By Jake Brooks
Connected through the Internet of Things, and potentially enabled through widely accessible open source standards, Transactive Energy is at the centre of the current energy transformation.
While many people are talking about a vision of the future electrical system built on Transactive Energy principles, members of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) are working to make it a practical reality. Transactive Energy systems allow for all levels of generation and consumption to interact with one another – and taking the principle to a new level, the IEEE is encouraging people throughout the industry to take part in shaping the future of the electrical grid as it becomes more intelligent, decentralized and interactive. The IEEE is the world’s largest association of technical professionals, and is dedicated to the educational and technical advancement of electrical and electronic engineering and allied disciplines.
Paul Heitmann, Chair of the P825 Transactive Energy workgroup in the IEEE’s recently formed Technical Committee for Smart Buildings, Loads, and Customer Systems (SBLC), says, “Our group is trying to make Transactive Energy work in a seamless, frictionless manner so you can enable a participatory energy economy at the grid edge.” Recognizing that the electricity system is entering a period of major change, he believes that energy professionals are looking for standard dependable ways of using Distributed Energy Resources (DERs), in combination with Blockchain technologies, the Internet of Things (IoT), Artificial Intelligence (AI), Powerline Based Communications (PLC), and other innovative technologies “to help transition to a more responsive, cleaner, resilient and economic electric grid,” while helping to ensure the electric system meets the expectations of future power consumers and providers.
The SBLC is organized under the IEEE Power and Energy Society.
There is little doubt that flexibility is becoming increasingly valued as a grid service. Mr. Heitmann notes that grid edge devices and systems can support grid operations under the Transactive Energy framework by offering flexibility of generation and consumption to grid operators. He underlines the term Distributed Flexible Resources (DFR), which is being used in some IEEE regions (e.g., Europe) to connote a subset of DERs in general.
One of the promising approaches being considered for facilitating the spread of Transactive Energy systems is the development of open source software that can become widely if not universally adopted for management and control of DERs in a local energy hub or micro-grid. Open source software is software where the underlying code is freely distributed and available for anyone to use as long as they respect certain basic requirements. Like many other platforms in common use, the open energy platforms are expected to bring a range of benefits including reduced development costs, simplified approaches to interoperability, improved software efficiency and reliability, more rapid time to market, and wider access to the benefits of the latest technology and the useful data that is generated from its operation.
Gary Stuebing, the former Chair of IEEE’s Corporate Advisory Group Open Source Ad Hoc, says, “We believe that open source is going to fuel the innovation of solutions and advance technology for the benefit of humanity. That’s typically what IEEE tries to do with all of its standards and other activities, and open source similarly is going to be one of those tools that helps IEEE live up to our mission.”
A 2017 paper by the IEEE Standards Association says, “Next generation infrastructures and vertical industry and consumer deployments are expected to be dependent upon open source, across all market sectors.” It goes on to say that “Open Source provided the potential for expanded integration of previously discrete technology eco-systems (e.g., 5G, IoT, Analytics, Big Data, Virtual and Augmented Reality, Artificial Reality, Vertical platforms: Smart Energy, Smart Cities, Automotive, etc.). Industry feedback indicated open source solutions could provide improved time to market solutions and potentially provide economic benefits to both suppliers and consumers. Research indicated … open source community initiations were expanding, where open source was being considered more frequently as an option to address industry requirements.”
IEEE research indicates that, with millions of devices beginning to evolve from strictly passive load to active participation at the ‘grid edge’ – such as smart home hubs or electric vehicles – the distribution grid operator will likely require further tools in addition to traditional central command/control operations to alleviate congestion and improve power quality. Alongside this, IEEE representatives note that, “[C]onsumers are demanding better efficiency, flexibility, resilience, and green or local energy solutions. Distributed ledger technologies can handle the decentralized communications, storage, computing and energy asset control required to enable a market driven solution based on Transactive Energy.”
Alpesh Shah, Senior Director of Global Business Strategy& Intelligence for the IEEE-SA, notes that participants in open source implementations will need to rely on software provided under licenses that are widely applicable and industry accepted. The IEEE is working on two of the most widely accepted: Apache 2 and BSD 3. In addition, IEEE plans to offer a CLA or Contributors License Agreement. This is an important feature, Shah says. “It goes with the software and hardware licenses so any code that is contributed to an open source project is signed off on legally by the person or entity that owns the contribution. This is to help ensure everyone contributing code has the legal authority to make it available, and that everyone using the code has the right to do so, as provided by the open source license.”
As the IEEE-SA provides a global collaboration platform, industry leaders are able to collaborate through multiple streams. And based on their identified need, open source can be one such approach that can be supported as a part of their desired joint development outcomes – which includes, but is not limited to, the ability to create standards, pre-standards requirements, specification, certification, value add solutions or open source code bases and designs.
Parties interested in initiating open source projects at IEEE-SA should be clear on the purpose of the project, and whether it will be an effort that will build upon or be adjacent to standardization activities, certification activities, or the primary result of the collaboration. Based on this, interested parties are welcome to submit a pilot proposal. These pilots can eventually be matriculated to any of the existing channels that the IEEE-SA offers for collaboration, should the need emerge.
The five distinct channels for project collaboration are:
1. The IEEE Standards development process where participants propose new standards and put them through a rigorous review and development process within the IEEE structure.
2. Industry Connections: An industry incubator and pre-standardization assessment process, where members and non-members of IEEE have the ability to work on source code, or pursue related development projects.
3. The IEEE conformity assessment program offers conformity services ranging the full spectrum from IEEE Certified(™) products to services for independent lab audits and registries of conforming products.
4. Alliance services: Offer the ability for interested parties to develop a new alliance or consortium to implement technology quickly without separately incorporating, and make use of a full set of services for their existing consortium. Several of the IEEE-ISTO supported alliances are working on open source projects.
5. Value services and marketplace education.
Mr. Stuebing says, “An open source use case template has been developed, and it’s under review by the CAG ad hoc. We have defined a project that is using open source: IEEE P2413™, Draft Standard for an Architectural Framework for the Internet of Things (IoT), which is designed to propose an architectural framework supporting cross-domain interaction, system interoperability and functional compatibility, and to fuel the growth of the IoT market.”
Any interested party can submit a proposal to IEEE for an open source pilot. Following this, assuming the required qualifications are met, a conference call is typically set up with the appropriate IEEE community manager and decisions are made on the best path to move the process forward.
As open source initiatives are developed, the standard practice is for the companies involved to drive a project forward. IEEE provides support and a framework. However, it’s up to the proponents to recruit interested volunteers and build momentum.
Mr. Heitmann previously supported IEEE 1547 Program Development (the grid interconnection standard for DER) and currently chairs the IEEE P825 Working Group on “Meshing Smart Grid Interoperability Standards to Enable Transactive Energy Networks.” He describes the P825 workgroup as, “a diverse and growing forum that is compiling a global perspective on the move toward a decentralized and transaction-driven electric power and energy system” and one that increasingly needs robust standards to achieve a rapid commercial scale. And it isn’t only academic and theoretical work at this point. Heitmann adds, “Early pilots of Transactive Energy methods within diverse use case applications will produce critical operational data, that will reinforce the march toward open, scalable, and secure platforms.”
At the same time as work progresses on open source standards and Transactive Energy systems, new systems are rapidly being developed for uncovering and monetizing value through cryptocurrencies and Blockchain technologies. It’s widely expected that the energy platforms of the future will integrate digital forms for exchange of value and making payments. Although the most famous digital currency, Bitcoin, may or may not be widely used for energy transactions, there are a range of high performance options under development that use similar principles and allow for customers to “purchase” energy services digitally using distributed ledger technology (DLT).
Mr. Stuebing concludes, “Work continues on additional use cases, and the IEEE Standards Association Standards Board is looking at how these could be integrated in the standards process. The next phase moves on to projects, operations and market introductions — trying to let the world know that IEEE is going to be engaged in open source and where that’s going to fit, and then educate people on what we’re going to do and how. And then hopefully, by the end of this year, we’ll have something that’s become part of the offerings within IEEE.”
In general, the IEEE is looking to remove technical barriers, influence policy and encourage regulatory change through discourse and consensus building. It’s reasonable to anticipate that a wide range of IEEE members and industry participants will be focusing on more of this in the months and years ahead.
For more information on IEEE Transactive Energy and Open Source initiatives underway and planned for the future, please see the following online resources or contact
• https://standards.ieee.org/develop/wg/Transactive_Energy_P825.html
• “What Is Open Source, and Why Is IEEE Involved?” Q&A with Gary Stuebing, IEEE Corporate Advisory Group Open Source Ad Hoc, Chair
• https://mentor.ieee.org/802-ec/dcn/17/ec-17-0172-00-00EC-ieee-sa-update-on-open-source-activity.pdf
• IEEE-SA Industry Connections Program: Blockchain Asset Management (http://standards.ieee.org/about/sasb/iccom/IC17-017-01-Blockchain_asset_exchange.pdf)
Further resources are available in APPrO’s prototype online resource centre for open power platforms: https://appro.org/openplatforms.
This article has also been published on LinkedIn at this location.