LF Energy, and its newest member Sony Computer Science Laboratories (Sony CSL), today launched a new open source project that aims to make microgrids more resilient.

It’s called Hyphae, and it’s a microgrid initiative that will automate the peer-to-peer distribution of renewable energy as we transition away from infrastructure of the traditional, centralized grid and expand into a distributed, renewables-intensive energy system. 

“A microgrid begins to compose an environment, like an island, that can be separate from the grid,” LF Energy Executive Director Shuli Goodman said. “Our investments in the grid into smaller and smaller components that can be composed and choreographed together will create the power system network of the future.”

Sony CSL, a subsidiary of Sony Corporation founded in 1988 as a computer science research lab, recently open sourced Autonomous Power Interchange System (APIS) software that will be the backbone of the Hyphae project. APIS is the autonomous power sharing management software that sits at the core of Sony CSL’s Open Energy System (OES) project, its proprietary peer-to-peer power interchange technology.

“We're just thrilled to have it,” Goodman said. LF Energy already has Resilient Information Architecture Platform for Smart Grid (RIAPS) and Grid eXchange Fabric (GXF), which are software platforms that can control microgrids, in its ecosystem of projects. “But what Sony CSL contributed begins to create a functioning, in the field prototype,” she added.

The partnership brings LF Energy another step closer to its goal of building the first interoperable alternating current- and direct current-ready microgrid.

Electricity comes in two main flavors: direct current (DC) and alternating current (AC).

DC, current that runs continually in a single direction like a battery or a fuel cell, was the standard in the U.S. during the early days of electricity. This linear movement of power presented a problem: DC could not easily convert to higher or lower voltages needed to deliver power to houses and office buildings. 

By contrast, AC travels in waves, reversing direction a certain number of times per second. The wave-like motion of AC power can be converted to different voltages using a transformer to distribute power transmission over longer distances. For this reason, AC power stations have been the national standard since the end of the 19th century.  

Although AC is cheaper to generate and has fewer energy losses than DC when transmitting electricity over long distances, its ability to work with transformers leans heavily on cogeneration that uses oil or gas as a stabilizing energy source.

As the energy system decarbonizes and generates more electricity from clean energy sources, the traditional power grid that relies on ACs and high inertia will not be able to provide the frequency stability needed to stabilize the inherent variability of renewable sources.

Alternative methods of maintaining frequency stability are a must, and LF Energy thinks Hyphae might just be the golden ticket to renewable-intensive grids.

OES and the APIS software that manages it are designed for use in DC microgrids where decentralized energy sources such as solar, which have a DC output, are connected directly to the grid. And because the intermittent nature of renewables makes energy storage vital in a renewables-intensive energy system, Sony CSL developed a decentralized battery system that can work autonomously in concert with the grid. 

Once power has been generated, however, electricity often must be converted or inverted to its correct form, at the right voltage, for transmission, said Kotaro Jinushi, business development manager at SONY CSL.

Under the current solar panel system, for example, energy can be distributed to the existing grid, but it's difficult to control how much is released to the normal distribution network, Jinushi explained. By using DC/DC converters and dedicated networks connected to individual houses, “our technology has the ability to control the flow of energy from one house to another,”Jinushi added. “With our technology, we really believe that we can accelerate installation of renewable energies without harming the existing infrastructure.”

Even so, APIS will still be getting a makeover.

“We're going to begin to go through a process of rearchitecting it from a monolithic software platform, and we’re going to break it apart into microservices,” Goodman explained. “Bringing it back to the bones and putting it back together again in a way that will create a modular, scalable architecture for massive deployment requires both hardware and software.”