IEEE Power & Energy Magazine - May/June 2022 - 91

neural networks outperformed humans
in visual pattern recognition.
DDL
The most recognized application of
DDL today is cryptocurrency. However,
DDL can potentially be applied
for other far-reaching uses. DDL is a
ledger that is distributed (many identical
copies exist across a network),
decentralized (no single entity is in
control), trustless (there is no need to
trust others), and immutable (it is very
difficult to tamper with records). The
1991 creation of a secure digital ledger
whose time stamps cannot easily
be tampered with is credited to Stuart
Haber and Scott Stornetta, who at the
time were working at Bell Communications
Research. However, a white
paper published on the Bitcoin blockchain
in 2009 in response to the 2008
financial crisis under the pseudonym
of Satoshi Nakamoto kick-started the
DDL revolution.
In 2010, the first application
of DDL was
born in the form of Bitcoin
cryptocurrency.
With the introduction
of smart contracts in
blockchains in 2015,
the era of decentralized
trustless applications
started. In 2017,
new protocols were
created to bridge realworld
data sources off
chain with on-chain
applications, allowing
DDL to be expanded
beyond the financial
sector. Today, decentralized
applications
5G
Networks
Humanity's obsession with connectivity
is nothing new. From the Royal
Road system developed by the Persian
King Darius I in the fifth century BC
to connect his vast empire, to Samuel
Morse's first wired telegraph message
sent in 1844, and from the invention of
the cellular mobile phone in 1973 by
Martin Cooper to the introduction of
the World Wide Web by Tim BernersLee
in 1991, this obsession has fueled
phenomenal social and economic
change. Society's pursuit for connectivity
was extended to man-made machines
when two computers " talked " to
each other in a Massachusetts Institute
of Technology lab in 1965.
The turning point for human and
that are built on DDL
platforms have started
to emerge in sectors
other than finance, including
the electrical energy sector
in particular (such as microtransactions
for local energy market trading)
and the Internet of Things (IoT)
in general (e.g., manufacturing automation,
e-mobility, and supply
chain management).
may/june 2022
Today,
decentralized
applications
that are built
on DDL
platforms
have started
to emerge in
sectors other
than finance,
including
the electrical
energy sector.
machine connectivity, however, was in
the 2010s when the speed and power
of long-term evolution cellular networks
connected the masses, and the
IoT vision became mainstream. On the
shoulders of several networking
enhancements
in 2019,
the first 5G
network was launched.
A 5G network enhances
the capacity, speed, latency,
and reliability
of preceding networks
by significant orders of
magnitude at a reasonable
cost. Supplementary
protocols, like narrowband
IoT, have made
it possible to bring low
power, low latency, low
costs, high range, and
reliability to the connectivity
of things. The
advent of the 5G New
Radio protocol means
that realizing the massive
interconnectivityof-things
vision is on
the horizon as it supports
a wide range of requirements for
data transfer, power, coverage, latency,
reliability, cost, and capacity.
A Digital Grid
I think the next disruption will be fueled
by the trio of 5G networks, AI, and
DDL. I characterize the future grid as
the " digital grid, " a physical electrical
grid that is massively interconnected,
is decentralized, and grows smarter as
it integrates with 5G networks, DDL
and AI.
5G networks make it technically
possible and economically feasible to
push the IoT to a new level. 5G adds
near-real-time (with a delay as short
as 1 ms) visibility and control to every
" thing " connected to the " last mile " of
a digital grid. The grid finally becomes
inclusive. AI will make it possible to
extract actionable knowledge from
massive data collected from loads,
generators, and energy storage units.
Data will finally become an asset and
not a liability. DDL will enable countless
decentralized, automated, peerto-peer
trustless transactions at every
layer of a digital grid. You will not
need to be a professional to take part in
energy trading.
To hit the 100% renewable electrical
energy target, the grid must fundamentally
change to rely on mostly
variable renewable resources while
maintaining a high standard of reliability.
To reach this goal, energy transition
entrepreneurs, early adapters, and forward-thinking
grid operators around
the world are pushing the boundaries
by experimenting with unconventional
products and services. Peer-to-peer microtransactions
of energy, cloud energy
storage, renewable energy as a service,
virtual power plants, and retail renewable
energy contracts with no limits
on energy use (similar to unlimited
data plans for mobile phones) are a
few examples. Such innovations have a
much higher chance of being adopted
beyond experimentation and will
influence
widespread change if a digital
grid materializes. The reason is that a
digital grid is capable of facilitating a
massive number of micro- and macrotransactions
locally and regionally, in a
decentralized, automated, secure, and
intelligent manner, among distributed
variable renewable generators, energy
storage units, and active loads to deliver
reliable electricity.
p&e
ieee power & energy magazine
91
IEEE Power & Energy Magazine - May/June 2022

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of IEEE Power & Energy Magazine - May/June 2022
