Presentation: The Tesla Virtual Power Plant
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Abstract
A Virtual Power Plant (VPP) is a network of distributed energy-resources (often solar, wind, and batteries) that are aggregated to provide smarter and more flexible power generation, distribution, and availability. A VPP leverages assets for more than one purpose, and, in doing so, decentralizes generation, enables market participation for small generators, increases grid reliability, and smooths the intermittency of renewable generation while improving the economics of renewables.
Tesla's VPP consists of vertically integrated hardware and software, including both cloud and edge computing. The Tesla Energy infrastructure platform ingests and aggregates telemetry from tens of thousands of assets, including Powerwalls, Powerpacks, and Megapacks, with low latency, and robustly distributes control commands, handling measurement uncertainty and network intermittency. Tesla Autobidder leverages this infrastructure platform to optimize diverse asset fleets, decomposing the optimization algorithm across edge and cloud intelligence.
This talk will explore the evolution of Tesla's VPP architecture, including:
- The use of distributed, actor-model programming for virtually representing physical assets and performing low-latency, hierarchical aggregations of telemetry.
- Managing complex workflows for forecasting, optimization, bidding, and control that must be predictable, reliable, and resilient under market-timing, algorithmic, and physical constraints. These workflows must handle diverse inputs, including inputs from third parties, that are only eventually consistent.
- Using Reactive Streams for reliably interfacing disparate systems, respecting resource constraints, and managing high-volume, near-real-time data streams.
- Introducing functional programming techniques to make the software more composable, reliable, and testable.
- Trade-offs between training and running global and local forecasting and optimization models.
- The development of responsive user-interfaces for operations and energy-market participation.
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