GridWorks

GridWorks uses distributed actors to balance the electric grid. What does this mean? In today’s world, more power comes from highly variable power sources such as wind and solar. And yet, the number of electrons going into the grid must match the number coming out. This is where GridWorks comes in. GridWorks technology enables electrical devices with some embedded storage or with flexibility to provide grid balancing. Furthermore, GridWorks allows these appliances to be more thrifty, using electricity when it is cheap and green.

To learn how using and contributing to GridWorks can support a cost-effective and rapid transition to a sustainable future:

• Try some simple Hello World examples;

• Read the Millinocket Story to learn how to exploit the synergy between wind power and space heating;

• Go through the partner Millinocket Tutorial.

Blockchain Mechanics

Gridworks runs markets between distributed actors acting as avatars for physical devices on the grid. It needs a foundation of trustless, secure, scalable validation and authentication. It heavily uses the Algorand blockchain. If you want to undestand more about how and why this is, go here.

Despite the current negative view of crypto technology, blockchain is actually a valuable technology which we use for validating the location and metering accuracy of Transactive Devices, and for creating a scalable mechanism for auditing energy transactions.

GridWorks SDKs

• gridworks: package provides basic shared mechanics for communication and GNode structure. It is used as a package in all of our other repos.

• gridworks-atn: package and associated documentation for the GridWorks Python AtomicTNodes SDK. AtomicTNodes are the GridWorks actors that make electrical devices transactive. This SDK is a great place to learn about blockchain mechanics, as it introduces some of the simpler structures (NFTs, stateless contracts, and then some simple stateful smart contracts constructed using beaker) required for establishing the link between physical reality on the electric grid and the actors that play their avatars in GridWorks.

• gridworks-marketmaker: package and associated documentation for our Python MarketMaker SDK. GridWorks uses distributed actors to balance the electric grid, and MarketMakers are the actors brokering this grid balancing via the markets they run for energy and balancing services.

There are several other open source GridWorks repos to explore on our github page, including the code running on the SCADA systems that Efficiency Maine is deploying in Millinocket this winter. The GNodeFactory currently hosts the demo, and does most of the heavy lifting in terms of identity management and authentication in GridWorks. Finally, since the demo is a distributed simulation, it needs a method of handling time. That’s done by a TimeCoordinator GNode.

Installation

Note

gridworks requires python 3.10 or higher.

(venv)$ pip install gridworks