Volts podcast: Jesse Morris on building an operating system for distributed energy
In this episode, Jesse Morris of international nonprofit Energy Web discusses his group’s work toward building a transparent and trusted “operating system” for distributed energy resources, with an end goal of enabling a more sophisticated and resilient energy grid.
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Text transcript:
David Roberts
Recent years have seen an explosive rise in distributed energy resources (DERs) — energy devices that are located “behind the meter,” on the customer side, like solar panels, batteries, electric vehicles (EVs), and smart appliances.
Distributed energy has the potential to change the grid for the better, making it cleaner and more resilient, but as things stand, there’s a problem.
Consider an EV. The customer has a relationship to it, a way to see its capacity and behavior; it wants to operate the EV in a way that best serves their own transportation needs. The aggregator — an entity that gathers DERs and treats them as a single entity, to sell their services — has a different relationship with the EV; it wants to operate the EV to meet contractual requirements. The distribution utility has a different relationship; it wants to operate the EV to maintain grid stability. And the market manager (ISO) has yet a different relationship; it wants to operate the EV in the way that best serves the market.
All these entities want different things from the EV, but they’ve all built bespoke systems to track it — systems that do not communicate with one another. Consequently, most DERs are wildly underutilized.
This can not last. Confusion and crossed wires will only grow with distributed energy. What the world needs is a common, transparent, trusted way to track DERs, their capacity and interaction with the grid.
That is what Energy Web, an international nonprofit, aims to provide: “an operating system for DERs” that will assign each DER a record on the blockchain (yes, the blockchain), allowing all interested entities to have a common source of information and tracking.
I am a bit of a skeptic of toward blockchain hype, but this seems like an excellent use of it, which could unlock a much more sophisticated and resilient grid. I’m eager to talk to Energy Web CEO Jesse Morris about what the product is, how it can help DERs, and where we might see it adopted next.
Alright, then. With no further ado, Jesse Morris of Energy Web. Thanks for coming to Volts.
Jesse Morris
Thank you for having me. Looking forward to the conversation.
David Roberts
You know, I want to get into the nuts and bolts of Energy Web, but I feel like we should do a little background, a little scene setting, a little contexting. So let's start, then, because Energy Web is, I think, primarily a way of solving the problems, some of the problems posed by distributed energy. And so I don't want to assume too much background knowledge on the part of listeners. So why don't you just really quickly sort of tell us what qualifies as distributed energy? What's the sort of technical definition of distributed energy? What is it? How much of it is there? How much is coming on board? And what challenge does it pose to the grid?
Jesse Morris
So I think that is a very accurate statement, in terms of our primary focus at Energy Web and the problems we're trying to solve. For us, distributed energy, and I'll add the additional word on here, distributed energy resources. What are we talking about there, at least in kind of Energy Web's world? So we're really talking about any kind of electricity using, storing, or generating device. So that could range from a battery in a home, a battery in a commercial and industrial building, an electric vehicle, a charge point, a heat pump, any kind of load that can be fle
