How to Make DGs a Disruptive Technology

Jose Antonio Vanderhorst-Silverio
8.27.07

To all readers,

This is what I mentioned above on the interests of Todd, which should make him support EWPC.

Under one of the articles mentioned on the post Wind Integration: An Emerging Paradigm, on 8.16.07, Todd wrote:

How would the wind storage concerns change if an army of customer owned generators could respond to real time price information to dispatch power to the grid instantaneously? Given today's knowledge, would you go back and put your money into mainframes or the little calculators?

Dick Maclay responded on 8.16.07 as follows:

Calculators and the first micro computers had a major market advantage over DG. They could stand alone. Even with DG, the cheapest back up system is some sort of network. Problem is that the network owners and their regulators look at DG as something that requires standby charges, is dependent on the transmission system, etc. They do not understand that it is to a large degree an alternative to expanding electric transmission. This is delaying DG by a decade or two.

But you describe a vibrant market at work, and deregulation is out of fashion. Unfairly out of fashion, since places like California slapped a "deregulation" sticker on a system designed to fail that did not at all resemble deregulation. But the perception that deregulation did not work is another factor slowing progress. If you are in a hurry my thoughts here are pessimistic.

But long-run they are more optimistic than the standard view. How does all of this affect wind? If I were smart enough to know that I would have been sufficiently clairvoyant to have sold all my holdings before the market started down.

Jose Antonio Vanderhorst-Silverio8.27.07

My response to Todd is only optimistic.

Under EWPC DGs cannot stand alone, but the network owners are no longer opposed to DGs with ultra-quality transportation. The problem now is with "native loads," which oppose DGs. So there will no be a decade or two delay with EWPC.

EWPC is not deregulation, but what deregulation should have been. Deregulation did not work, because there is still a need for regulation: to change price control regulation with prudential regulation.

Under EWPC, DGs development will be associated with the Second Generation Retailer's business model innovations. Maybe there is a large market segment in the making already.

As deregulation is out of fashion, the emerging EWPC has all the potential to be in fashion, if we stop debating about it and concentrate on promoting a generative dialogue.