  Digitalization has led to radical changes in the distribution of goods across
various sectors. The tendency is to move from traditional buyer-seller markets
to subscription-based on-demand "smart" matching platforms enabled by pervasive
ICTs. The driving force behind this lies in the fact that assets, which were
scarce in the past, are readily abundant, approaching a regime of zero marginal
costs. This is also becoming a reality in electrified energy systems due to the
substantial growth of distributed renewable energy sources such as solar and
wind; the increasing number of small-scale storage units such as batteries and
heat pumps; and the availability of flexible loads that enable demand-side
management. In this context, this article proposes a system architecture based
on a logical (cyber) association of spatially distributed (physical) elements
as an approach to build a virtual microgrid operated as a software-defined
energy network (SDEN) that is enabled by packetized energy management. The
proposed cyber-physical system presumes that electrical energy is shared among
its members and that the energy sharing is enabled in the cyber domain by
handshakes inspired by resource allocation methods utilized in computer
networks, wireless communications, and peer-to-peer Internet applications
(e.g., BitTorrent). The proposal has twofold benefits: (i) reducing the
complexity of current market-based solutions by removing unnecessary and costly
mediations and (ii) guaranteeing energy access to all virtual microgrid members
according to their individual needs. This article concludes that the proposed
solution generally complies with the existing regulations but has highly
disruptive potential to organize a dominantly electrified energy system in the
mid- to long-term, being a technical counterpart to the recently developed
social-oriented microgrid proposals.
