Emerging Grid Architecture
What is it?
Definition – in layman’s terms:
- Current grid infrastructure, wholesale market rules, and business models have been built over the last century for one-way electricity flow and passive end-uses.
- The future grid will require a fundamental transformation in grid operation and design and needs to manage increasing decentralization, DER deployment, renewable energy, and more.
- Current market rules, grid infrastructure, and industry structure are inadequate to operate the future modernized grid, making it critical to ideate and enact new grid architectures, system practices, business models, distribution level markets, and standards.
More technically speaking – industry terms to know:
- Transactive energy: An approach that allows for communication and trading between energy suppliers, customers, and resources and ultimately coordinates all electricity-related actions in order to minimize costs and optimize grid operation.
- Grid architecture: Refers to a framework used for thinking about how the grid as a system needs to transform to modernize and identifies bounds to assist policymakers and grid operators in making broader changes to the system.
- Distribution system operator (DSO): A neutral developer and operator of the distribution system, who manages competitive access to markets, enables customer access and choice, and optimizes the use of DERs in the distribution system.
The Grid Today
For a Modern Grid
The future grid will feature more distributed resources, a larger number of actors, and advanced technologies monitoring and controlling numerous grid-connected assets. As the characteristics of generators and electricity demand changes, the reevaluation of grid organization structure should occur to set up a more dynamic system that enables innovation and new business models. Especially as the distribution system becomes more complex, establishing distribution system operators to manage the grid as a platform will be vital for DER integration, enabling DERs as a system resource, and maximizing value for all grid-connected entities and assets.
Technology Examples
Explore examples of emerging grid architecture in these technologies:
