lunes, enero 18, 2010

Conversaciones Estratégicas sobre Haití, la CDE y Google

Editorial del GMH
18 de enero, 2010

Desde que se inició hace casi cinco años, el Grupo Millennium Hispaniola, una propuesta para desarrollar la República Dominicana y Haití en este siglo, hemos venido tejiendo sostenidamente conceptos organizativos emergentes, orientados a apoyar la propuesta mencionada, inicialmente en la necesaria transformación del sector eléctrico, para poner en funcionamiento un sistema que persiga el máximo bienestar social. El aporte del GMH a nuestros vecinos haitianos, en este momento de intensa solidaridad, es que trabajemos juntos para implantar un cambio del estilo prevaleciente de gestión, a uno que facilite conversaciones estratégicas en los más altos niveles organizacionales, acordes con la incertidumbre reinante en el mundo de hoy que presagia un nuevo orden emergente. En esencia, necesitamos impulsar un círculo virtuoso en que nuestros países se refuercen mutuamente.

Como muestra palpable de la mencionada incertidumbre, el Foro Económico Mundial acaba de publicar su informe sobre los riesgos globales para el 2010, del que recojo dos palabras que sintetizan la crítica situación de la economía global: agudamente vulnerable. En ese informe se destaca que los tres riesgos mayores son: 1) La crisis de la deuda soberana de los Estados Unidos y del Reino Unido; 2) Más colapsos de precios de los activos. Se estima que China va a seguir los pasos del Japón en los años 90; y 3) Durmiendo hacia una crisis energética por falta de inversión.

Coincidiendo con el 50 aniversario de la CDE, hoy se ha convocado una reunión para organizar una cumbre entre gobiernos e instituciones donantes que será centrada en el desarrollo de Haití a corto y mediano plazos. Por los grandes enlaces sistémicos que unen la República Dominicana con Haití, entiendo que la cumbre es una magnifica oportunidad para adoptar un proceso de conversaciones estratégicas, amparadas no en proyecciones que funcionan en tiempos de baja incertidumbre, sino en la planificación por escenarios, que forma parte del sistema de conocimiento profundo sugerido por W. Edwards Deming. En ese sentido, reitero la sugerencia de que lean el artículo visionario A Better Decade Require the End of the Prevailing Style of Management.

Por ejemplo, con conversaciones estratégicas en el sector eléctrico amparadas en tres escenarios plausibles de futuro, uno de los cuales podría considerar la inminente desaparición definitiva de la CDEEE, porque la misma impida la existencia de un sistema (el todo vale más que suma de las partes) y por ende la expectativa de lograr el máximo bienestar social. Tal escenario puede basarse en la aparición en escena de Google Energy, que podría ser la señal emergente de que dicho escenario ya se activó. Al respecto, sugiero que los líderes dominicanos y haitianos, de todos los estratos, pongan mucha atención al artículo Is Google the New Enron?

Cabe indicar que, en ese escenario emergente, el empuje de la reestructuración hacia modelos organizativos radicalmente diferentes, a los que impulsa el estilo prevaleciente de gestión, es la aparición de los “agentes de software” que se suman por primera vez a nosotros, los agentes humanos, dentro de las estructuras de las organizaciones sociales. Esos agentes representativos de las tecnologías de información y comunicaciones son el nuevo elemento barato que está destinado a reemplazar el petróleo para impulsar un mayor nivel de productividad y bienestar, facilitando el desarrollo e implantación de sistemas socio técnicos y con ello las naciones del planeta.





Is Google the New Enron?

First update. Original comment and response on the EWPC Blog.

Comments

<< Even though Mr. Carson and all readers of the discussion now know that Enron's problems were related with EnronOnline >>

No, we "know" no such thing. I take exception to this tactic. Frankly, I should never have responded to your nonsense.
James Carson

Please take a look at the post "Re: Is Google the New Enron?" in the link http://bit.ly/59q1Ry
Jose Antonio Vanderhorst-Silverio

-----------------------

Even though a debate has already reaffirmed without doubt that “The answer should be a strong NO!,” there is additional evidence and requirements to support the “strong NO!” answer.

Is Google the New Enron?


By José Antonio Vanderhorst-Silverio, Ph.D.
Creator of the EWPC-AF
Systemic Consultant: Electricity


First posted in the GMH Blog, on January 17th 2010.

Copyright © 2010 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. This article is an unedited, an uncorrected, draft material of The EWPC Textbook. Please write to javs@ieee.org to contact the author for any kind of engagement.

Most Viewed on the EWPC Blog January 17th, 2010

· The EWPC Textbook (13,064)
· The Sixth Disruptive Technology (9,556)
· Demand Integration is NOT the Province of Politics. (6,204)
· Nanosolar Breakthrough and the Old Paradigm (5,677)
· Response to Professor Banks (5,411)

Most Commented on the EWPC Blog January 17th, 2010

· Can the Power Industry Eliminate its Price Controls to the End Customer? (66)
· The Next Energy Secretary (57)
· Response to Professor Banks (46)
· EWPC’s Tipping Point (44)
· IMEUC False Facts (41)
· Campaign for Fair Electricity Rates (34)


“Is Google the New Enron?” is a very good question that was raised by Ian Bell in earth2tech.com. Repeated under the EWPC post Can We Let Google and Wal*Mart be Global Energy Retailers?, my response was:

The answer should be a strong NO! Google Energy should be something very different than ENRON. ENRON was the result of an incomplete market, that lacked enough functionality, under a flawed architecture. That market was based on the obsolete Investor Owned Utilities Architecture Framework and its incremental extensions, that keep adding huge complexity.

An interesting debate under the article confirms the “strong NO!” The discussion started with Mr. Carson, who essentially took a tangent by writing that, to his “… knowledge there were no particular problems with…” EnronOnline. This was part of my first response: “I do not disagree that Mr. Carson may be right. His post, however, do not change at all my post.” As my first response might have left some doubt, however, in the ongoing discussion it was determined, without any doubt, that Enron and EnronOnline were “mutually dependent on each other.”

Even though Mr. Carson and all readers of the discussion now know that Enron’s problems were related with EnronOnline, this article will present additional evidence and requirements to further support the strong NO response. That response requires that Global Energy Retailers should emerge under a complete and fully functional architecture framework, as explained in the introductory post States that Implement a Heterogeneous Grid are Poised to be the Winners:

States legislatures need to empower state regulators to do the innovative job to satisfy the need for their constituencies that a homogeneous grid is no longer able to provide. To consider a heterogeneous grid, legislatures can take a look at the now closed debate between Mr. James Carson and I, under the EWPC article The Electricity Without Price Controls Architecture Framework (EWPC-AF).

As key evidence, it is important to know that Enron decided to pull the plug out of the domestic market as early as in 1998. The June issue of that year of the magazine Power Economics reads:

Enron has pointed the blame at the ‘competitive transition charge’ which the incumbent investor-owned utilities are collecting to offset their stranded costs. Because of this and the across-the-board rate cut of 10 per cent that was mandated by the state government, there is very little margin with which to make attractive offers – and a profit.


But we now know that the situation faced by what I call First Generation Retailers was the “result of an incomplete market, that lacked enough functionality, under a flawed architecture.” For that reason, Enron operated only in the dysfunctional wholesale market.

Google, Wal*Mart, Microsoft and/or any other potential global Second Energy Retailer will operate in the domestic market, which is where a revolution of value creation is in the making in the global power industry. As described in the EWPC article Forget Demand Side management (DSM); Think Demand Side Innovation (DSI), Second Generation Retailers will need to develop ongoing competitive business model innovations, that will include DSIs into their customers’ one stop service integrated offerings. That competition is not a price competition between First Generation Retailers, like the one that Enron described, but a system architecture competition between Second generation Retailers, like those of the Silicon Valley Model.

Nothing less than a complete and fully functional market is required to enable those innovations and the jobs and wealth that come with the development of the resources of the demand side. While the First Generation Retailers in today’s liberated markets depend on wholesale market price supply competition, the proposed Second Generation Retailers bridge the retail and wholesale markets. In that way, they compete in both markets, where the continuously changing wholesale market price is the result of both supply and demand.

As I said earlier, there eventually will emerge a set of global prudential regulations for Second Generation Retailers, so that merger and acquisition activity would be restricted. From the responses that I received at that time, I know that it is even difficult at the US federal level, unless the government takes the advice given in the EWPC article A Better Decade Require the End of the Prevailing Style of Management.

In that regard, the post Making Socio-Technical Architecture and “The Smart Grid Game” Mutually Reinforce Each Other, gives an example of how to have effective regulation by letting the system architect decide on the few critical systemic architecting issues, that do no belong to the prevailing political process, as explained in the September/October 2002 issue of the IEEE IT Professional magazine article “Less is More with Minimalist Architecture,” written by Ruth Malan and Dana Bredemeyer.