What’s Complexity Theory Got to Do with Power Engineering?
Paul Mauldin, Editor | TD World | Apr 18, 2012
In the 1990s I had the privilege of being part of a utility research organization that was leading out in developing the concept of ‘distributed utility’ – a major forerunner of ‘smart grid’. The premise was that central generation had reached the limits of economy of scale, and smaller, distributed generation resources, particularly aero-derivative gas turbines, were more economical and easier to site closer to load. Of course, there was lots of discussion about system stability, interaction with large remote generation, and how all this would work with looming deregulation of the electric utility industry. In California, deregulation meant that utilities would soon have to delaminate. The traditional vertical integration of generation, transmission and distribution would be broken up to encourage competitive market forces to do their thing, similar to the breaking up of the telecommunications industry.
We had frequent brainstorm meetings with engineers, economists and operations research experts taking turns at the whiteboards. Arrows and symbols connected the various elements of the physical electrical system with marketers, regulators and consumers. Here was the generation resource, there was the consumer, over here is the market place where time and location based pricing is determined. Black, blue, red and green dry-erasable lines went everywhere. Trying to add a little humor I even wrote a little story titled: “The Totally Disconnected Utility” and passed it around the office. I got a few yucks but most of my colleagues just grabbed another bagel and went back to their computers and whiteboards. This was serious, industry changing stuff!
Cont.: tdworld.com 
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