Over the past decade and a half, the use of demand response and other flexible distributed resources for electricity market efficiency and grid reliability has grown dramatically. Federal and state policy objectives point to an important role for customers’ loads, generation, and storage in the management of an increasingly unpredictable power system. As we consider the need to substantially scale the use of flexible distributed energy resources, growing attention has been devoted to the need to address not only the economics of the electricity grid, but also the control system implications, to ensure grid reliability. This has led to a focus on an area of activity called “Transactive Energy.” Transactive energy (TE) refers to the use of a combination of economic and control techniques to improve grid reliability and efficiency. These techniques may also be used to optimize operations within a customer’s facility.
The U.S. Department of Energy has supported the GridWise® Architecture Council (“the Council”) in developing a conceptual framework for developing architectures and designing solutions related to TE. The goal of this effort is to encourage and facilitate collaboration among the many stakeholders involved in the transformation of the power system and thereby advance the practical implementation of TE.
Building on workshops sponsored by the Council in 2011 and 2012, the Council began to address the topic of TE in a workshop portion of each face-to-face meeting. This culminated in the First International Conference and Workshop on Transactive Energy held in Portland, Oregon, on May 23 and 24, 2013. At the conference, the Council announced plans to release the first (draft) version of a “Transactive Energy Framework” document in October 2013. The draft framework was updated based on feedback provided to GWAC, and an updated Version 1.0 was published in January 2015. In January 2018, GWAC started work to update the framework again based on discussions held during prior GWAC meetings. In the time between Version 1.0 and Version 1.1 (this document), much transpired, including three more GWAC TE conferences and the addition of TE to many conferences, showing broad interest in the topic, as well as new pilot implementations of TE systems.
The valuable input from industry researchers and practitioners at these conferences and workshops reinforced to the Council that there was a need for the following:
• clear definitions
• explanations of technical and economic drivers motivating TE
• addressing of TE from multiple perspectives, including
– business and policy considerations
– business models
– value creation
• conceptual or reference architectures for TE systems
• identification of the implementation challenges of such systems.
The Council developed this document to address these needs by providing definitions of terms, architectural principles and guidelines, and other descriptive elements that present a common ground for all interested parties to discuss and advance TE.