21st Century Electric Power System Architecture

Abstract: The growing concerns about sustainability and resilience, and the availability of cost-effective, infinitely scalable renewable energy technologies, are challenging every aspect of our existing 20th century power system — operation, planning, markets, regulatory frameworks, business models, and even public awareness about energy. Because the drivers of change are so pervasive, we need to apply a whole-system grid architecture approach to think about the structure of a future power system that can achieve our top-priority objectives. We can expect decentralization to be a central theme of power system change.

Bio: Lorenzo Kristov is an independent consultant focusing on power system transition to integrate high levels of renewable generation and distributed energy resources (DER). From 1999 to 2017 Lorenzo worked at California ISO as a principal in market design and infrastructure policy, where he was a lead designer of the locational marginal pricing (LMP) market system the ISO implemented in 2009. Areas of expertise include: wholesale market design; DER participation in wholesale markets; coordination of transmission-distribution system operations; distribution system operator (DSO) models and distribution-level markets; microgrids and energy resilience strategies; whole-system grid architecture.