Scientist Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory Berkeley, California, United States
Many aspects of how we manage electricity have hardly changed in over a century. It is time to rethink the fundamentals, to lay the foundation for a different approach - much as Internet technology upended the technology basis of the old phone system. This new way of managing power distribution needs to be natively digital, bottom-up, plug-and-play, and self-organizing. Most of the required elements are already around us, in isolated form. Price is the only mechanism that can work at any scale and in any application context. Plus, capacity constraints must always be respected. Learn how we can introduce this approach into products and buildings, and the resulting capabilities that can result. This approach is most fully realizable with DC power distribution, but the core concepts also apply to AC domains of power. A key feature is facilitating low cost microgrids with modular technologies and products.
