NEWS: AES aims to stitch the country’s patchwork of connect-and-manage systems into a single standard. 🪡

The proposed Grid 2.0 standard, floated by AES SVP Chris Shelton and colleagues, took inspo from the rules that run the internet. 

How it works: “New large loads, transmission, batteries, and clean energy assets voluntarily adopt orchestrated management of their grid participation in a real-time, permission-based paradigm,” according to a new report. This essentially codifies the “fragmented” processes introduced by grid operators around the country.

The math: If new loads accept 0.25% curtailment, it would free up 76 GW nationally from existing infrastructure, the report noted. “A small amount of flex unlocks a large amount of capacity on the system we already pay for as electricity customers,” Shelton wrote on LinkedIn.

The model: Shelton and his team expect to work with a few early adopters, then scale. For data centers already running workload schedulers, all that’s needed is software integration.