Introduction of Enoda PRIME® Exchanger: the integration of optimal passive design with complex dynamic control

ENODA can provide a system which is agnostic to the nature of supply and demand. To do that, there needs to be a fundamental enabling technology in operation. It sits in the location of the transformer just as the router sits in the former location of switch in telephone exchanges, and they both transform the nature of those networks. We can put the Enoda PRIME® Exchanger into the distribution network of utilities all around the world improving their performance and enabling grids to become the primary provider of system stability, changing the system topology dynamically. This is how we can unlock innovation in generation and consumption, delivering sustainable prosperity for everyone.

Enoda PRIME Exchanger 

The Grid

How do we enable the world’s coordinating systems infrastructure to become so much better, and decarbonised at the same time?

First, we have to coordinate a suitable energy system. We cannot suddenly replace the existing energy system with a complete alternative energy system. As all good designers understand, any complete design often becomes unworkable when a new element is abruptly attached. There needs to be a complete reworking of the pieces to make those additions integrate as part of a newly resolved system. Trillions has been invested in existing infrastructure, so economically, the solution needs to be backwards compatible. We have to be plug and play to the existing system, applied to the alternating current waveform. That's what we must continue to do if we want an economically sustainable system in the cities we live in now.

An alternating current waveform means it has a temporal dimension - it's a signal - and the entire system is predicated on maintaining its timing as a 60 hertz or 50 hertz signal. If we want to decarbonise load, electric vehicles, heat pumps, data centres, and industry, we need to be able to decarbonise generation as well. And the best pathway today for the decarbonisation of energy is solar, wind and other renewable sources. But all of those vary in time unpredictably. Day is followed by night. The wind blows, the wind doesn't blow; we have cloud cover, we don’t have clouds. We need have a system which is capable of not only acknowledging that reality, but to reliably function in that reality. It also needs to be able to deal with a massive decarbonisation of the load itself. For example, we are asking the grid to couple with the second largest system, the transportation system. We must be able to energise vehicles distributed across the system. If you can't solve for that problem, you don't decarbonise almost half the economy.

Future Facing Questions

So, if we want to be able to have a future where we make use of carbon-free generation of energy, we have to be able to deal with the insecurity, instability, the non-dispatchability of green energy as an input, and the myriad different behaviours that humans want to conduct themselves at the other end of that system. Whether it's charging my vehicle now, whether it's heating my house now, whatever it happens to be, there is a tremendous variety of activities we will want to electrify. These are not trivial consequences: reducing cooling and heating costs have transformed human life. We are literally healthier and live longer lives as a direct consequence.

So, the concept that we would ask people to use less energy, meaning less heating, less cooling, or less power is actually not a very good idea if you really care about people, is it? But then, if we can decarbonise our energy supply, do we care if people are heating their homes or cooling their homes? Of course we don't. That would be a valuable addition to their lives.

So how do we decarbonise? We have to have a grid - one that is fundamentally different from what it was up until this time. It was predicated on large spinning masses in which the spinning mass not only provided the primary power from coal-fired, gas-fired, oil-fired power stations, and nuclear. At the other end we had variant load, and the spinning mass provided resistance to the change in frequency and the peaking capacity, which allowed us to stabilise that system.

But if we look at the IEA's 2050 forecast for zero carbon, where's the spinning mass? There effectively is none.

So between now and 2050, we have to change one of the largest machines ever built to one which no longer has spinning mass, to one that is no longer totally dependent on spinning mass. Something has to provide that stability cost effectively, and at scale. The benefit of achieving that could be almost indescribably immense for humanity because the marginal cost of energy from generation like wind and solar is zero. If we can stabilise the system in real-time and cost effectively, consumers can enjoy abundant, low cost, clean energy.

So, we can massively reduce the cost of electricity to everybody so long as we can stabilise the signal...which until now, no one could.

If system stability won’t be provided at point of generation because there’s no spinning mass to provide the stability and manage load, the idea that demand management would be able to provision stability services at that scale is an immense control problem.

If however, we can provide stability from the grid itself, We must have a grid which connects anywhere to anyone. If the local domestic household in Europe or USA is actually going to be able to provide power back to the system positively contributing to system stability, then we can reduce the marginal cost of energy to everybody. First and foremost, though, we need a network, which connects anywhere to anyone to do that. It's similar to the transition of the internet. We had a switch network, which was not anywhere to anyone. We now have a network with the internet, with routers, it is now a system that is anywhere to anyone.

ENODA’s Systemic Solution

ENODA provides a system which is agnostic to the nature of supply and demand. To do that though, there needs to be one fundamental enabling technology. It has to sit in the location of the transformer just as the router sits in the former location of switch in telephone exchanges, and they both transform the nature of those networks. We can put the Enoda PRIME® Exchanger into the distribution network of utilities all around the world, improving their performance, and enable grids to become the primary provider of system stability. This is how we unlock innovation in generation and consumption, delivering sustainable prosperity for everyone.

The Prime Exchanger can enable that system, and the coordinator of the grid is Enoda ENSEMBLE™, a blockchain-based software system. Enoda ENSEMBLE™ coordinates each of these distributed devices so that they can behave as a single unity across the system, with no central control. Instead, the exchangers coordinate themselves to optimise the flow of power across the system to maintain stability in real time - securely. Utilising a blockchain, it's cyber secure, it's robust, it's distributed; there is no single point of system failure. As I said, to enable that we need a device – the Prime Exchanger – to be capable of controlling all the degrees of freedom of the primary power signal. That's what the Enoda PRIME® Exchanger does. It's bi-directional, it controls voltage and current power factor, phase and load balance, as well as removing harmonics.

So now we have an energy system capable of being as absolutely liquid as possible at all times.

Our first commercial product is a 400kVA, 15kV down to 400V European grid standard device. If you want to decarbonise the world, you must decarbonise North America, Europe, and Asia. If we achieve that, we can massively transform humanity's impact on the environment. So, the Enoda PRIME® Exchanger and its companion Enoda ENSEMBLE™, will allow us to totally decarbonise while increasing the prosperity of humans.

Inside the Enoda PRIME® Exchanger

At the heart of the Enoda PRIME® Exchanger, is our unique three-phase torus electromagnetic subsystem. It is related to machines, it is related to transformers, and a whole lot of electromagnetic devices, but it is none of the above. It has the same symmetry as the sinusoid that makes up the waveform within the system itself. It doesn't induce harmonics into the system in the way that a transformer would, and it can doing some truly unique things.

Exploded view of Enoda PRIME® Exchanger 400kVA

Electromagnetic interaction is well described by one of the fundamental symmetries of our universe. That symmetry means that electricity and magnetism are always in each other's presence - always and everywhere.

Matter interacts with the magnetic field, in ways remarkably different from how it would interact with the electric field; you can make use of Maxwell's third equation, change the magnetic field, and so too change the electric field. That is what William Stanley realised with the transformer. He made use of Faraday's insights to allow us to be able to step-up and step-down voltage in the most elegant manner. It was just such a beautiful thing to do. ENODA makes use of the same physics, but instead of it being a device that steps voltage by the same ratio at all times, it's a dynamic device. It dynamically modulates the flux through induction, allowing us to control all the dimensions of the electricity system.

Enoda PRIME® Exchanger 400kVA electromagnetic core

We are doing this by modulating the current flowing through the Prime Exchanger’s windings, allowing us to take a very poor signal in, and give you a clean signal out. Within this subsystem, we have control. We have edge compute to understand the signal, as well as power electronics and control, and this all sits in the same physical footprint as a transformer. That was an essential breakthrough for us. We had to be able to create a device which is small enough to fit into the physical enclosure that currently encloses a transformer. That way we can remove the very practical barriers to adoption on a global basis, by being backwards compatible.

ENODA will shortly be running pre-commercial pilots of 400kVA Prime Exchangers in European networks and would welcome conversations with utilities that wish to be in the first group of networks to experience the benefits of the Enoda PRIME® Exchanger.