VOLTTRON™
Real-time, scalable platform for transactive energy control
Small-scale computers—such as the Raspberry Pi—can have VOLTTRON™ installed as a controller.
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Our energy system is changing rapidly. Across buildings and the grid, digital technology is producing new data streams that offer in-depth understanding of the system. At the same time, integrating renewable energy generation, energy storage, and electric vehicles is adding new challenges.
With support from Department of Energy, PNNL developed a platform to support the needs of this changing energy system. VOLTTRON™ is an agent execution platform that provides services to its agents that allow them to easily communicate with physical devices and other resources. It enables mobile and stationary software agents to perform information gathering, processing, and control actions. VOLTTRON can independently manage a wide range of applications, such as HVAC systems, electric vehicles, distributed energy or entire building loads, leading to improved operational efficiency.
With the real-time, scalable distributed control and diagnostics capability needed to maintain high levels of reliability and security, VOLTTRON enables the integration of today's new energy system.
VOLTTRON Attributes
- Open, flexible and modular software platform.
- Easy application development.
- Object oriented, modern software development environment.
- Language agnostic - does not tie applications to a specific language.
- VOLTTRON supports a commonly used device and control systems protocols, such as, BACnet® and Modbus®.
- Low CPU, memory, and storage footprint requirements.
- Supports non-Intel CPUs.
- Supports platform services, such as, messaging, mobility and application support.
Downloading VOLTTRON
VOLTTRON is an open source technology. The source code has been released to the public and the research team invites you to download VOLTTRON at GitHub; here you will find a quick start page, documentation, and the VOLTTRON User Guide. VOLTTRON's non-proprietary nature makes it possible for researchers and software developers to use this tool to build applications to more efficiently manage energy use among appliances and devices.