Electricity Without Price Controls

Competitive electric retail revolution

Mon, 10 Dec 2012 21:19:00 -0600

There were two major limitations to competitive electric retail markets, one was conceptual, the other political. We didn’t really understand electric retail markets. As a result, after the California debacle, new retail competition development was practically stopped by political decision making all over the world.

We are now ready for a competitive electric retail market revolution by addressing the political limitation, as a complete understanding of electric retail markets has been available for quite some time. That political limitation is fully addressed in the blog post Law of the Situation: the utilities did not understand.

To address the conceptual understanding, please first take a look at the post The Electric Power Industry is Missing a Vibrant Retail Market, which follows the idea that "New technologies are missing many things, but especially their markets." That second post can serve as introduction to supersede the conceptual limitation, based on the following stories:

… the late M.I.T. Professor Fred C. Schweppe... " envisioned a world of customer-based electrical generation and storage"

The death of Fred Schweppe in1988 and a misunderstanding by William Hogan in 1992 of Schweppe’s work on the energy marketplace were "small chance events early in the history of' deregulation that "tilt[ed] the competitive balance," to an inferior solution path, as W. Brian Arthur explained in general in his Scientific American, February 1990, article "Positive Feedbacks in the Economy.”

The events, were naturally pulled by strong vested interest community, by neo-liberalization, by the debating system approach, and by the regulatory design, which self reinforced each other.

To enable a superior solution path, the stories end in the post States that Implement a Heterogeneous Grid are Poised to be the Winners, whose summary is as follows:

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 it is now very clear that both limitations no longer hold, any government of the world is now able to move forward. In fact, state governments have now the opportunity to open the power industry to business model competitions that will lead to maximum social welfare.

But there is more. In response to the first blog post, a private message from a consultant in California said:

I'm not sure that this blog post will lead to California (or any other state) opening itself to a retail model like Texas. There's a lot of residual fear based on the market manipulations by companies like Enron. I do think that some of the CA utilities are trying to be responsive to consumer concerns while others are less disposed to that.

I confess I don't know what it will take to get utilities to change their behavior. Some days I feel like I'm banging my head against a wall.

This is an updated version of the response:

A retail model like that of Texas or the United Kingdom is not being proposed. Both violated the warnings made by the late M.I.T. researcher Fred C. Schweppe and his team in the book “Spot Pricing of Electricity (Kluwer, 1988)” that said:

"We believe the deregulation which considers only the supply side of the supply-demand equation is dangerous and could have very negative results."

“A second major difference between this chapter and most of the rest of deregulation literature lies in our concern that the economics and physical security of the power systems not be destroyed or compromised.”

Instead, what’s being proposed is in the post The New California Capitalist Model to Initiate the Transformation of the Global Power Industry.

Law of the Situation: the utilities did not understand.

Sat, 08 Dec 2012 11:23:00 -0600

As a follow up to the GMH post Low cost power?, here's another valuable interchange under the EnergyPulse article, What to do when customers like gas rationing and politicians better than their utilities?, by Mark Gabriel, where Greg Tinfow wrote on 12.6.12 that:

Here in California, we generally have to beat a 2/3rds threshold for votes on any tax increases. Despite that high hurdle, people do vote to tax themselves--to the tune of $7 billion/year just a few weeks ago--when they know what they are getting for their money. The utility industry needs to catch up to the needs of the future, not the 1930s regulatory policy that they've operated under for 80 years. Hurricanes, renewable energy, and global warming provide the industry with an unprecendented opportunity to remake themselves into what they should have been all along, energy service providers rather than monopoly power producers. As tempting as a "tough love" strategy may be to those who believe IOUs are the root of all our energy problems, the reality is that they behave exactly like any other profit-oriented business, despite regulatory restraints stronger than just about any business.

The future is going to require both a smarter energy infrastructure and a different kind of energy company than in the past. The transition is not going to happen overnight, and the cost of bringing the under-funded distribution infrastructure up to speed will not be cheap or easy. It is doable however, and the better utilities are at communicating both the costs and the benefits, the sooner we'll get moving forward.

That future of electric utilities is not at all doable. Jesse Berst SmartGridNews.com post Get ready! FERC spotlights 3 major challenges for utilities is introduced with “The bad news – there are big, big challenges looming for the electric utility industry. The good news – agencies and regulators are increasingly aware of these painful truths and, therefore, increasingly willing to discuss solutions. That was the message from FERC Chairman Jon Wellinghoff during a briefing on Capitol Hill this week.” But that good news is not at all for the utilities.

Instead what’s doable for utilities is in the third prediction of the EWPC article Three Smart Grid Predictions for Initiating the Global Power Industry Transformation: “Repositioning the utilities that missed the opportunities to learn the lessons of other industries is bound to be in a restricted T&D Grid space that will sooner or later be ‘painfully consolidated.’"

This is why! Ever since the 1980s, utilities have had an "... unprecedented opportunity to remake themselves into what they should have been all along, energy service providers rather than monopoly power producers," as Mr. Tinfow said. Please take a look at the article Why the Current Smart Grid Process Doesn’t Let the New Steve Job Connect the Dots in two key events where they lost that unprecedented opportunity: the Energy Policy Act of 1992 and once again in the development of the Integrated Energy and Communication Systems Architecture (IECSA) project, circa 2003.

The situation that utilities face today were clearly anticipated in 1982 in chapter 4 of John Naisbitt’s bestseller Megatrends: Ten New Directions Transforming Our Lives, on the "Law of the Situation: the railroads did not understand."

Suppose that somewhere along the way a railroad company, sensing the changes in its business environment, had engaged in the process of reconceptualing what business it was in. Suppose they had said, "Let’s get out of the railroad business and into the transportation business." They could have created systems that moved goods by rail, truck, airplane, or in combination, as appropriate. "Moves goods" is the customer-oriented point. Instead, they continued transfixed by the lore of railroading that have served the country so well - until the world change.

Of this phenomenon Walter B. Wriston, chairman of Citycorp, in 1981 said: "The philosophy of the divine right of kings died hundreds of years ago, but not, it seems, the divine right of inherited markets. Some people still believe there’s a divine dispensation that their markets are theirs - and no one else’s - now and forevermore. It is an old dream that dies hard, yet no businessman in a free society can control a market when the customers decide to go somewhere else. All the king’s horses and all the king’s man are helpless in the face of a better product. Our commercial history is filled with examples of companies that failed to change in a changing world, and became tombstones in the corporate graveyard."

What electric utilities' customers need

Sun, 02 Dec 2012 08:46:00 -0600

The Special Report EPRI: Utilities have a LOT more to learn about what customers want, posted on SmartGridNews.com, ends with "calls for cooperation and collaboration among utilities in their efforts to come up with verifiable business models that yield actionable results for what customers really want. Without that collaboration, getting those valuable results could take a decade or more."

Why wait for so long waiting for collaboration? Under a customer orientation, instead of collaboration, what's needed is to open the power industry to a competition of business models. Please take a look at the post Customer oriented electricity. As can be seen next, the real problem is that the world changed.

In the post The Utilities’ Business Marketing Myopia Manifesto, I quoted that "... utilities did not stop growing because the need for energy based services (light, air conditioning, refrigeration, etc.) declined. That grew. The retail side of utilities are in trouble today not because that need was filled by others (competitive retailers, energy services companies, energy management companies, solar panel vendors, demand side energy efficiency suppliers, demand response companies, battery manufacturers) but because they could not be filled by the utilities themselves. They let others take customers away from them because they assumed themselves to be in the utility business rather than the energy based services business. The reason they defined their industry incorrectly was that they were utility oriented instead of services oriented; they were product oriented instead of customer oriented...

Is the Smart Grid that?s Being Pushed History?

Tue, 27 Nov 2012 23:12:00 -0600

I guess that now, that the Smart Grid that’s Being Pushed scenario is about to become history, it’s time for reconsideration of the minimalist architecture scenario that was unveiled in the EWPC Blog post Institute For The Future’s J. Dunagan Announced the Winners of the Smart Grid 2025 Game, whose last paragraph repeated that:

“In order to do what we need to do today to create the best possible future plausible scenario for the smart grid, the emergent, inclusive, holistic, simple, and minimalist, Electricity Without Price Controls Architecture Framework (EWPC-AF) was shown to have what it takes, in at least four of the ten engagements, that mutually reinforced each other, initiated by the EWPC-AF_Creator. For that outlier performance, it deserves to be given an opportunity to be widely known all over the whole world. Denying it such opportunity I humbly understand would be unfair to humanity.”

In the November 2012 EWPC Blog post IMF to encourage professional decisions about electricity, written to influence the International Monetary Fund mission that was in the Dominican Republic, earlier this month, we may see that we might already be beyond the Smart Grid altogether, as the post states:

“Looking at the emerging model of the power industry, I have written several articles and posts about the Smart Grid that's being pushed. Now I am adding two words to write about the regulator oriented Smart Grid that's being pushed, which, as a systemic consultant on electricity, I strongly believe is bound to be replaced by the customer oriented Smart Market that's being pulled, under the Value Added Electricity minimalist architecture (formerly EWPC-AF).”

With excellent timing for the Dominican Republic, where I believe that the systemic whole of the electric power industry is trying to emerge, the energy and electricity policy white paper, "Getting Smarter About the Smart Grid" became available yesterday, November 26, 2012, published by the National Institute for Science, Law & Public Policy (NISLAPP) in Washington, D.C.

That report was authored by smart grid technology expert Timothy Schoechle, PhD, an international consultant in computer engineering and standardization, high-tech entrepreneur and former Faculty member of the University of Colorado, College of Engineering and Applied Science. Well in accordance with the March 2010 EWPC Blog post Is the Smart Grid that is Being Pushed a Costly Mistake?, the press release (long form)Smart Grid Funding Misspent On Obsolete Technologies, Says New Report summarizes the story as follows:

“Billions spent with taxpayer dollars on ‘smart meters’ will not lead to U.S. sustainability; Place citizens and economy at risk.”

The press release adds that “Schoechle says the present policy approach to electricity infrastructure in the U.S. evidences a ‘fundamental lack of understanding of the problems associated with the future of electricity and energy,’” Praising independent experts, the last of 7 “Opportunities to Intelligently Move Forward,” says that:

“Local communities must take it upon themselves to understand and obtain the safest and most secure technological options available for utility meters and other smart grid technologies. This education should be gained from independent experts with no vested interests in the present centralized utility paradigm. Wireless technologies should be avoided where safer more secure options exist.”

IMF to encourage professional decisions about electricity

Tue, 13 Nov 2012 23:37:00 -0600

I am trying to get my professional systemic advice to the mission of the International Monetary Fund that is visiting the Dominican Republic through several channels. If you are able to use any channel, in any other country, please make them, the World Bank, and the Inter-American Development Bank, aware of this post as soon as possible and please supply me with evidence you have done so.

That mission will be leaving our country next Friday, November 16, and I hope they will incorporate the following in their statement of the conclusions reached on the country's economy:

1. The excessively prolonged Dominican electricity sector crisis is a systemic crisis.

2. Multilateral financial institutions are important parts of the Dominican electricity system.

3. Multilateral financial institutions will come prepared to participate with other traditional and non-traditional representatives of the system to define the new Dominican electricity sector model.

Looking at the emerging model of the power industry, I have written several articles and posts about the Smart Grid that's being pushed. Now I am adding two words to write about the regulator oriented Smart Grid that's being pushed, which, as a systemic consultant on electricity, I strongly believe is bound to be replaced by the customer oriented Smart Market that's being pulled, under the Value Added Electricity minimalist architecture (formerly EWPC-AF).

The emerging whole system top level of said architecture has one market and one grid subsystems that mutually reinforce each other. Most value creation is to be related to the Smart Market, which is where high systemic leverage network effect increasing returns are available.

The problems that show up in the post Customer oriented electricity are universal, signaling a power system whole that’s trying to emerge to replace the current system. They only showed up earlier in the Dominican Republic, because we have had very bad reliability since 1972. That year was also the year where the guarantee of cheap energy disappeared under the OPEC crisis. In those days we didn’t have the guarantee of cheap information we have nowadays, so very high customers’ transaction costs mutually reinforced themselves with regulator oriented electricity.

As customers’ reliability performance requirements range increases, for example, from an analog to a digital world, at some point regulator oriented electricity under vertical integration was unable to cope. That’s what restructuring and deregulation were supposed to address, but in most jurisdictions it made things a lot worst as some variant of regulator oriented electricity system remained in place, as political decisions overrode systemic professional decisions.

From there on, whether it can be identified or not, a systemic crisis starts if political decisions keep overriding professional decisions. Until systemic professional decision makers are allowed to address the non trivial issues behind the crisis, it will go on and on. Sooner or later, I understand that customer oriented electricity will emerge to replace regulator oriented electricity, which reinforces itself with the guarantee of cheap information to enable very low transaction costs.

At that point, after huge value destruction, I strongly believe that regulator oriented Smart Grid that's being pushed will be replaced by customer oriented Smart Market that's being pulled, under the Value Added Electricity minimalist architecture.

Customer oriented electricity

Thu, 08 Nov 2012 07:15:00 -0600

For about 40 years, the Dominican Republic has undergone a severe crisis in the electric power sector. Experts have come and gone and the crisis gets worse and worse. What’s different in the Dominican Republic? I conjecture that we might have been ahead of the world for quite a while.

At this moment there is a great opportunity to show that we are ahead. From November 6 to 16, the International Monetary Fund is present in the Dominican Republic. To do it, I have suggested... to continue reading, please hit the link to the Grupo Millennium Hispaniola version of Customer oriented electricity.

Smart Grid?s Critical Thinking?

Thu, 11 Oct 2012 22:12:00 -0600

The abstract of the video The case "against" the smart grid, by Bruce Nordman [Energy Analysis Department, LBNL] states that “Amid all the current cheerleading around the ‘Smart Grid,’ there is a lack of critical thinking about the design choices underlying the dominant paradigms being put forward, and how current efforts do or don't relate to any long-term strategy we have. In addition, in the past decades we have learned a great deal about how to design and architect networks, how they evolve, how they have collided with energy use, and how they work in practice. This talk will explore some of these topics, and suggest a path forward that could result in significantly more energy savings than our present one.”

I guess that one particular exception to the cheerleading around the “Smart Grid that’s being pushed” can be found in the Electricity Without Price Controls blog. One particular example emerged today as we learn about the emerging future in a discussion on a private Linkedin group. My comment went as follows:

The T&D wires only smart grid suggested by Bruce is well in agreement with the last prediction of the article Three Smart Grid Predictions for Initiating the Global Power Industry Transformation, which says “Prediction #3: Repositioning the utilities that missed the opportunities to learn the lessons of other industries is bound to be in a restricted T&D Grid space that will sooner or later be "painfully consolidated."

Bruce's presentation, which is three years old, is a huge paradigm shift from a utility centered "end to end" smart grid that's being pushed to a customer centered building network 'smart power service' plus a T&D wires only smart grid. As he concentrated on the building side, the article The Electric Power Industry is Missing a Vibrant Retail Market might be an important complement to his presentation.

The case "against" the smart grid

Thu, 04 Oct 2012 14:52:00 -0600

Creative synthesis of the electric power industry

Sun, 02 Sep 2012 22:51:00 -0600

Summary: It has been known for quite some time that in order to cope with the electric power industry we need simple and stable rules. Such rules will help unleash the needed creative destruction of capitalism. In general, most people are likely to believe that “… that our minds, bodies, businesses, governments, and social institutions are no longer capable of coping with the rapid rate of change.” Applying Henry Poincaré's “creative synthesis” we might learn how to cope at the business, government, and social institutions level, by making sure that “useless combinations” of rules are not allowed. An IEEE Systemic Code of Ethics is suggested to avoid such “useless combinations.”

To continue reading, please go to the post Creative synthesis of the electric power industry

Taxed energy: thought Occupiers aren?t expecting, but will love

Fri, 10 Aug 2012 07:34:00 -0600

Note: the following text is an adapted translation of the article Energía con impuestos: pensamiento que indignados no esperan, pero adorarán, published in acento.com.do weekly column “Systemic Leadership.” The translation does not include hyperlinked material which remains in Spanish.

In the story "The 15-M is emotional, lacks thought," published in El Pais, October 17, 2011, Zigmunt Bauman, Polish philosopher and sociologist known for his concept of liquid modernity, said of Occupiers that:

"The movement grows and grows but ‘it does through emotion, lacking thought. With emotions alone, without thought, you don’t get anywhere.' The uproar of the collective emotion plays a carnival show that ends in itself, without consequences. 'During the carnival anything goes but ended the carnival with a business as usual comes back.'"

Taxed energy would be, for example, at the crux of the Dominican agenda with the IMF and everything else would be secondary. Although they don’t expect it, for having a counterintuitive thought, Occupiers would love it. It's like Henry Ford and Steve Jobs made thoughtful proposals we were not expecting, but love.

Innovator of cars we love, Ford is quoted as saying that if he had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses. Jobs transformed several industries, with products, services and systems that people did not expect, but love.

Increasingly, electricity grows its share of total energy consumption. For example, road transport is changing from liquid fuels to electricity. But then, Why has electricity not been transform to be loved? Because he who made the law, also made the loophole.

For several decades until 1972, the world depended on cheap oil and was organized around it. Since then, the guarantee of cheap energy is gone, but not the energy sector legislation designed to protect it under that guarantee. Although legislative changes were made in many jurisdictions, the sector continuous protected from startups.

Maintaining this illusion, energy is subsidized, benefiting those on "Wall Street" and hurting Occupiers. With subsidized prices all consumers are encouraged to waste energy, promoting unsustainable consumption that later on taxpayers, mainly Occupiers, will pay dearly for through taxes.

The best example of the damage caused by artificially cheap energy and which tax reform should correct is that of the Dominican Republic. Here we have many Occupiers since long ago and probably will have many more if the highly risky large coal plants (see a 10 minutes’ video) or natural gas of 300 or 600 megawatts government bet goes through.

Dominicans have been suffering a prolonged systemic electricity crisis of major proportions, which encourages unchecked and unbalanced demand, accumulate excessive debt, undermines the national budget and from time to time significantly increases foreign debt. Although less visible, a similar legal situation also occurs in the U.S. and Europe affecting their Occupiers. The opportunities are just as important here as in all these countries.

The guarantee of cheap information, for example, with the legislation based on the value-added electricity architecture framework, will encourage thoughtful proposals that Occupiers will love, for lower taxes and higher job opportunities. Such legislation will curb excessive generation increases with consumption reductions.

Thus, taxed energy: will encourage investment in energy efficiency and energy savings in final consumption, will decrease and decongest land transport, while it will significantly increase virtual communication, for example, at the premises of the productive sectors and households for education and health services.

The Dominican electricity crisis is essentially that of Europe and the USA

Sun, 15 Jul 2012 22:50:00 -0600

Summary: The GMH article The Dominican electricity crisis is essentially that of Europe and the United States responds to the criticism that says "Don’t tell us ... that in the United States and Europe there is also the same problems with electricity that we have here [in Dominican Republic], because nobody is going to believe it ... " What follows is an edited translation of the article La crisis eléctrica dominicana es esencialmente la de Europa y EUA, posted on July 13, 2012, on acento.com.do.

Systemic leverage to economies doesn't depend on climate change (has video)

Sun, 08 Jul 2012 22:14:00 -0600

In response to the article Systemic leverage to economies via their electric link, I received a private comment (see below), which I think deserves a public response by itself.

My response to the private comment was: "Thank you very much for the video. It shows the big bet that Europe’s politicians seems to be making. Systemic leverage to economies is valuable on either generation scenario: a lot of gas or a lot of renewable resources."

As a complement, I repeat now the first comment under the post What Would Steve Jobs Do About Energy Innovation? that says:

Under the Technology Review article one person disagreed with my suggestion. To get a better understanding of the approach, next is my response:

Thank you very much for your inquiry. What I am suggesting is that the real cause is bad electricity regulation (the same may apply to gas and water networks) designed to protect the PSQ. Think there are two sequential stages of energy innovation: the first to upgrade the power industry as a whole to the digital revolution and the second to introduce new energy technologies.

Because of the bad electricity regulation enacted in the Energy Policy Act of 1992, the small systemic changes introduced under the name of deregulation produced huge value destruction, instead of the equally huge value creation that was expected, based on MIT's great research led by the giant late professor Fred C. Schweppe, as described in the book Spot Pricing of Electricity. Schweppe's warnings about the deregulation in the making were not considered because of the PSQ.

An example of the value destruction can be found in [the] post that is carried by the tweet:

@YoQPagoTolaLu: FERC's Order 1000 as a Potential Example of Over-Regulated America #EWPC http://bit.ly/GMH055

Similarly, to see an example of value creation look at the post that is carried out by the tweet:

@gmh_upsa: Will Germany be the First Country to Adopt the #EWPC-AF? http://bit.ly/GMH051

The private comment included a 4 minute video and said: "Fast forward to the second half of this - it is very pertinent to the topic (sound on).Idealism can be put ahead of economies by the zealots, but without a sound economy, nothing can succeed, and nations will regress."

Systemic leverage to economies via their electric link

Fri, 06 Jul 2012 07:02:00 -0600

While considering the proposal of the Value Added Electricity Architecture Framework (VAE-AF, formerly EWPC-AF) as one of the potential systemic alternatives to be considered to try to greatly increase the investment and innovation spaces in the electric power industry, and its associated energy industries, please give the benefit of the doubt to the GMH article Systemic leverage to economies via their electric link to try to create the conditions to end the global economic crisis. That article starts with "What follows is an edited translation of the article Apalancamiento sistémico de economías vía su eslabón eléctrico, posted today on acento.com.do. Please considered it as a follow up to the post What Would Steve Jobs Do About Energy Innovation?

In addition, if you have any suggestion, for example, on how to help socialize the article’s aim, please say so in private, or, better yet, by taking the leadership in public by making use of your preferred social media.

How Utilities that Become Tech Companies Might Develop Business Model Innovations

Sun, 22 Apr 2012 18:45:00 -0600

In the article From volume to value: Why utilities MUST change their business model (and one way to get started), Jesse Berst introduces an approach that goes from one end of a continuum, to the other, going through three roles that he calls infrastructure on one extreme, intermediary somewhere in the middle, and innovator in the opposite end.

He clarifies that “The volume-to-value continuum is a metaphor. In the real world, of course, the boundaries between these roles will blur; other new roles will appear. The three roles are not mutually exclusive. It is quite possible to imagine a utility that innovates one or two services, while also acting as an intermediary for several more, while also maintaining its traditional infrastructure role.”

Next is a hyperlinked version that merges the comments “Continuum Versus Discrete Smart Grid Evolution” and “The Second Generation Retailer is Just a Tech Company“that I posted under Jesse’s article.

Hi Jesse,

Thank you for repeating this interesting continuum approach, which I respect a lot. Next, I will contrast it with the EWPC-AF discrete approach that emerged through me. A lot of the though behind the continuum also applies to the discrete approach.

I wonder if the business concept “stuck in the middle” would apply, leading to the traditional low cost and high value, either/or discrete polarization.

This is how the power industry whole gets split in two highly cohesive subsystems that are lightly coupled among them:

1) A low cost wires-only T&D (Smart) Grid regulated utility. This is critical, but it no longer owns the retail customer interface.

2) A high value innovative Enterprise (Smart) Market “Second Generation Retailer” tech company. This is where business model innovations are expected on the customer interface.

That's what has been emerging through me as the EWPC-AF, which I said a year ago may be renamed as the Value Added Electricity Architecture Framework (VAE-AF).

3) Utilities should not be forbidden of trying the intermediary role as a transition tactic, but I suspect it is a losing “stuck in the middle” strategy in the long run.

Next is a list of this year EWPC post entries, most recent first, after about half a year of inactivity.

1) Should Smart Grid Startups Depend Mostly on Utilities Executives Challenges?

2) Why Customers Will Be quote--Mad as Hell--end-quote With the Current Smart Grid

3) Why and How the Status Quo Should Respond to Criticism on Current Smart Grid Developments

4) Conjecture: ICT Replaces Energy as a New Type of Carrier Industry

5) Why the Current Smart Grid Process Doesn’t Let the New Steve Job Connect the Dots

6) The Utilities’ Business Marketing Myopia Manifesto

7) Update: Many Comments on What Would Steve Jobs Do About Energy Innovation?

8) What Would Steve Jobs Do About Energy Innovation?

9) Is a New Steve Jobs Needed in the Power Industry?

10) FERC's Order 1000 as a Potential Example of Over-Regulated America

11) Is Power Industry Regulation Helping Crush the Life Out of America’s Economy?

12) Will Germany be the First Country to Adopt the EWPC-AF?

13) A Perfect Example of the Normalization of Deviance in the Power Industry

14) Smart Grid: SoS "… interacting in unpredictable ways that regulators and investors cannot comprehend

Should Smart Grid Startups Depend Mostly on Utilities Executives Challenges?

Thu, 19 Apr 2012 21:24:00 -0600

Summary: To meet challenges faced by utility executives, smart grid startups are trapped by utilities as their only customer via a power industry architecture that was designed in the “Integrated Energy and Communication Systems Architecture (IECSA) project, circa 2003.” To avoid traps like those, an IEEE Systemic Code of Ethics has been suggested. The article is supported by 10 references.

To continue reading, please go to the GMH article Should Smart Grid Startups Depend Mostly on Utilities Executives Challenges?