lunes, noviembre 12, 2007

Disintegrating the Grid and Retail Worlds

Instead of trying to integrate the grid and the retail sides of the utilities, CIOs should take the results of an essential system analysis that supports the EWPC market architecture and design breakthrough paradigm shift of the power industry.

Disintegrating the Grid and Retail Worlds

By José Antonio Vanderhorst-Silverio, Ph.D.

Systemic Consultant: Electricity

Copyright © 2007 José Antonio Vanderhorst-Silverio. All rights reserved. No part of this article may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, without written permission from José Antonio Vanderhorst-Silverio. Please write to javs@ieee.org to contact the author for any kind of engagement.

W. Marie Zanavich, Vice President Information Technology / CIO, Retired, has produced a very interesting piece of work to support the integration of the grid and retail sides of the utilities, based on the cumulative learning of the past 30 years in standards and process disciplines of the IT business. She concludes that “the ‘enterprise direction’ [of the CIO] should be the only one supported.”

An alternative view of the article supports the need to restructure the power industry under the EWPC market architecture and design paradigm, as can be seen in Disruptive Technologies Convergence. With EWPC most of the technology integration present challenges identified in the article disappear. By performing an essential systems analysis, to find out the real information system requirements of the power industry, I came up with the Synthesis Proposal Agreement of EWPC.

The biggest technology (compatibility and integration) issue originates in an intuitive and mistaken restructuring that separates transmission from distribution and that keeps distribution together with the retail operation in the utilities. Restructuring is in essence an information technology event, in which there are great efficiency opportunities on the customer side of the business, arising from the great reduction in transaction costs with the introduction of innovative business models to take the power industry out of the NO PROFIT ZONE, as explained in Let EWPC Come to Fruition.

In addition, serious difficulties on the integration of the grid with retail were explained in the article The Anti-System Utility. The problem is that the distribution side of the grid has been used to keep the retail side of the enterprise as a monopoly or as a powerful incumbent retailer. Those powerful retailers obstructs competition, as is the recent case of Ohio’s plan for re-regulation, as explained in the A New Mistaken Experiment and that are to be resolved with “Let the Market Decide” in Ohio.

Unlike the grid and retail side of the utility under transmission access, the integrated transmission and distribution grid, which is kept together under EWPC, has the same transportation function and the same culture under the same roof. That is why I also wrote the EWPC article Solving Smart Grid Cost Recovery to solve the difficulty that regulators have to approve AMI investment. I said above that most of the problems disappear, thinking of the great information technology challenges of implementing the smart grid.

Retail competition at the federal or global level, under prudential regulations, with Second Generation Retailer - 2GR developing business model innovations, will result in Retailers Enterprise Solutions as explained in Positive Returns under EWPC. AMI investments then will no longer be bets of regulators, but risks taken by 2GRs under competition.

Reference and context: Technology Integration Presents Challenges




The EWPC Textbook

A textbook on electricity without price controls (EWPC) has been in the making for quite some time. The textbook will answer the paradox, “How much system reliability can you afford?” by integrating preceding work, which will include a whole chapter in physical and financial risk management.

The EWPC Textbook

By José Antonio Vanderhorst-Silverio, Ph.D.
Systemic Consultant: Electricity

Copyright © 2007 José Antonio Vanderhorst-Silverio. All rights reserved. No part of this article may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, without written permission from José Antonio Vanderhorst-Silverio. Please write to javs@ieee.org to contact the author for any kind of engagement.

Thank you Fred Banks, Len, Michael, Fred Plett, Jim, Steve, Peter, Joseph, and many other important and intelligent persons, like yourselves, that have questioned or helped the EWPC market architecture and design breakthrough paradigm concepts, under this article or in other physical or electronic venues.

I am happy to tell all of you, and the general public, that I have decided to write the textbook “EWPC Theory and Practice,” since I have now come full circle with the key insight of William C. Hayes Editorial, in the Electrical World magazine of April 1st, 1978, “How much system reliability can you afford?,” which signalled very clearly the need for a paradigm shift of the power industry.

This morning, after almost 30 years of keen observations and hard work in the power industry, I woke up with a strong message that is going to be the center of the EWPC book, which fully answers that engineering, economic, social, and financial paradox, that “brought the utility industry to a cross roads,” as Mr. Hayes wrote.

Most of the concepts of the textbook are already in the GMH Blog and in www.EnergyPulse.net, while the most recent are in www.energyblogs.com, needing a strong editorial and design effort to transform it into a coherent textbook.

From what I gather from Fred insistence, on the need of a textbook that covers electric derivatives, there is a need for a textbook (not necessarily financial) to cover both the physical and financial risk management aspects of EWPC. One whole chapter of the textbook will be dedicated to it. Since my Ph.D. training is in Information Theory, where random variables and random processes are everyday work, I will take that challenge very seriously.

Readers are advised to read very carefully the recent rebuttals posted, before making any conclusions.

Best regards,

José Antonio