Transactive Energy

The term “transactive energy” is used here to refer to techniques for managing the generation, consumption or flow of electric power within an electric power system through the use of economic or market based constructs while considering grid reliability constraints. The term “transactive” comes from considering that decisions are made based on a value. These decisions may be analogous to or literally economic transactions. An example of an application of a transactive energy technique is the double auction market used to control responsive demand side assets in the GridWise Olympic Peninsula Project1. Another would be the TeMix work of Ed Cazalet2. Transactive energy techniques may be localized to managing a specific part of the power system, for example, residential demand response. They may also be proposed for managing activity within the electric power system from end-to-end (generation to consumption) such as the transactive control technique being developed for the Pacific Northwest Smart Grid Demonstration project3,4. An extreme example would be a literal implementation of “prices-to-devices” in which appliances respond to a real-time price signal.

The current situation is that dynamic pricing is widely used in the wholesale power markets. Balancing authorities and others operations such as hydro desks routinely trade on the spot market to buy or sell power for very near term needs. In addition, dynamic pricing tariffs are being tried in a number of retail markets, for example, the PowerCentsDC dynamic pricing pilot5.

GridWise® Transactive Energy Systems Research, Development and Deployment Roadmap, Final Version, December 2018

An Overview to the Transactive Energy Roadmap, Draft June 2017

GridWise® Decision-Maker’s Transactive Energy Checklist, December 2016.

GridWise® Interim Report: Transactive Valuation Methodology

GridWise® Transactive Energy Framework V1.1

GridWise® Transactive Energy Infographics

GridWise® Transactive Energy Principles

Background Documents:

Ultra Large‐Scale Power System Control Architecture

Grid 2020 Towards a Policy of Renewable and Distributed Energy Resources


1 Hammerstrom, D.J., et al, “Pacific Northwest GridWise™ Testbed Demonstration Projects: Part I. Olympic
Peninsula Project”, PNNL-17167, October 2007, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, Richland WA
2 Cazalet, E.G., “TeMIX: A Foundation for Transactive Energy in a Smart Grid World”, presented at Grid-Interop
2010, Chicago, IL http://www.pointview.com/data/files/2/1062/1878.pdf
3 Hammerstrom, DJ, et al, “Standardization of a Hierarchical Transactive Control System”, in the Proceedings of Grid-
Interop 2009, November 2009, Denver, CO, pp 35 – 41. http://www.gridwiseac.org/pdfs/forum_papers09/don-
business.pdf

4 http://www.pnwsmartgrid.org
5 http://www.powercentsdc.org