SBIR-STTR Award

Direct to Phase II

For over a century, the structure of the electric utility business has been a supplier driven model with consumers receiving and paying for electricity without any participation in how the electricity is produced, transmitted, or consumed.However, advances in renewable energy technologies (e.g., PV panels), battery storage, smart devices, as well as financing models have given rise to prosumers - electricity consumers who produce energy from rooftop PV while also consuming from the grid.These prosumers are interested in monetizing the value of their investment/production whereas regular consumers desire cheaper electricity prices.However, there are no widely available and effective tools to facilitate consumer participation in the energy market.BEM Controls, LLC plans to provide a software platform which uses the blockchain technology to securely manage data, communications, and control of devices among different participants on a large scale.Specifically, the focus will be on these issues: (i) standardized smart contracts; (ii) integration with power management systems; (iii) scalability of the technology; (iv) load shifting enabled through local/distributed power purchasing; and (v) cybersecurity capabilities.The deliverable of the proposed DOE SBIR Phase II project will be a transactive energy software platform leveraging blockchain, which is called the “Energy Internet” (EI) platform.This will provide an end-to-end transactive energy management platform that incorporates WiseBldg© (“Wise Building”), BEM Controls’ existing proprietary open architecture building energy management platform.This will also incorporate a new grid-level analytics and communications platform called WiseGrid, which provides insights into Distribution System Operators (DSOs) about energy transactions within a microgrid as well as a grid-level platform for executing demand response and energy efficiency programs.WiseBldg leverages machine learning to incorporate occupant preferences for each building where it is deployed allowing individual buildings to participate in demand response based on their own real-time load profiles.At the grid-level, the EI platform will host intelligent applications such as improving distribution system load factors, and local voltage control based on large-scale Volt-VAR or Volt-Watt adjustments of smart inverters.This structure will allow the development and testing of a functioning energy internet platform for transactive energy and demand response applications.The proposed cyber physical platform will help to design and develop a local smart electricity market where even small prosumers can contribute to a market-oriented power system.The local electricity market can be managed by a commercial aggregator, organized as a Virtual Power Plant (VPP), that gathers the energy/power flexibility offers from its consumers’/prosumers’ portfolio.A centralized database registers the electric energy consumption of all the electrical loads, the individual PV system forecasted output, and demand response (DR) capabilities on offer (negawatt trading) with proper validation.On the consumer side, this platform can be used by a building owner to offer to sell or buy electricity within a microgrid.Permission-based blockchain will be used to keep track of all transactions.A Chicago area electric utility and a partner on this project, Commonwealth Edison Company (ComEd), has offered to pilot the software platform in one segment of its network - the Bronzeville microgrid in Chicago.This pilot deployment will assist the team to gain operational experience, which will help to make the proposed EI platform more robust and resilient.The involvement of ComEd in this project, will help BEM Controls to promote the application of this EI platform to other electric utilities.Virginia Tech is the technology partner who will focus on cybersecurity issues related to data communication.In addition to the team members, a six-member advisory committee has been formed with members from industry, a national lab, academia, a strategy policy firm and a blockchain developer.