In memory of Dr. Martin Luther King. EWPC is about the liberalization of electricity markets, so customers have freedom of choice, fair and efficient prices, while the power system is planned, operated and controlled effectively. Having now available EWPC’s Tipping Point, we are about to enable electricity for the third industrial revolution with a modern global electricity rights movement (see Global Citizens' Call to Arms).
I Have a Dream Too
By José Antonio Vanderhorst-Silverio, Ph.D.
Systemic Consultant: Electricity
First posted in the GMH Blog, on April 4th, 2008.
Copyright © 2008 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.
In memory of Dr. Martin Luther King, one of the most prominent leaders of the modern civil rights movement in the United States.
Electricity Without Price Controls (EWPC) is about the liberalization of electricity markets, so customers have freedom of choice, fair and efficient prices, while the power system is planned, operated and controlled effectively. An expert told me long ago that “putting this idea into practice is indeed very complicated.” Having now available EWPC’s Tipping Point, we are about to enable electricity for the third industrial revolution with a modern global electricity rights movement (see the EWPC article Global Citizens' Call to Arms).
Following the article ITER and the Mother Lode, by Martin Rosenberg - From the Editor's Desk Blog, I went to Fast Company and read the article “The Mother Lode,” by Fred Krupp. After quoting “VC bigshot” John Doerr about the boom in Green Tech: “We’re talking about nothing less than the reindustrialization of the whole planet,” Fred adds “So the biggest mistake any investor or company could make would be to remain inside the Valley’s rarified air, ignoring the incumbent energy companies that control distribution, have near total market share, and shape regulations to their benefit.” Doerr calls Green Tech the “mother of all markets.” This statement describes the barrier created by The BIG California LIE.
In the recent discussions on EnegyPulse and EnergyBlogs.com and posted under several EWPC articles, after running out of arguments against the EWPC market architecture and design paradigm Don Giegler had written “Weren't you describing your effort to convince critics like me that EWPC is not a pipe dream?,” Bob Amorosi wrote: “I really suspect your EWPC proposal is a pipe dream at best,” and Len Gould wrote “Happy Dreams.”
Back in October 2005, in response to the same position (see Re: Soñar no Cuesta Nada - I have a Dream too), I wrote the following to Dominicans;
Just as Martin Luther King Jr. said I have a Dream, so I have a Dream too:
It would be fatal for the nation to overlook the urgency of the moment and to underestimate the determination of the Customer. This sweltering summer of the Customer's legitimate discontent will not pass until there is an invigorating autumn of freedom and equality. Two thousand and five is not an end, but a beginning. Those who hope that the Customer needed to blow off steam and will now be content will have a rude awakening if the nation returns to business as usual. There will be neither rest nor tranquility in Dominicana until the electricity Customer is granted his citizenship rights.
I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: "We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all customers are created equal." I have a dream that one day on the barrios of Santo Domingo the Customers with secure service and those with lots of blackouts will be able to have the kind of service they can afford. I have a dream that one day even the Dominican Republic, a failed state, sweltering with the heat of injustice and oppression, will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice. I have a dream that my three children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the passaport they carry but by the content of their character. I have a dream today.
"Jose, what gives you the goofy idea that the situation that exists in CA relates to well-regulated VIUs? That species became extinct in the late '90s when visionaries like you convinced "progressive" state commissions and the voters to restructure the same to allow competition. Competition that still does not exist. Markets with pricing and contracting rules that defied common sense were tossed into the mix for good measure. More than a few forgot what they read in Samuelson about well-regulated monopolies. Good heavens, Sam may have been on to something!"
In the Third Industrial Revolution that we are living today, energy costs are prohibited and retail customers' transactions costs are going down year after year, enabling a new paradigm that allows "the liberalization of electricity markets, so customers have freedom of choice, fair and efficient prices, while the power system is planned, operated and controlled effectively." For more details, please read again the EWPC article High Leverage Shake-Up in California (please hi link http://www.energyblogs.com/ewpc/index.cfm/2008/3/1... ).
In the Third Industrial Revolution, the California example is that the business model of winning rate case to the regulator depends entirely on very risky regulator "bets on utilities projects that will go into the rates structure." However, under the breakthrough EWPC market architecture and design paradigm, "... the layers of overhead of both utilities and the regulator are removed," and Second Generation Retailers compete at their own risk (neither at the ratepayer, nor taxpayer) in several worldwide market segments trying to develop business model innovations as business do in many other industries. For more details, please read the EWPC article Innovation and Risk Taking in the Power Industry (please hit link http://www.energyblogs.com/ewpc/index.cfm/2008/1/2... ).
More on risk taking of my dream appears in the EWPC article Global Electric Service Shared Vision (hit link http://www.energyblogs.com/ewpc/index.cfm/2008/1/9... ):
In the Fifth Discipline there is quote by Robert Fritz that says "In the presence of greatness, pettiness disappears." Peter Senge rephrases it as: "In the absence of a great dream, pettiness prevails." Senge adds: "Shared visions foster risk taking and experimentation. When people are immersed in a vision, they often don't know how to do it. They run experiments. They change direction and run another experiment. Everything is an experiment, but there is not ambiguity. It's perfectly clear why they are doing what they are doing. People aren't saying 'Give me a guarantee that it will work.' Everybody knows that there is no guarantee. But the people are committed nonetheless."
So, by default of Don's response, I just want to make sure that readers understand that my last argument holds: "... Don Giegler is defending the utilities status quo and has been using IMEUC to throw stones at EWPC, because he knows that IMEUC is not a threat to the California utilities excesses."