IEEE Electrification Magazine - December 2016 - 31

engagement but is otherwise self-interested and behaves
quite independently. An interesting research question is
whether the alternative transactive techniques can be
harmonized. Is it possible to define a single agent that
can participate in any of the various transactive techniques? Work is under way to define architectural elements that are common to all transactive systems.

Historical Field demonstrations

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The DOE funded the PNNL to conduct a novel field demonstration, the GridWise Olympic Peninsula project (see
"The GridWise Olympic Peninsula Field Demonstration").
The Bonneville Power Administration (BPA) offered up the
principal project objective, which was to explore whether
a nonwires solution could help them defer upgrading a
transmission line into the Olympic Peninsula in western
Washington State. Because the line was becoming congested, the project team set up a novel energy market in
which many types of devices on the Olympic Peninsula
radial feeder were taught to individually bid the paired
unit price and energy quantity for the electricity each
would consume (or generate) at the given price. Every
5 min, the new market cleared at a price that would meet
the electrical load without overloading the constrained
transmission into the radial feeder. The cleared price was
distributed back to each bidding device, which then took

TAbLe 1. GridWise Architecture council

Te Principles (V1.0).
formulated and demonstrated in Europe. The right side
of Figure 1 shows other formulations that facilitate
bilateral agreements between individuals, extending
market exchanges from wholesale energy markets into
distribution market systems. The TEMix protocol is such
a technique and has made good progress specifying
useful standards.
Each of these three techniques specifies rules by
which actors in a transactive system may interact. If the
actors are automated, they may be represented by computational agents. This seems to be an attribute shared
among all transactive systems: the system achieves its
objectives through the interaction of networked actors,
where each networked actor knows the rules of

Transactive definition

he GridWise Architecture Council (http://www.gridwiseac
.org), formed by the DOE in 2004 to promote interoperability

for the U.S. electric power system, defines transactive energy as
"techniques for managing the generation, consumption, or flow
of electric power within an electric power system through the use

 Highly automated coordinated self-optimization
 Transacting parties are accountable for standards of

performance
 Maintain system reliability and control while enabling optimal

integration of renewable and distributed energy resources
 Transactive energy systems should provide for nondiscrimi-

natory participation by qualified participants
 Transactive energy systems should be observable and

auditable at interfaces
 Transactive energy systems should be scalable, adaptable,

and extensible across a number of devices, participants,
and geographic extent

Foundation in Economics
Distributed,
Constrained
Economic Power
Flow

Auctions

Bilateral Trades

Foundation in Physics

of economic or market based constructs while considering grid
reliability constraints."

Figure 1. The transactive techniques categorization proposed for
electric power grids.
IEEE Electrific ation Magazine / d ec em be r 2 0 1 6

http://www.gridwiseac

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