Dr. Caryl Johnson of Introspective System

The largest machine on earth is often said to be our electrical grid. By the end of 2016 there were some 7600 power plants greater than 1 MW with many times more, smaller resources and and even larger number of control systems. The grid is truly a complex machine that is made up of systems collected into ever larger systems. In the controls world this is called a systems of systems. This is the ultimate in complexity and is true on all large systems like the electric grid and ecological systems.

It has been shown that market-based systems can be amazingly stable in these complex environments because of the many naturally balancing feedback loops within the system. In the electrical engineering field, the GridWise Alliance has called this idea of market-based systems “Transactive Energy”. Much of the research in this area has been done by the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory and one of the successful trials was the Olympia Peninsula Project (OPP) consisting of a field demonstration of price signal-based control of distributed energy resources. The demonstration showed that market-based control was able to manage distribution constraints and reduce peak loads. This was followed with the Pacific Northwest Demonstration Project (PNDP) ending in 2015.

Dr. Caryl Johnson and Trevor Gionet scientists at the Portland based platform solutions company Introspective Systems will discuss the three methods for implementing Transactive Energy controls within microgrids and the greater electrical grid. They will discuss the three methods of implementing Transactive energy control systems applicable to microgrids and distribution systems including the two currently developed methods:

• Centralized (top-down pricing signals)
• Centralized (auction-based)

And the method being developed by Introspective Systems resulting in a fully distributed edge-based intelligent control network.

This work is being performed at Brunswick Landing Renewable Energy Center. The edge-based control system being researched and designed at Brunswick Landing has pricing signals (potential of 10 or more different grid scales) are continuously re-calculated, only travel in a downward direction and are acted upon only by edge devices have promise, using the “power of complexity to lead to simplicity” Since the scope of influence of a single node is typically only one or two degrees of separation as described by Eric Berlow, this limits the computing power required to calculate the system state and provides for enhanced capabilities using advanced artificial intelligence techniques and limits security risks with limited communications routes. An effective transactive edge-based energy system can provide increased resilience, versatility, reliability and flexibility when used not only in microgrids but the greater electrical grid.

Biography:

Dr. Caryl Johnson, Chief Innovation Officer has extensive experience in the private sector and government with the Department of Interior and the Department of Defense. With a 30-year career in science and science management, Dr. Johnson specializes in solving the challenges inherent in complex systems. At Introspective Systems she directs the strategic science vision of the company and is the innovator behind xGraph designed to solve her particular life lessons learned in building complex adaptive systems of systems. Her early work with the computer automation of regional and global seismic networks established the standard for such systems world-wide, and in its current form serves as a core algorithm (GLASS associator) of global seismic network processing by the U.S. Geological Survey’s National Earthquake Information Center (NEIC) in Golden, Colorado. She has over 50 scientific papers in reviewed professional journals and reference books, and is the author of a popular book on volcanoes. She also has spent 15 years overseeing cutting edge R&D and systems design in the private sector and at BAE Systems as a Systems Engineering Fellow. At BAE Systems she provided leadership and scientific direction to management and business area directors related to evolving DOD applications of computational intelligence and virtual systems engineering as applied to robotics, machine vision, sensor fusion, cognitive interface technology, and mission performance optimization.

Trevor Gionet of Introspective Systems

Biography:

Trevor Gionet, Lead Algorithm Scientist is a former Fulbright Graduate Scholar and a Masters graduate in Mathematics from the University of Maine, Orono with extensive experience in mathematical modeling using High Performance Computers. At Introspective systems he is responsible for managing scientific algorithm development in diverse market sectors including Electrical Grid and modeling and simulation. His thesis “Improvements to Data Assimilation Strategies in Forestry” involved the simulation and analysis of biomass growth rates in the Maine north woods using combination of growth (TEMFORM) and weather models (WRF) and data collected through the United States Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) Forest Inventory Analysis (FIA) program. At Introspective Systems he is lead algorithm scientist and is a principal scientist for a Department of Energy contract, researching a new edge-based grid control system and architecture for the US. electrical grid.