domingo, agosto 25, 2013

An answer to "2003 Blackout: Could Smart Grid Save Us Next Time?"

Second update. A solid societal blackout framework change to save GlobalDebout from Smart Grid technical blackouts. This starts with the post Power to Global Debout: recalling the August 2003 Northeast Blackout and the update to the post Un País Sin Apagones (UPSA), something like to A Country Without Blackouts, which are integral to this update. UPSA as you can see has now emerged as an answe to what was suggested in the post Can #GlobalDebaut international call concentrate on an Ashoka like solid framework change?

The most critical questions raised on November 2004, in the Policy Analysis of the Cato Institute, Rethinking Electricity Restructuring, by Peter Van Doren and Jerry Taylor is that
Accordingly, anyone who believes market forces ought to play a larger role in electricity has to argue... convincingly that the California meltdown and the Northeast blackout were not the result of market forces. 
The convincing argument we discovered is now very simple: those blackouts are the result of anti-systemic markets forces. While researching for this update,  I went ahead and posted the following, as the second comment (the first comment is what makes the bridge from smart meters to the 2003 Blackout, is repeated at the end of this update) under the post Smart meters help consumers avoid wasting money on energy efficiency, written on August 12, 2016, by Michael Giberson on the Knowledge Problem Blog.
I love the last two paragraphs Lynne Kiesling posted on April 9, 2004 in A LITTLE PREMATURE?,
You can tell a lot about the perspective in the report from the heading in Chapter 2: “The North American Power Grid Is One Large, Interconnected Machine”. But this “one large machine” picture produces a misconception, or let’s call it an over simplification, of reality on the grid. This misconception is that reliability on the bulk power grid is an either/or proposition: either it is working, or it isn’t, and we’re all in this together. The implication is usually that we’re all bound together by one gigantic externality problem, and if you believe it then the answer is you need to pay more money to improve supply-side system reliability.

This mechanistic perspective reveals just how deeply the industry, regulators and policymakers still take a very physical supply-oriented view of the system. They would be more innovative, and come up with better policies for more robust networks, if they treated the power grid as an organic, dynamic system.
I love it, because she was supporting the emergence of a new civilization that will take market share from the industrial civilization, which we have been calling the systemic civilization. As an example, please consider the post Can we agree with the Second Curve, while not with Handy?, which at the moment has the following updates:
First update. As Handy is right on about privatization, Do we need deregulation?

Second update. If First Curve restructuring increases inequality, Would Second Curve restructuring decrease it?

Third update. Early harvest 2015 Lima Annual Meetings: Electricity Pact strategy of trajectory.
Fourth update. Will positive signals on wellbeing and growth come from organization? 
Fifth update. ¿Evitará cosecha temprana en Pacto Electrico que el 1% sea más rico que el 99%? (Will early harvest in Pacto Electrico avoid that the 1% get richer than the 99%?). 
Six update. ¿Cómo podría el Pacto Electrico atraer emprendedores que salten a la Segunda Curva para crear riqueza mundial? (How would the Pacto Electrico attract entrepreneurs that leap to the Second Curve to create world growth?) 
Seventh update. As the UK energy market remains on the 1st Curve, Pacto Eléctrico should leapfrog us to the 2nd Curve. 
Eigth update. Tres reglas de liderázgo para el Pacto Eléctrico cuando cada aspecto de negocio está a punto de cambiar (Three leadership rules for Pacto Electrico when every aspect of business is about to change.) 
Ninth update. Countries must leap into Hagel’s electoral strategy of trajectory on Handy’s curve of systemic civilization. 
Tenth update. Help #GlobalDebout entrepreneurs at the Bottom of the Pyramid ‘Be discovery driven.’
From Katherine's article "2003 Blackout: Could Smart Grid Save Us Next Time?, we select the following as representative of the above mentioned mechanistc mindset:
Greentech Media recently spoke with Dagle about those causes and about how, ten years later, a slightly smarter grid and more stringent oversight could help mitigate the extent of the next blackout. After describing each cause, she asked: What’s been improved? and What still needs to be done?
On each of the causes there is an overing organic minset tha was introduced in the initial text of this post, which is described s follows:
Cause #1: Inadequate understanding of the system. Instead of a system, we are dealing with an anti-system that is begging to be transformed into a system, with the understanding that is available in the background of this blog.

Cause #2: Loss of situational awareness. Instead of the situational awareness limited to the power system, the customer experience at the retail market is key for the organic dynamic system that introduces direct democracy of the systemic market (#DD_SM on Twitter) on society.

Cause #3: Inadequate vegetation management. While impotant under the mechanistic mindset, it becomes an economic problem for those who fail under the organic minset.

Cause #4: Inadequate oversight of reliability coordinators. While supporting the smart grid transition centered on reducing technical blackouts, it is superseeded by the Great electric service transformation centered on avoiding societal blackouts.
The first comment under the  post Smart meters help consumers avoid wasting money on energy efficiency:
Should we be confortable with cause and effect analysis in a highly interdependent world? Customers have standardized smart meters that they didn’t choose as part of their investment. What’s the risk of early obsolescense of those smart meters? Should the feel good energy efficiency investments give customers value on the customer experience be neglected in the analysis?

Should customers continue to be deluded or be undeluded in retail markets with the right kind of structure? Please consider the following systemic argument in which cause and effect are not close in either time, nor space. As we approach another aniversary of the 2003 NorthEast Blackout, I have used the Wall Street Journal commentary “Demand, Not Supply,” written by Vernon Smith and Lynne 6 days after the blackout, to write a tweet with an image with the title “Can global soaring inequality be due to the failure to successfully address the California debacle and the 2003 NorthEast Blackout?” that can be seen via the tweet conversation https://twitter.com/gmh_upsa/status/764111905648578560

First update. This is a comment on the original EWPC Blog that went unanswered.

Comments

Yes, at what cost would it take for a smart grid to save us the next time? An implied part of the question is how much do we need to invest in plant in the ground. A second part of the question is how me will we be willing to pay each of the distributed generators whom we want to provide electricity to the grid. My article "Saving California With Distributed Generation: A Crash Program To Use Small, Standby Diesel Generators To Keep The Lights On," Public Utilities Fortnightly, 2001 June 15, showed that California had enough independently owned DG 15 years ago to have averted the blackout but just didn't have a mechanism to pay those DG for their energy and to recoup the cost of doing so from their customers. Even without buying electricity from these 30,000 MW of DG, one large California utility went bankrupt.
Mark Lively

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The answer to the article 2003 Blackout: Could Smart Grid Save Us Next Time? is maybe. But then at what cost to the customers or society? The press need to understand (and tell it to the people) what can be seen next from two paragraph taken from the post Great electric service:
Back in 1978, the late MIT professor Fred C. Schweppe, wrote that there was actually not need to avoid massive power failures. He introduced the concept of a societal definition of a blackout to contrast it to the technical definition that is being used in the United States, China and other countries said to be following suit with smart-grid projects. Once that is understood, the public will respond by having supplemental energy sources. 
To manage supplemental energy resources, customer scope needs to take into account, for example, the internet infrastructure in the development of electric retail (not wholesale) markets. To develop product and services that people love in that internet infrastructure, after returning to Apple, Steve Jobs said that "You've got to start with the customer experience and work back to the technology, not the other way around." From Jobs standpoint, that smart-grid solution is being been done the other way around.
This is an update: