Aggregation Mechanism
The disclosed modular substrate block carries an individual credential containing, among other admissibility surfaces, an energy-storage admissibility surface. That surface specifies the block's signed nameplate energy capacity in kilowatt-hours, its rated charge and discharge power in kilowatts, its admissible temperature window, and its cycling envelope. When blocks are assembled by standard masonry methods into a wall, a floor, a roof, or any other building element, the aggregate energy-storage capacity of that element is the sum of the per-block signed capacity values. The aggregation occurs at three nested scales: wall-scale (one structural wall), floor-scale (one horizontal slab or roof system), and building-scale (the union of every credentialed element in the structure).
The building electrical system enumerates the blocks present in the structure by reading the credentialed-block manifest, which is the union of the lineage chains of all installed blocks. For each block it fetches the master credential, verifies the signature, extracts the energy-storage admissibility surface, and accumulates the signed nameplate value into the appropriate scale bucket. The accumulation is deterministic and stateless: any party with read access to the manifest can independently reconstruct the aggregate. A grid operator, a building owner, an insurer, or an auditor may walk the manifest and confirm the building's declared nameplate capacity without any reliance on the building electrical system itself.
Aggregation is structurally hierarchical. Per-block credentials sum into element-scale aggregates (one wall, one floor, one roof), element-scale aggregates compose into structural-zone aggregates (a single tenant suite, a single fire compartment, a single thermal zone), and zone aggregates compose into the building-scale aggregate. At each level the aggregation operation is the same: enumerate the constituents, verify signatures, extract admissibility surfaces, and sum signed nameplate values within scale-specific filters. The hierarchy admits independent verification at any level without requiring the verifier to walk the entire structure. A tenant verifying a tenant-bounded aggregate need access only to the manifest entries for their suite; an insurer verifying the building aggregate walks the full manifest. Intermediate aggregates are themselves signed by the corresponding governance authority, the tenant authority for tenant aggregates, the building authority for the building aggregate, producing a tree of signed attestations whose leaves are the per-block credentials and whose root is the building's declared nameplate capacity.
Operating Parameters At Each Scale
Wall-scale aggregation produces typical capacities of 1 to 50 kilowatt-hours per wall, depending on wall area, block class (lightweight versus heavyweight), and block fill factor. A representative residential interior partition wall of 8 square meters using a medium-class block carries approximately 5 to 12 kilowatt-hours; a structural exterior wall of 25 square meters using a heavyweight block carries 30 to 50 kilowatt-hours. Floor-scale aggregation produces 5 to 500 kilowatt-hours per floor, with light commercial floors at the low end and heavy industrial slabs at the high end. Roof-scale aggregation falls within the floor-scale range and is reported under the same scale identifier.
Building-scale aggregation sums across all credentialed elements and typically produces 100 kilowatt-hours for a single-family residence, 1 to 5 megawatt-hours for a mid-rise multifamily or commercial building, and up to 10 megawatt-hours for an industrial or institutional structure of substantial mass. Power-handling at each scale is bounded by the lesser of the aggregate signed power capacity and the building electrical-service capacity. Aggregate efficiency at each scale is computed by power-weighting the per-block efficiency entries and is reported as a single signed value within the building credential.
Admissible temperature window for the aggregate is the intersection of the per-block admissible temperature windows; if any block in the aggregate excludes a temperature, the aggregate excludes it. The cycling envelope at the aggregate level is reported per block class and is honored at allocation time rather than at summation time, because the aggregate cycling envelope depends on the dispatch profile chosen by the building electrical system. Round-trip efficiency is reported at three operating points (low-power, mid-power, peak-power) corresponding to the dispatch regimes the grid-services interface is expected to encounter; the per-point aggregate efficiency is the power-weighted mean of per-block per-point efficiencies, and the reported aggregate efficiency curve is signed under the building credential. State-of-charge reporting at the aggregate level is the energy-weighted mean of per-block state-of-charge values, with per-block dispersion exposed as an auxiliary scalar so that downstream consumers can distinguish a uniformly half-charged aggregate from an aggregate composed of fully charged and fully discharged constituents.
Time-domain parameters of the aggregate are similarly derived. Aggregate response latency to a dispatch instruction is the maximum of per-block response latencies, reflecting the worst-case time required for all participating blocks to reach the commanded operating point. Aggregate ramp rate is bounded by the slowest constituent and is reported as a signed scalar in kilowatts per second. Aggregate self-discharge rate is the energy-weighted mean of per-block self-discharge rates and is reported in fractional capacity per day. Each of these time-domain parameters is independently verifiable by walking the manifest and recomputing from per-block credentials.
Alternative Embodiments
Although the principal embodiment uses standard masonry assembly with mortar joints, alternative embodiments contemplate dry-stacked, post-tensioned, or interlocking block geometries; cast-in-place forms in which the credentialed substrate is poured into a structural framework; and hybrid assemblies in which credentialed blocks are integrated into prefabricated panel systems. In each case the aggregation primitive is unchanged: each block carries its admissibility surface, and the aggregate is the sum.
In an alternative embodiment, the building electrical system supports partial-aggregate views, in which a subset of blocks (for example, those in a single zone, those associated with a single sub-meter, or those serving a single tenant) are summed independently and exposed under their own scale identifier. This allows multi-tenant buildings to expose tenant-bounded aggregate capacities to their respective tenants without disclosing the full building manifest. In another embodiment, a portion of each block's storage surface is reserved for behind-the-meter loads while the remainder is exposed to grid-facing dispatch; the reserved portion is signed under a degraded service class and is excluded from the aggregate by class filter. In yet another, blocks may be relocated and re-credentialed into a different structure, in which case their admissibility surfaces re-attach to the new building's manifest and the prior aggregate is updated downward by the same primitive.
Composition Of The Aggregate Manifest
The credentialed-block manifest is a content-addressed enumeration of every block installed in the structure, indexed by the block's lineage-chain identifier. Each manifest entry records the block's location within the structure, its installation timestamp, its current admissibility-surface vector, and a pointer to the block's master credential. The manifest itself is signed by the building authority of record and propagated through the building-level credential, so that the building's signed nameplate capacity is itself a derived attestation rooted in the per-block signatures.
The aggregate composes with grid-facing dispatch through pair-settled grid services. The building electrical system presents the aggregate energy-storage admissibility surface to the grid as if it were a single resource of the corresponding capacity and power rating. Grid-facing dispatch instructions are received against this aggregate. Internal allocation of charge and discharge across the blocks is managed by the building electrical system, subject to the per-block admissibility bounds, temperature window, cycling envelope, power rating, exposed in each block's credential. No grid-facing instruction may cause a block to operate outside its signed bounds; allocation algorithms within the building electrical system are responsible for honoring this constraint.
Prior-Art Distinctions
Existing modular battery systems aggregate at the cabinet or rack level rather than at the structural-element level. A typical commercial battery installation consists of a small number of large cabinets located in a dedicated electrical room, with capacity declared at the cabinet nameplate by the manufacturer. The cabinets are not part of the building's structural system, the capacity is not derived from a credentialed manifest of constituent components, and third-party verification of the nameplate requires factory documentation rather than a cryptographic walk of per-component signatures.
Distributed battery systems for residential and small-commercial applications similarly aggregate at a per-unit level (typically 5 to 20 kilowatt-hours per unit), with the aggregate computed by the inverter manufacturer's proprietary management system and exposed only to that manufacturer's grid-services platform. None of these systems treat the structural element as the aggregation unit; none expose a cryptographically verifiable per-block manifest; and none compose with grid-facing dispatch through a pair-settled service primitive that holds at every scale from wall to building. The disclosed aggregation primitive departs from this prior art by making the structural element itself the unit of capacity, and by making every level of aggregation, wall, floor, building, independently verifiable from the same per-block credentials.
Thermal-mass storage systems integrated into building structure represent a closer analog in form factor but operate on entirely different physical principles and lack the credentialed-aggregation layer. Phase-change-material walls, sensible-heat concrete cores, and ground-coupled slabs store thermal rather than electrical energy and report capacity through engineering calculations performed at design time rather than through a per-component cryptographic manifest. Where these systems and the disclosed primitive coincide is only in the use of building structure as the storage medium; the aggregation, verification, and dispatch architecture differ entirely. Recent research on cement-matrix supercapacitors and structural-electrode composites investigates the per-block physical primitive but does not address aggregation, credentialing, or grid-facing dispatch composition. The disclosed primitive is orthogonal to the choice of per-block physics and applies whether the per-block storage mechanism is electrochemical, electrostatic, or otherwise, provided the per-block credential exposes a signed energy-storage admissibility surface.
Installation And Commissioning
Installation of credentialed substrate blocks proceeds by conventional masonry trades. Each block is identified by a printed or embedded credential reference (typically a two-dimensional barcode bonded to a non-load-bearing face, or an RFID tag embedded in the block body). At the moment of installation, the block's reference is read by the installer's commissioning device, the location within the structure is recorded, and the manifest entry is created and signed by the building authority of record. The act of laying the block thus produces a credential commit that is observable to downstream consumers within the latency bound declared by the building credential.
Commissioning of the aggregate occurs after the structural element is complete. The building electrical system enumerates the manifest entries for the element, verifies that all blocks are in expected admissibility states, computes the aggregate signed nameplate, and exposes the aggregate to the grid-facing dispatch interface. Any block whose credential cannot be verified, whose admissibility surface is in an unexpected state, or whose location does not match the manifest is excluded from the aggregate and flagged for review. The commissioning process is repeatable: a recommissioning event may be triggered at any time to re-verify the manifest and re-compute the aggregate, supporting periodic compliance reviews and post-renovation re-certification.
Disclosure Scope
This disclosure encompasses any building or structure in which credentialed substrate blocks are aggregated into wall-, floor-, roof-, or building-scale energy-storage volumes by summing the signed values of their per-block energy-storage admissibility surfaces; any electrical system that performs the summation; any manifest format that allows third-party verification by walking the per-block credentials; and any grid-facing dispatch interface that consumes the aggregate as a pair-settled grid service while honoring per-block admissibility bounds in internal allocation. It encompasses the alternative embodiments enumerated above and any equivalents thereof.
The disclosure further encompasses the use of the aggregation primitive in regulatory and commercial contexts where third-party verification of nameplate capacity is required: utility interconnection studies, capacity-market participation, insurance underwriting, financing collateral assessment, building-code compliance, and post-incident forensic reconstruction. In each context the credentialed manifest provides an evidentiary basis that is independent of the building owner's or installer's representations and that can be re-walked at any later date to confirm that the aggregate stated at one time was supportable by the per-block credentials in force at that time. Disclosure scope additionally covers the use of the manifest in cross-building aggregations such as virtual power plants and microgrids, in which the per-building aggregates from multiple structures are themselves summed by the operator of the cross-building service, with the same primitive applied at the higher scale. At every level of aggregation, from per-block through per-element, per-zone, per-building, and per-portfolio, the operation is the same: enumerate the credentialed constituents, verify their signatures, extract their admissibility surfaces, and sum the signed values within the applicable scale filter. The architecture's contribution is to make this operation uniform across all scales and to make every intermediate aggregate independently verifiable from the same per-block credentials that ground the lowest-level claim.
