While transactive energy—an allocation of electricity based on dynamically discovered values or prices— has been extensively studied, its uptake and use has been slow. This report describes a tool, the transactive network template, which should hasten the creation and uptake of transactive energy networks.
The transactive network template is a metamodel meant to guide implementers as they configure their own transactive agent within a network of such agents. The transactive network template’s object–oriented design approach provides implementers basic code object types, which may be used and extended to represent each of the assets in the implementer’s circuit region. These objects further facilitate the transactive agent’s necessary computations, which are divided among responsibilities to schedule assets’ power usage, to balance electric supply and demand, and to coordinate the exchange of electricity with the other transactive agents.
This report addresses the conceptual transactive network template design. Implementers are directed to more formal design documents and reference implementations. A Python™-based [Python 2018] reference implementation of the transactive network template has been coded, and three implementations have been configured to represent a national laboratory and two university campuses. In the future, the author wishes to make the transactive network template more generally applicable to networks that require more accurate power flow and those employing alternative transactive coordination mechanisms.