SIMPLE Microtransactions

Bear Systems is building on its next generation cybersecurity platform to provide a range of SIMPLE (Secure Integrated ML Platform Leveraging Expertise) solutions for the world’s most pressing needs.  This blog entry is one of a series of introductions showing how Bear can provide a SIMPLE solution for specific vertical challenges.

When people hear the term “microtransactions” (MT), they often think about banking.  In reality, there are a large number of very important MT systems, and in this post, we will focus on the energy grid as a powerful example.

A growing number of people are attempting to create their own energy through options such as hydroelectric, wind, and solar equipment.  As people become more and more efficient at producing their own energy, they are discovering surpluses of energy that they wish to trade back to their energy grid.  At the same time, large commercial buildings that have historically leveraged battery-based demand-response systems to mitigate peak energy costs are also looking to trade back energy during these peak times.

Energy companies are increasingly behind demand and are very interested in obtaining this energy.  It would seem that this is a perfect option and something that should be easily achieved.

The problem is that these microtransactions at the edge are extremely hard to do and often involve a large number of very dynamic rules.  For example, what are the energy demands at different levels of state, local, and hyperlocal levels?  Give the current availability of a local grid, how quickly can energy be transmitted to areas requiring that surplus?  Even longer-term trends that aid in predictively determining costs are constantly changing and can greatly impact exchange prices.

Currently all of these transactions occur through central systems within a given power plant or major utility building, at best.  While these systems contain the domain expertise and algorithms to handle a lot of this complexity, they are just too far away to be able to interact in time to handle these exchanges.

Compounding this challenge, and as can be read about in our blog post on SIMPLE CNI, most grid systems run SCADA which is a very insecure communications management platform.  Attempting to process transactions remotely through such a system is a nonstarter.

SIMPLE Energy starts by securely locking down all devices in a power grid and leverages quantum resilient communication security between each endpoint.  SIMPLE Energy also provides a distributed deep learning system that enables completely autonomous transaction systems at the edge to the level of individual houses and/or buildings.  These SIMPLE Energy Locations use existing algorithms, encapsulated Utility Domain Expertise, and a range of out of band inputs to continuously modify ongoing exchanges.  Since SIMPLE Energy embeds its ML/AI systems directly into each location, advanced features such as predictive exchange rates can be hyper-localized very each exchange.

Utilities will be able to extend the SIMPLE Energy platform to enable any feature that they require and move beyond cybersecurity and exchanges into important maintenance and resiliency operations.  Within the exchange system, as one example, a Utility might have a new module that constantly checks electrical transmission rates to aid is better refinement of those exchange rates.

SIMPLE Energy is not just for the latest equipment either as it is clear that the challenges for SCADA revolve around legacy equipment management.  More on this topic can be read in our Smart CNI blog post.

There is obviously more, much more, to our SIMPLE MT solution and, if you are interested, please contact us to learn more!