Learning path

Grid Foundations

How a power market turns bids, load, and wires into a price at every point on the grid, learned by running one. The first path, and the one every other path builds on.

Who it is for

Anyone who now makes or supports grid decisions without a power background: new hires in energy roles, site and procurement teams, credit and research analysts, consultants, and students in an introductory power systems course.

Learning objectives

By the end of the path, a learner can:

1. Explain why a grid operator commits units a day ahead and dispatches them hour by hour, and what unit commitment decides that dispatch does not.
2. Build a merit order from generator costs and capacities, and find the marginal unit that sets the price in an uncongested hour.
3. Explain how line limits, generator limits, and ramp rates constrain the least-cost dispatch (security-constrained economic dispatch).
4. Identify a binding line, read its shadow price, and explain why congestion makes prices differ from bus to bus.
5. Split a locational marginal price (LMP) into its energy, congestion, and loss components, and say what drives each.
6. Trace how congestion moves money between generators and loads through settlement and congestion rent.
7. Predict, then check, how a line outage, a generator outage, solar, a battery, or a new data center load changes prices and congestion.

Labs

• Placement: Energy Markets Trivia, to find where you start.
• Core lab: the Grid Simulator, a day in a five-bus power market built on the PJM 5-bus test system. It commits units, then runs security-constrained economic dispatch for each of 24 hours and explains every price step by step.
• Final check: the same Trivia check, to show what you gained.

How it is assessed

Each lab will carry 3 to 5 set scenarios with a pass mark: a saved starting state, a question to answer, and a scoring rule. The path ends with a short capstone on a live market from Virya Intelligence, and a certificate with a public verification link.

Where it leads

Trading and Risk, Energy for Compute, Policy and Geopolitics, or the Grid Operations lab. In Virya Intelligence, the same mechanics drive the Underwrite workspace.

Open the Grid Simulator

Every lab is free to play today with one sign-in. Graded scenarios, certificates, the cohort dashboard, and the capstone on live market data come with paid plans, which are not on sale yet.