Volts podcast: Jesse Morris on building an operating system for distributed energy

In this episode, Jesse Morris of international nonprofit Energy Web discusses his group’s work toward building a transparent and trusted “operating system” for distributed energy resources, with an end goal of enabling a more sophisticated and resilient energy grid.

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Text transcript:

David Roberts

Recent years have seen an explosive rise in distributed energy resources (DERs) — energy devices that are located “behind the meter,” on the customer side, like solar panels, batteries, electric vehicles (EVs), and smart appliances.

Distributed energy has the potential to change the grid for the better, making it cleaner and more resilient, but as things stand, there’s a problem.

Consider an EV. The customer has a relationship to it, a way to see its capacity and behavior; it wants to operate the EV in a way that best serves their own transportation needs. The aggregator — an entity that gathers DERs and treats them as a single entity, to sell their services — has a different relationship with the EV; it wants to operate the EV to meet contractual requirements. The distribution utility has a different relationship; it wants to operate the EV to maintain grid stability. And the market manager (ISO) has yet a different relationship; it wants to operate the EV in the way that best serves the market.

All these entities want different things from the EV, but they’ve all built bespoke systems to track it — systems that do not communicate with one another. Consequently, most DERs are wildly underutilized.

This can not last. Confusion and crossed wires will only grow with distributed energy. What the world needs is a common, transparent, trusted way to track DERs, their capacity and interaction with the grid.

That is what Energy Web, an international nonprofit, aims to provide: “an operating system for DERs” that will assign each DER a record on the blockchain (yes, the blockchain), allowing all interested entities to have a common source of information and tracking.

I am a bit of a skeptic of toward blockchain hype, but this seems like an excellent use of it, which could unlock a much more sophisticated and resilient grid. I’m eager to talk to Energy Web CEO Jesse Morris about what the product is, how it can help DERs, and where we might see it adopted next.

Alright, then. With no further ado, Jesse Morris of Energy Web. Thanks for coming to Volts.

Jesse Morris

Thank you for having me. Looking forward to the conversation.

David Roberts

You know, I want to get into the nuts and bolts of Energy Web, but I feel like we should do a little background, a little scene setting, a little contexting. So let's start, then, because Energy Web is, I think, primarily a way of solving the problems, some of the problems posed by distributed energy. And so I don't want to assume too much background knowledge on the part of listeners. So why don't you just really quickly sort of tell us what qualifies as distributed energy? What's the sort of technical definition of distributed energy? What is it? How much of it is there? How much is coming on board? And what challenge does it pose to the grid?

Jesse Morris

So I think that is a very accurate statement, in terms of our primary focus at Energy Web and the problems we're trying to solve. For us, distributed energy, and I'll add the additional word on here, distributed energy resources. What are we talking about there, at least in kind of Energy Web's world? So we're really talking about any kind of electricity using, storing, or generating device. So that could range from a battery in a home, a battery in a commercial and industrial building, an electric vehicle, a charge point, a heat pump, any kind of load that can be flexed over time.

So our definition of distributed energy resources, at least in terms of the work that we're doing, is actually quite broad. And if I think about the challenges and opportunities there, these are things that anyone working kind of under the broad umbrella of the energy transition, especially you, David, would be super familiar with. We know that in many grids around the world, we're undergoing one of the biggest shifts in the 100+ year history of the grid. More and more customers are adopting these distributed energy resources. Again, I'm sitting here in California, massive amounts of rooftop solar coming online.

The model three is the fastest selling and the best selling automobile in the state. So all of these distributed energy resources, in some places, are presenting problems. We do a lot of work in Australia, where they have too much solar at specific times of the day. It's literally backfeeding into the transmission system. It's unbelievable. But then we also are in places where those same resources can provide immense value to the grid. My electric vehicle can help reduce congestion at certain times of the day to prevent our overhead lines from overheating and starting more wildfires. So a little bit of the context about what we're focused on.

David Roberts

As I've thought about distributed resources over the years, I think, in the beginning, most people are, I think intuitively, most people still just think solar panels, and kind of batteries, sort of the generating and storing of energy. But as you note, any energy consuming device in the house that can be controlled, really counts as an energy resource, as a distributed energy resource. So, like your water heater. Very sort of banal household appliances, we're kind of starting to think about them now as energy resources, which is really a new way of looking at things. But the one piece about distributed energy that I think is worth adding is that all these devices that you're talking about are what's called "behind the meter", which means from the utility's point of view, the utility comes and reads your meter, and that's how much energy you use.

So it does not know what is going on behind the meter. I think a key part of this is just that these distributed energy resources are operating largely out of sight of utilities.

Jesse Morris

Exactly. That is the problem that we're trying to solve at Energy Web. We are trying to make it possible for all of these devices to be seen and be able to communicate by these utilities. And maybe a little context there. My background. I worked at RMI, or Rocky Mountain Institute, for about ten years. And my tenure there, I can't tell you how many times I walked into a boardroom or with some executives at a utility or another energy company, and we had these beautiful charts and models showing how much money different companies could make by taking all of these distributed energy resources and bidding them into wholesale markets, and eventually, with regulations changing, bidding them into local, I'd call them "distribution markets" for electricity run by local utilities.

And the charts were beautiful, the performers are beautiful, but you had to make two pretty fundamental assumptions. One, that regulations would continue to evolve, which as you know, is ...

David Roberts

Not always something you can bet on.

Jesse Morris

Exactly. But the second thing, and this is why I spun Energy Web, myself and several other collea