Be Resilient

The current power grid was never designed. The grid grew organically, assuming that power generation was centralized, reliable, and constant, where power flows one-way, from the center to the edges. The introduction of intermittent renewable energy sources (solar, wind), the massive introduction of edge solar power production, and the coming mass deployment of electric vehicles, all drastically destabilizes the grid. Furthermore, there are no affordable grid-scale storage options to mediate these problems. Last but not least, the grid was never hardened for cyber-security and is already compromised. Consequently, the future power supply will be curtailed, unreliable, and of poor quality.

The solution many converge to is microgrids, where small sections of the grid establish independent operations and reliable power supply, even when the broader grid is stressed or unavailable. The problem with microgrids in isolation is that they drive the cost of resilience to unacceptable level, because each microgrid must carry the full burden of power production and storage.

Our approach is to connect these individual microgrids in to a network of trading partners, where each participant can buy and sell power using transactive energy – markets in time and power. Transactive energy drastically reduces the cost of resilience while substantially increases the overall reliability, security, and privacy. Our framework, the Energynet, uses transactive energy to drive the behavior inside each microgrid and across microgrids. Buildings can trade with each other inside a microgrid and microgrids can trade with each other or with the utility. We use real-time price signals to manage supply and demand as opposed to central control. We allow real-time price signals to affect immediate behavior. At the same time, we use future trading for long term planning purposes. All of the above allows the Energynet to compensate for the intermittent nature of alternative energy sources. National Grids can integrate clean energy sources and storage from the bottom up, which enables deploying intermittent clean energy at scale.

The result is a fractal of trading power nodes, from the individual building, to the neighborhood, to the city, while each level maintains its own power autonomy and sovereignty. Each level is responsible for its own power use and power trading policies. Each level can decide to participate in the local transactive energy market. Each level of the fractal can work independently or in collaboration with other levels. The Energynet achieves energy resilience through mutually supportive islands of stability, even when the wider grid experiences stress or disruption. In the aggregate these islands of stability in turn help to stabilize the wider grid.