Decision Coaching 3.0: Is it better to be a fox or a hedgehog?

Nate Silver’s new book is required reading for decision coaches.  Nate Silver is a Bayesian.  He is also bringing structured modeling and probabilistic thinking to the world of political pundits and pollsters.  The title of his new book is, “The Signal and...

Introductory chapter

Table of Contents

About the Authors

Acknowledgments

Preface

CHAPTER 1 - INTRODUCTION

California is a leader in renewables and electrification

The digital transformation is happening in California and everywhere

The rest of this book

CHAPTER 2 - THE DUCK CURVE

Storage and load shifting

Customer-owned battery storage

EVs

Water heating

HVAC

Clothes dryers, dishwashers, refrigerators, and pool pumps

Storage optimization and load shifting require look-ahead pricing

Subhourly flexibility

Summary

CHAPTER 3 - THE TRANSACTIVE ENERGY VISION

The three systems

SECTION 1: Overview of the transactive energy model

The two products

Three important principles

Storage decisions

The TE process: tenders, transactions, and deliveries

The TE platform

Summary

SECTION 2: The customer in a transactive energy model

How the flexible loads connect with the TE system

Summary

SECTION 3: The transactive energy platform

Transport

Web services and payload

Market-making process and clearing

Scalable and parallel platforms

Summary

SECTION 4: Retail operation with a transactive energy platform

Palo Alto’s utility services

Converting to TE

Summary

CHAPTER 4 - THE AGENT

What the agent is

The agent’s objective

Agents in the TE system

Machine learning

How the agent determines forward transactions for the next 24 hours

Agents working with months-ahead or years-ahead transactions

CHAPTER 5 - THE RATES PROJECT

Purpose of the RATES project

Project results

Customer recruitment and participation

The California PUC granted SCE an experimental transactive subscription tariff

The RATES system was highly automated

The rest of this chapter

SECTION 1: RATES architecture and interfaces

SECTION 2: The TeMix agents

Battery storage agent

Pool pump agent

Electric vehicle agent

HVAC agent

Residual load

SECTION 3: The RATES platform, tenders, and subscriptions

The informational architecture of RATES

Summary

CHAPTER 6 TRANSACTIVE ENERGY ROADMAP FOR CALIFORNIA

What is the path forward?

Retail market design and tariffs

Investment and risk management

Wholesale market design

Regulation

Digital technology

Standards

Will customers be comfortable with high-tech automated energy agents?

Summary

CHAPTER 7 - SUMMARY: IN A NUTSHELL

Glossary

References