FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS

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What is GridWise?
What is the GridWise Vision?
What are GridWise Technologies?
What is the GridWise Architecture Council (GWAC)?
Does the GridWise Architecture Council coordinate with other, related programs like EPRI's IntelliGrid Architecture? How do these efforts compare?
How is GridWise moving forward?

What is GridWise^™?

GridWise is a vision for the future of the power grid, shared by a new U.S. Department of Energy program initiative and an industry alliance. They share a common vision that information technology will profoundly transform the planning and operation of the power grid from central generation down to customer appliances and equipment into a collaborative network filled with information and a myriad of market-based opportunities.

Advanced information technology has changed so much in our society the way we do business, communications, entertainment and education. But it has not yet had similar impact on our energy systems. This is about to change.

GridWise will enable distributed, real-time markets and control to integrate the traditional elements of supply and demand, transmission and distribution with new technologies such as distributed generation, energy storage, and customer load management.

The Department of Energy and the GridWise Alliance (an alliance of leading members of the power and information technology industries) have jointly declared their intention to work together to bring about this transformation sooner, with more impact and greater public good.

What is the GridWise Vision?

GridWise is a vision for the future electric system built upon the fundamental premise that information technology will profoundly transform the planning and operation of the power grid, just as it has changed business, education, and entertainment. It will form the "nervous system" that integrates new distributed technologies-demand response, distributed generation, and storage—with traditional grid generation, transmission, and distribution assets to share responsibility for managing the grid as a collaborative "society" of devices.

To do this GridWise will:

Provide the incentive for customer and third-party assets to collaborate with existing grid assets to control costs and improve reliability by revealing the true time- and location-dependent value of electricity.
Provide the basis for collaboration by allowing the revealed values to be shared in real-time by leveraging broadband communications that are rapidly becoming ubiquitous.
Provide the means to take advantage of the opportunities for collaboration so revealed, and capture value in return, through rapid advances in distributed controls and e-business applications.

What are GridWise Technologies?

GridWise technologies are summarized here in three general categories:

Distributed Resources. These are physical, capital assets that generate, store, or consume electric power and that are not broadly considered or deployed as grid assets at present. Among these are demand response, distributed generation, and electricity storage.
Communications Technologies. These are the mechanisms for transporting information among all participants collaborating in the operation of the power grid. These include communication media, information security, privacy and authentication, machine to machine, and E-commerce.
Control and Software Applications. These are the controls and software that utilize information provided through the communication technologies, and an extended set of sensors, to operate existing grid resources and the distributed resources as an integrated system to make the grid more cost effective, reliable and robust. There are many, many potential applications; among these are: customer information gateways, smart meters and automated meter reading, demand response and energy management systems, Grid-Friendly^TM appliances/equipment/processes, distribution automation, market operations, autonomous agents for power purchasing, load forecasters, transactive control for distribution and transmission systems , and emergency end-use curtailment.

What is the GridWise Architecture Council (GWAC)?

The GridWise Architecture Council (GWAC) is an independent effort stemming from a number of related endeavors, including the DOE's GridWise Program. The GWAC is not a formal DOE advisory board. In the context of its engagement in the GridWise vision, the DOE is providing limited financial and logistical support to the Architecture Council. The GridWise^TM Architecture Council assembles a focused team of experts to articulate the guiding principles that constitute the architecture of a future, intelligent, transactive, energy system and see that GridWise evolutionary directions remain true to these principles. The GWAC Bylaws describe the roles, responsibilities, policies and procedures that govern the operation of the council; the GWAC Terms of Reference overview the goals, missions and scope of the Architecture Council.

Does the GWAC coordinate with other, related programs like EPRI's IntelliGrid Architecture? How do these efforts compare?

The GWAC coordinates with a number of complementary efforts in related fields. Contacts have been made with the oBix standards work in the intelligent building community, NRECA's Multispeak initiative, and architecture efforts in the ISO/RTO area. An important area for coordination is with the EPRI sponsored IntelliGrid efforts. GWAC member, Erich Gunther is currently the liaison between the GWAC and the IntelliGrid Architecture.

Though their areas of interest overlap, IntelliGrid Architecture emphasizes the impact of information technology and communications to advance the electric utility business. EPRI engages their electric utility base in projects that define and demonstrate enterprise integration approaches based on open standards to create designs and identify best practices that address electric system operations. This work is also concerned with accommodating the rise of distributed energy resources and other external players in the electric system, but more so from the point of view of the electric utility.

The GridWise Architecture Council recognizes the intelligence emerging at the fringes of the traditional system and sees that unleashing new value propositions will drive a transformation in the electric power business and its operations. Developing a strategic view that is shared across a broad set of electricity related industries is an important thrust of the GWAC. As a result of the GridWise vision, the GWAC emphasizes the interfaces between independent parties in a collaborative association. This e-commerce flavor complements IntelliGrid's enterprise integration emphasis.

The GWAC and IntelliGrid Architecture efforts are working together to stay abreast of each others activities and share the results of their efforts. The GWAC offers a body of experts for overarching perspective of IntelliGrid and GridWise advances. This group will work to reduce competing efforts in overlapping areas, and identify gaps for consideration by either initiative. Finally, where conflicting opinions may exist, society benefits from multiple viewpoints that give depth and definition to the complex issues raised by such far reaching initiatives.

How is GridWise Moving Forward?

What will it take to realize this vision of an information-rich power grid? Several key activities are being launched as an Initiative within the DOE to start the transformation. A study that we conducted to estimate the value that the transformed energy system has to offer revealed that the savings could exceed $80 billion over the next 20 years. These figures are based on deferring new construction by actively managing load, reducing outage costs through active grid management, increasing customer efficiencies through advanced controls and diagnostics and a number of other opportunities to cut costs across the system. A second, more comprehensive study conducted by the RAND Corporation considered a range of scenarios and identified benefits from $40B to $140B.

Already, industry is beginning to embrace the vision of a modernized grid and is starting to work together to realize its benefits. Last year, a number of corporations forming the GridWise Alliance, signed a Memorandum of Understanding with the DOE in which they agree to work toward making the GridWise vision a reality.

These and other stakeholders, including commercial companies, utilities, regulators, national laboratories and industry, have met to begin outlining a federal program to lead the way. DOE's Office of Electric Transmission and Distribution is working to build consensus, broaden the vision, and seed the research and demonstration required to make the transformation happen in a cohesive, well-planned manner. DOE's GridWise Program will invest in the following areas to ensure that consumers, the economy and the environment are protected and will benefit from the final outcome:

Communications architecture and standards will make it possible for generators, transmission and distribution utilities, energy service companies and consumers to share information and form an integrated network.
Simulation and analysis tools are needed to simulate energy markets and energy systems and validate the vision. These tools will combine operations and economics in a single model, something that has not been done before.
Smart technologies from the government and industry are needed. The program will help seed the early development of technologies that individual commercial companies otherwise might not risk pursuing.
Test beds and demonstration projects will provide experiments of ever increasing scale to prove the worth of these technologies or reveal their faults.
New regulatory, institutional and market frameworks that support a climate of innovation as these technologies evolve need to be examined.
A rigorous scientific basis for understanding of the behavior of transactive, market-driven energy networks is needed to predict the global properties of the system and the outcomes from controllable influences such as market structures and regulatory options. Managing a much more agile but vastly more complex network requires developing a theoretical understanding of its behavior and advances in computational methods and hardware.

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