unanticipated power consumption....
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