South Fork Grid Consortium

We are seeking your comments, questions, and suggestions on this working draft 0.81.

South Fork Grid Manifesto

Principles for a 100% Renewable Energy System

The members of the South Fork Grid Consortium seek to create a “South Fork Grid”, consistent with intent of Governor Cuomo’s initiative to reform the energy vision (REV) of New York but under an accelerated path to 100% renewable energy systems.  The South Fork Grid envisioned is an aggregation of distributed energy generating devices (e.g., solar panels), energy storage devices (such as batteries), energy using devices (e.g., home air conditioning systems, light bulbs and pool pumps), and decentralized controllers (e.g., smart thermostats) interconnected through the internet (i.e., the Internet of Things) via wifi networks and through electrical distribution wires.  These various interconnected devices are then able to be managed (turned on and off) by the South Fork resident and his or her energy co-op using a smart phone or computer, which can orchestrate the efficient exchange of energy between the devices that generate, store and use it in a safe, secure, reliable, cost effective manner and sustainable fashion.

The South Fork Grid Consortium advocates the following principles in the development, deployment, management, and dynamic improvement of South Fork Grid based in 100% Renewable Energy:

1) Direct Benefit to Health, Human Security, and Environmental Conditions

The central reasons for the existence of the South Fork Grid are to promote the vitality of the South Fork’s ecosystems and social ecologies that in turn support the health, prosperity, quality of life, security and resilience of all residents and their communities.  The objective is for the South Fork Grid to support those benefits today and indefinitely into the future;

2) Strategic Positive Impacts on Resilience and Sustainability

The redesign of the South Fork electrical and broader energy systems must consider how the provision of energy affects a myriad of other factors essential to the resilience and sustainability of South Fork communities businesses, and households; 

3) Strategic Improvements in Climate Change Management

Climate change is a central consideration in the redesign of the South Fork energy system, which requires a rapid migration to a 100% renewable energy system on the South Fork;

4) Improving Local Value Chains, Prosperity and Social Equity

The resilience of the South Fork communities, as well as their prosperity and social equity, is improved when the local production of energy contributes positively to local green business development and employment growth through a 100% renewable energy matrix;

5) 100% Renewable Energy, Locally Controlled

A net 100% renewable energy matrix within the South Fork Grid must be locally designed, developed, managed, and governed to positively affect all other elements of its energy matrix (e.g., emergency services, health services, sanitation, water, environmental quality, the integrity of ecosystems and social ecologies, good governance, local management and control, education) and local value chains consistent with resilience and sustainability;

6) Advancing REV and a Green Political Economy for National Security

The South Fork Grid aspires to serve as a model and a positive way forward for a green political economy and national security in the South Fork, as well as in other New York communities proactively supporting, or aspiring to support, the REV (Reforming the Energy Vision) process.  The South Fork Grid aspires to advance REV by engaging a replicable model of net 100% renewable energy within Long Island, New York, the broader New York metroplex, the U.S., and throughout the planet to counteract the negative consequences of the petrochemical political economy, the nuclear industry, climate change and the need to be in conflict with other nations and groups to perpetuate unsustainable energy policies, consumption, and toxic emissions;

7) Exceeding the Clean Energy Standards and REV Goals

The South Fork Grid is not seeking to adopt the lowest common denominator within the REV goals; It is seeking to be a better path forward leading by example as a model of what is possible to do in exceeding the Clean Energy standards and REV goals in reducing carbon emissions, the dangers of nuclear fission energy production, and their relationship to environmental degradation, the threat of terrorism, and the risks of nuclear accident, contamination, and war;

8) Empowering Prosumers (Proactive Producers of Energy Locally)

The South Fork Grid Consortium is looking to vastly increase the number of “prosumers” (i.e., producer-consumers) of clean renewable energy on the South Fork, that are proactively participating in energy conservation, demand response, energy self-sufficiency, and energy co-ops.  In association with their energy co-ops, prosumers produce their own energy for their own purposes, and sharing the excess energy they produce with their neighbors, their South Fork communities, and the broader Long Island grid while benefiting economically from their energy contributions and carbon emission reductions;

9) Openly Reporting Carbon Emissions and Clean Energy Advancements

The South Fork Grid will openly show where clean energy and carbon emissions are being produced by neighborhood, including trend lines showing improvements and lagging indicators associated with South Fork Grid, Township, and Hamlet carbon emissions and green energy goals;

10) East End Resilience Network

The South Fork Grid is seeking to be a strong partner and convener within the East End Resilience Network test bed.  The East End Resilience Network embraces permission-less use and innovation (similar to the internet) of new renewable energy technologies.  These emerging technologies are engaged in living laboratories at the Resilience Capacity Zone (household, neighborhood, community) level, with variances from local, state, and federal law within specified and approved conditions consistent with safety and reliability standards;

11) Rapid and Broad Adoption of New Clean Grid Technologies

The South Fork Grid seeks rapid and broad adoption of new technologies that support the provisions of this agreement as long as they support open clean energy grid standards and the migration toward a safe, green political economy, which aspires to greater social equity;

12)Open Systems and Open Data Standards

The South Fork Grid embraces open system and open data standards for data collection, hosting capacity analysis, system planning, communication, network operation, and computation with appropriate levels of cyber and physical security to protect privacy and 100% system reliability under normal business conditions along with failsafe provisions for emergent conditions;

13) Networked Collective Human and Machine Intelligence

The South Fork Grid Consortium recognizes that it has to operate not only under current demands but also future demands.  It is clear that U.S. society is rapidly embracing advanced energy systems which will require a high level of engagement of collective human and machine intelligence.  This emerging cybernetic world in Long Island alone is connecting millions of humans and billions of smart devices (e.g., smart thermostats, electric and self-driving vehicles) networked together and interacting within the Grid;

14) Fully Islandable Systems

The South Fork Grid to protect itself from storms, cyber-attacks and other central electrical system collapses will have fully islandable, resilient physical and cyber mesh networks at the household, neighborhood, community, and South Fork-wide levels, with no one left without light, communication, and other basic needs being addressed under emergency conditions.  These islandable systems will require decentralized controllers and smart invertors;

15) Independence from Coercive and Corrosive Organizations

The South Fork Grid will shelter itself from organizations that carry large liabilities in association with dirty, dangerous, or environmentally destructive forms of energy or seek to impose activities that harm local health, human security, economic value chains, or the sustainability of communities, their social ecologies, and ecosystems;

16) Designed and Organized to Be Secure and Survive System Collapses

The South Fork Grid will shelter itself from organizations and technologies which may become single points of failure or collapse from malfeasance, misfeasance, terrorist attacks, unsupportable debt or unsustainable liabilities, which are or could become a danger to or reflect additional unnecessary costs to the South Fork Grid with cascading negative impacts on South Fork community resilience and sustainability;

17) Decentralized Influence and Empowerment

The South Fork Grid will engage in an exploration and tests of Community Choice Aggregation, or similar approaches of decentralized control to empower residents, their neighborhoods, and community to become decision makers and energy producers in the emerging REV Grid;

18) Serious Game Exercises: Building an Anticipatory Science Base

Starting in June 2018, the South Fork Grid will engage planning efforts for South Fork-wide serious game exercises for four simulated time frames: 1) the 2019 through the 2023 period; 2) the 2023 through the 2027 period; 3) 2028 through 2037; and 4) 2038 through 2047. These exercises will identify gaps and solutions to resolve the gaps in the resilience of the energy matrix on the East End of Long Island over these time frames.  The South Fork serious games will engage a broad set of stakeholders and decision-makers in the process of evaluating and shaping South Fork Grid energy systems plans, development initiatives, and operations;

19) Independent Energy System Simulation, Planning, and Testbeds

Starting in the spring of 2018, the South Fork Grid will engage a dynamic energy system simulation and planning process studying all of its potential energy system choices and their consequences in dynamic models with many scenarios using state-of-the-art technologies and anticipatory science to provide inputs into the South Fork Grid serious game exercises. These exercises will be open to participation by all residents of the South Fork and participating organizations in the East End Resilience Network testbed of the New York Resilience System.  These testbeds and their demonstration projects will lay the foundations and test principles and technologies essential to an effective and efficient competitive South Fork Grid marketplace;

20)  Energy Co-ops and Market Pilots

Starting in the spring of 2018, the South Fork Grid will advance local demand management services within the South Fork through the use of Energy Co-ops and initiate the process of identifying and starting market pilots of renewable energy production behind the meter and its aggregation and distribution locally and sub-regionally throughout the South Fork Grid.

This document is a working draft.  We welcome your comments and questions.