Distribution Management System for the Grid of the Future: A Transactive System Compensating for the Rise in Distributed Energy Resources

The electric industry is undergoing significant changes due to a number of factors including new technologies, the proliferation of distributed energy resources (DERs), and increasingly savvy prosumers (consumers with local active sources of generation and storage). These changes impact utility operations and business models in fundamental ways. From an operational perspective, the distribution utility faces large numbers of active grid-edge devices and systems for which it currently has limited to no visibility or control. From a business point-of-view, the customer-owned DERs reduce the utility?s net energy sales, while, at the same time, imposing increased costs on the utility to accommodate their variability and unpredictability.