Grid Signals

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Sascha Janssen

Sascha Janssen

Principal Solutions Architect @AWS working with the energy industry. Outside-in views on grid modernisation, distributed trust, and the infrastructure in between. Opinions my own.

Rooftop solar homes at night connected to a control room where a human operator oversees automated dispatch, with a stop button and decision record

Designing the Stop Button

The AI Act asks for human oversight where automation can affect physical systems faster than operators can assess individual actions. Every industry that hit this wall solved it with architecture, not vigilance. The grid can too — and it has already built much of the foundation.

Issue #010 cover - a low-voltage feeder at night, from substation to the last house on the line

The Last House on the Line

For a century, grid engineers designed the whole feeder around one customer: the last one. Rooftop solar broke that rule — and took the industry's easiest fairness answer down with it.

Issue #009 cover - AI dispatching distributed energy assets

Why Does an Energy Asset Act?

Fifty thousand batteries, one algorithm, no human in the dispatch path. If you want AI dispatching your assets, read the EU AI Act as architecture, not legal text.

500MW and No Receipts

500MW and No Receipts

AI data centres are the grid’s most significant new load. They’re also its least verifiable flexibility participant.

Five Primitives No One Assembled

Five Primitives No One Assembled

A minimum viable architecture for flexibility market verification exists in pieces. Here is how they fit together.

The Integration Gap

The Integration Gap

The engineering primitives for verifiable flexibility settlement already exist. The industry just hasn’t picked them up yet.

The Witness Problem

The Witness Problem

What a flexibility settlement record has to prove — before anyone argues about who builds it.