[PLUG-TALK] The unstable "smart" grid

Rich Shepard rshepard at appl-ecosys.com
Thu Oct 22 16:08:14 UTC 2009


On Thu, 22 Oct 2009, Keith Lofstrom wrote:

> I attended the TiE "smart grid" presentation at Intel Ronler last night. 
> Interesting.  Frightening.  The idea is to use computers to regulate usage
> and make electrical demand sensitive to availability through a rapidly
> adjusting price mechanism.  There were so many claimed benefits, it is
> clear that the smart grid will bring about the Second Coming!

   ... of Enron?

   A couple of weeks ago The Economist had a long look at smart grids; it's
probably available on their Web site. More than pricing, it's supposed to
adjust for irregular power generators such as wind and solar, wheel the
power more efficiently (somewhat like network packets), recognize problems
to route around them then notify a control center for repair, etc.

> Anybody remember October 19, 1987, Black Monday, when the S&P and the DJIA
> dropped 20%?  They blamed that on computerized trading. The California
> energy crisis of 2000 and 2001, helped along by our buddies at Enron? 
> Adding computers doesn't automatically make a system more stable,
> especially if the system designers aren't well versed in stability math,
> and don't run lots of worst case simulations, and don't understand what
> happens when self-interested players game the system.

   Er, you mean like the Portland Water Bureau? Or the air traffic control
system?

> When I mentioned large systems of coupled, nonlinear differential
> equations, and how difficult such systems were to understand, much less
> stabilize, the room full of policy wonks, computer geeks, and CEO types
> had no clue how all that esoteric math could possibly relate to their
> visionary nirvana.

   This is the general case, not specific to "smart" electrical grids.

> I did not even get into the fact that the communication system is powered
> by the electrical system; making the electrical system dependent on
> sophisticated communication is not a formula for robustness.

   This self-referential system (the electricity powering communication about
the electricity) would do Douglas Hofstadter proud. Of course, when it fails
the communications could be by smoke signals (burning transformers and
sub-stations).

> BTW, the computer slide presentation system failed partway through ...

   Well, duh! It wasn't on a smart grid. Or a smart OS, I'll bet.

Rich



More information about the PLUG-talk mailing list