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Transactive Energy Community Gathers in Portland

May 17, 2016 – Transactive energy (TE) took center stage last month as the TE community gathered for the third Transactive Energy Systems Conference and Workshop in Portland, Oregon.  With some 150 attendees from around the world, the participants listened to keynote talks and plenary panels from TE leaders.  They also engaged in a series of interactive workshop sessions, providing important feedback and guidance about next steps needed to advance the field.

SGIP member organizations were well represented in the audience, and a number of SGIP leaders, including present and past board members, were among the keynote and panel speakers. Within SGIP, the Transactive Energy Coordinating Group (TECG), chaired by Ron Melton from Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL), has been closely following the issue of transactive energy.  The coordinating group is working on a white paper, tentatively titled “TE Landscape Scenarios.”

Opening keynote speaker Audrey Zibelman, chair of the New York State Public Service Commission, discussed the commission’s ambitious initiative, “Reforming the Energy Vision (REV).”  She described the significant transformation anticipated in the distribution system, stressing the important part TE will play in its implementation.

The critical role of modeling and simulation was highlighted throughout the conference. On the final day of the conference, a plenary panel spotlighted the Transactive Energy Modeling and Simulation Challenge for the Smart Grid (TE Challenge), which brings organizations together to create and demonstrate modeling and simulation platforms to address grid problems with TE approaches. Leaders from TE Challenge teams described their progress to date, with six out of seven teams giving presentations.

The TE Challenge, organized by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), has now passed the midpoint of Phase 1.  Formally launched at a Kickoff workshop in September 2015, Phase 1 will conclude later this year with the TE Challenge Summit in Gaithersburg, Maryland on September 20 and 21.

The work products from Phase 1—a series of white papers—will provide important components like scenarios, use cases, business case models and more to be used in Phase 2.  The second phase, which will launch in January 2017, will have an even greater emphasis on modeling and simulations.

Please visit NIST’s TE Challenge Collaboration Site for information on each of the seven teams.  Further details about the Challenge are also outlined in the February 2016 SGIP webinar “Transactive Energy Getting Real?  Progress with the TE Challenge.”

For access to many of the presentations from the Transactive Energy Systems Conference and Workshop, including those related to the TE Challenge, please visit the conference website.  Conference organizers announced that the conference proceedings will be published later this year.

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