MSL IEEE Presentation: The Complex Adaptive Grid

MSL President David Breecker had the honor of presenting MSL’s “Complex Adaptive Grid” initiative to the IEEE eGrid 2024 Workshop in Santa Fe, NM on November 19. The presentation was very well received by the approximately 100 participants, primarily comprised of engineers working in the power electronics area, and including several influential leaders in the grid modernization field. The presentation, which sparked considerable discussion, was part of a panel on “The Power Plant of the Future.”

The Complex Adaptive Grid (CAG) initiative is an offshoot of MSL’s New Grid Paradigms program, taking those ideas forward to an actionable approach and implementation plan. The presentation [PDF], entitled “Toward a Complex Adaptive Grid: a Systems Innovation Approach to Grid Modernization,” proposes a whole-systems conceptual framework for the design, planning, and operation of the future grid, which urgently requires substantial modernization to meet our energy and environmental requirements.

The framework recommends three closely integrated actionable elements to understand and plan the Complex Adaptive Grid: first, a Systems Innovation approach; second, Trans-disciplinary Research uniting all relevant fields; and finally, a Complexity Science lens (as pioneered by the Santa Fe Institute). This is designed to enable transformational innovation (as opposed to the incremental innovation currently being pursued); and to empower the grid to support massive numbers of Distributed Energy Resources, growth in variable renewable generation, pervasive pricing signals and market mechanisms, and complex governance structures.

The result will be a fully integrated socio-techno-economic system whose behavior can be dynamically optimized in real time, while negative unanticipated consequences of emergent behavior can be avoided. A core consortium has begun forming to carry the CAG initiative into implementation, starting with the Center for Energy Law and Policy (CELP) at Pennsylvania State University and Camus Energy (an MSL Member).

Coincidentally, the Santa Fe Institute is forming a Working Group in this domain, which will kick off in the Spring of 2025 with a workshop on “Governance Institutions for a Polycentric and Technologically Complex Electric Power Grid.” MSL’s Breecker will be a member of this Working Group, along with MSL Advisory Board members Cris Moore and Seth Blumsack (CELP), and Lynne Kiesling (Northwestern University), all SFI internal or external faculty.

The international eGrid workshop, sponsored by IEEE Power Electronics Society (PELS) and IEEE Power and Energy Society (PES) and organized by Sandia National Laboratories (an MSL Member), provided an international forum for academics and industry to exchange information on their latest research ideas, developments, experiences, achievements, state-of-the-art technical trends, and applications. The workshop invited experts in power electronics and power systems to discuss the evolution of the electric system toward a more power electronics-based infrastructure.

The Power Plant of the Future panel was convened and moderated by (MSL Member) Los Alamos National Laboratory. The workshop also convened experts from industry, academia, and international labs to engage in plenary speeches, tutorials, and panels on the latest insights on theory, modeling, analysis, design and development, testing, and integration of power electronics-based power systems.