Plane Crashes in the Making: What Chilean Pilots are Facing

Below you will find an explanation of why the newly appointed managers of the distribution companies EdeNorte, EdeSur y EdeEste will face a moving target, which as pilots of an obsolete planes will not be able to maneuver, as they are not prepared to handle the crisis being face in the Dominican power industry and anywhere in the world with similar situations like India.

How the Smart Grid Could Fight Off Energy Thieves in India is an important news for the Dominican Republic. In that greentechmedia.com report, that Boonsri Dickinson wrote on September 23, 2010, Dr. Rahul Tongia of the Center for Study of Science, Technology, and Policy (CSTEP) in Bangalore, India, gave his thoughts at the GridWise Global Forum.

Right now there are 9 comments under the report, three of which are mine: In the first one, I wrote:

What Dr. Tongia said “…that India shows that every country’s needs are different. You can’t just make a magic black box and use it to deliver energy—it isn’t that easy,” seems very reasonable under conventional wisdom. But, the systemic leverage of the transformation of the electric power industry is more about changing mental models or paradigms than about standards or technologies.

If the US goes ahead with their exclusive and ineffective smart grid, as described by IBM Chairmen, Samuel Palmisano, they stand to lose the great opportunities in the inclusive and effective development explained in the EWPC article Which Country Will Take the Leadership of a Global Vision for Advancing Grids for Customers?

Mariano Orellana wrote on 09/25/10 11:34 PM the following:

During a Chilean Trade Commercial Mission to New Delhi on 2004, we presented our experience done for chilean utility, that permitted decrease commercial losses from 28% to 8%. We detected how distribution was done, and proposed some solutions to local authority, but nothing was possible to be done, and losses were > 47% for a population of around 18 millions.

This is my response of 09/26/10 6:40 PM

Hi Mariano,

Taking aside the political issues, which I know interfere a lot, I respectfully disagree that Chile’s experience is of good use to India or to the Dominican Republic. I suspect that India is a lot closer to the Dominican context than when the Chilean utility reduced losses to 8%. We are in a very different world. If that is the approach that the three new Chilean managers that came to the Dominican Republic will use, they will not be able to solve our 44 year old crisis. That crisis is a moving target as explained next.

In my country, we have a very different market environment as we are exiting the Mass Market Revolution that is inherent to Chile’s experience. We are way inside the Systems Revolution and there is a paradigm shift available to develop the resources of the demand side, which is an area of vibrant open retail markets where I think Chile is now behind. I know the attempt made with the Short Law.

Chile has a great 1980s disruptive design (think of an airplane design) and great managers (think of the pilots) for the Mass Market electric power industry that operate monopoly retail markets. We need an emergent 2010s disruptive design for the Systems electric power industry and a new kind of managers that operate under retail markets competition. That is about what I wrote in my first post.