AIT/IEEE PES Austria Chapter: Steve Widergren (PNNL) - Transactive Energy for Distributed Resource Integration

AIT Lecture Series in junction with IEEE PES Austria Chapter 

Transactive Energy for Distributed Resource Integration 

Steve Widergren, Principal Engineer at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory  

AIT Austrian Institute of Technology
October 12, 2009, 09:30-10:30
W301, 3rd Floor 
Giefinggasse 2, 1210 Vienna 

Abstract: This presentation will cover a definition of Transactive Energy (TE), and characteristics of a TE design, the type of problems that TES are designed to address, the trends in automation and multi-agent systems.  It will also include a review of US and EU field demonstrations showing that TE techniques are real. 

About Transactive Energy: The term "transactive energy" is used here to refer to techniques for managing the generation, consumption or flow of electric power within an electric power system through the use of economic or market based constructs while considering grid reliability constraints. The term "transactive" comes from considering that decisions are made based on a value. These decisions may be analogous to or literally economic transactions. An example of an application of a transactive energy technique is the double auction market used to control responsive demand side assets in the GridWise Olympic Peninsula Project1. Another would be the TeMix work of Ed Cazalet2. Transactive energy techniques may be localized to managing a specific part of the power system, for example, residential demand response. They may also be proposed for managing activity within the electric power system from end-to-end (generation to consumption) such as the transactive control technique being developed for the Pacific Northwest Smart Grid Demonstration project3,4. An extreme example would be a literal implementation of "prices-to-devices" in which appliances respond to a real-time price signal.

The current situation is that dynamic pricing is widely used in the wholesale power markets. Balancing authorities and others operations such as hydro desks routinely trade on the spot market to buy or sell power for very near term needs. In addition, dynamic pricing tariffs are being tried in a number of retail markets, for example, the PowerCentsDC dynamic pricing pilot5.

Steve Widergren of DOE's Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, who led the GridWise Architecture Council effort from its inception, and is working on this DOE Buildings effort.