Cloud Energy Virtualization for Distributed Grid Market Modeling
Find Innovative SolutionsGenerate Solutions
Solution Overview
Problem
The current electrical grid architecture is inefficient, leading to significant energy loss and environmental impact, with legacy systems struggling to account for diverse energy sources and consumption patterns, and lacking real-time market integration and predictive modeling.
Innovation Solution
A virtualized cloud environment models energy flow and generation, using parametric objects to represent physical devices and systems, allowing for real-time market exchange and multilevel pricing, with virtualized energy objects that include attributes like source, heat content, and greenhouse gas emissions, enabling normalized costing and carbon sequestration across the grid.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Loss of energy
If a centralized electrical grid architecture is used, then power generation and distribution can be managed centrally, but significant energy loss occurs (45% of energy produced is lost) and environmental impact increases
Solution Approach 1:
The patent segments the centralized grid into distributed energy resources (DERs) and virtual power plants (VPPs). Virtualization creates modular representations of physical assets, allowing energy generation, storage, and consumption to be broken into discrete virtual entities that can operate independently yet coordinate collectively, reducing transmission losses while maintaining manageable complexity through standardized interfaces.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent introduces a virtual dimension overlaying the physical grid. Virtual power plants and energy markets operate in this digital layer, enabling real-time optimization of energy flows across distributed physical assets without requiring complex physical reconfiguration. This virtual-physical mapping resolves the contradiction by managing complexity in the digital domain while achieving energy efficiency in the physical domain.
2Loss of information
If legacy grid operators manage diverse energy sources, then traditional centralized control can be maintained, but real-time information about consumption and generation is lacking
Solution Approach 1:
The patent introduces virtual power plants as intermediary entities between diverse energy sources and the traditional grid. These VPPs aggregate distributed energy resources and provide standardized interfaces, enabling real-time information exchange about generation and consumption. The virtualization layer acts as a mediator that translates diverse data formats into unified market signals, resolving the information asymmetry while enabling automated market operations.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent implements real-time feedback loops through virtualized energy markets. Consumption data from smart meters and generation data from distributed resources are continuously fed back into the virtual market environment, enabling dynamic pricing and automated dispatch decisions. This feedback mechanism provides the granular information previously missing while driving automation through algorithmic market clearing.
3Object-generated harmful factors
If fossil fuels are combusted for electricity generation, then energy production can be maintained, but greenhouse gas emissions increase
Solution Approach 1:
The patent changes the economic parameters of energy generation by virtualizing carbon emissions and environmental externalities into tradable assets. By assigning monetary value to greenhouse gas emissions and creating carbon markets within the virtualized energy system, the patent transforms the cost structure to favor low-carbon generation. This parameter change enables sustained electricity production while reducing emissions through market-driven selection of cleaner energy sources.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent converts the harmful effect of carbon emissions into a beneficial market mechanism. By virtualizing emissions data and creating carbon credit trading within the energy market, previously harmful emissions become quantifiable assets that drive investment in clean energy. This transformation maintains energy production productivity while systematically reducing greenhouse gas emissions through economic incentives.
4Reliability
If distributed grid architecture is implemented, then reliability and sustainability improve, but real-time market integration and predictive modeling are needed
Solution Approach 1:
The patent creates universal virtual power plant entities that can represent any combination of distributed energy resources. These standardized virtual entities provide multi-functional capabilities including generation aggregation, storage coordination, and market participation. This universality enables reliable distributed grid operation while reducing integration complexity through standardized interfaces and common operational protocols across diverse assets.
Data Source
AI summary
A system for creating an energy performance and predictive model includes a non-transitory computer-readable storage medium which performs the steps of obtaining parametric information objects that represent actual physical objects and modifying the parametric information by embedding data related to energy performance characteristics unique to the device represented. The system further performs the steps of grouping the modified parametric information objects that define actual real world interrelationships to create a complete virtualized project and parsing the virtualized model data set to create a first parsed data set and a second parsed data set. The first parsed data set creates the project system control application, which acts upon and coordinates the actions of the real device through the virtual field bus. The second parsed data set creates the project's virtualized energy performance project and represents the subset of the virtualized performance environment where other virtualized devices can act upon it.