Transferring Packetized Energy Across Cells with Asynchronous Forwarding

Energy routers are novel power electronic devices, which can link previously unconnected parts of the power grid. They can steer the electric currents in a meshed power grid, helping to unburden overloaded power lines. Additionally, the energy routers partition the power grid into electrical cells which can operate independently of the wide area synchronous grid. In this paper, we advance the 'Energy Packet Grid', a novel control architecture to organize the envisioned future power grid with energy routers. In this architecture, energy is exchanged with 'Energy Packet Transfers', which can be viewed as short-term contracts between energy routers and other power electronic devices. The core contribution of this paper is 'Asynchronous Forwarding', a protocol that organizes Energy Packet Transfers across multiple cells and energy routers. It provides a flexible and loss-efficient way to organize power flows across cells. We evaluated Asynchronous Forwarding in our custom simulator and in hardware experiments, using real-life power electronic devices, demonstrating the protocol's feasibility.