IEEE Electrification Magazine - December 2016 - 3

Ruth, Hongyu Wu, Monte Lunacek,
and Paul Vaynshenk, discusses the
necessary detail and intricacy
required to evaluate transactive
energy systems in a home energy
management system application,
which includes controlling multiple
household appliances to reduce the
peak on a circuit while minimizing
energy costs for the consumer.
Development and deployment of
transactive energy systems require
intimate knowledge of control systems, economics, and Internet technologies. A software platform that
eases the deployment of transactive
energy systems-addressing common features of transactive energy
systems, including distributed
computing, communications, and
security features-would allow
developers to focus on applications.
This would allow new systems to
move more quickly from prototype
to demonstration to deployment.
Our second article, "VOLTTRON," by
Srinivas Katipamula, Jereme Haack,
Bora Akyol, George Hernandez, and
Joseph Hagerman, discusses an
open-source platform that addresses these needs for small- to medium-scale commercial buildings.
The article describes some of the
necessary features to support transactive energy systems and how
the current software addresses
those needs.
Having considered how one
might enable the use of transactive
energy systems within a building,
the natural next question is to consider how to derive further value
from the flexibility inherent in the
way a building uses energy. Our
third article, "Using a Transactive
Energy Framework," by Farrokh
Rahimi and Ali Ipakchi, considers
this problem by exploring the provisioning of grid services from
buildings through the use of transactive energy systems.
Of course, the most important
question about transactive energy
systems is whether it is worthwhile.

Other questions follow: is there
enough value to be had in the system
to justify the deployment and maintenance costs? Are all stakeholder
needs met? Are all actors treated and
incented fairly? Is the system interoperable and scalable? How does the
introduction of new market systems
change the behavior of the participants, and, in turn, how does that
impact the value of the deployed system? In the end, all of these questions (and others) must be addressed
to develop a business case that
holistically evaluates the impact of
these systems and determines
whether they provide enough
benefit. Our fourth article, "Evaluating Transactive Systems," by Donald J.
Hammerstrom, Steven E. Widergren,
and Christopher Irwin, discusses
these issues in detail and presents

current work that is endeavoring to
address this gap.
One group that has led the way
in building the transactive energy
system community is the GridWise
Architecture Council. We asked two
of the emeritus chairs of the council to provide the "Technology Leaders" and "Viewpoint" columns for
this issue. These columns provide
some background on the broader
work on transactive energy systems
and some of the ongoing challenges. We hope readers enjoy this
issue. We believe the varied views
of the contributors give insight into
the debate that is occurring within
the community and that they also
expose the value of transactive
energy systems as we look into the
future of our electrical systems.

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Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of IEEE Electrification Magazine - December 2016