Ensuring
Electric Power Reliability -- Remarks by Kurt Yeager, to the IEEE-USA Energy Reliability
Symposium Thank you for that gracious introduction and the privilege of speaking to you today. In the next few minutes, I would like to take the liberty of extending our horizon on electric power reliability to consider the electricity infrastructure needed for the new digital society. TVA Chairman Crowell spoke eloquently this morning about the core vision and message of the collaborative Electricity Technology Roadmap: that is, to electrify the world. This vision is a reminder from the global stakeholder community that electricity is much more than just an energy medium. It has become the prime-mover of society through the innovations it makes possible, and its power to improve the human condition will continue to escalate in the new century as technology progresses. The most important characteristic of this marriage of electricity and innovation is its ability to amplify productivity. This reality is of profound importance in the context of the global demographic transformation underway. As a result, today’s economically developed countries represent a rapidly declining minority of the world’s population. Unless we can elevate the productivity growth rate of the world to at least 2% per year – the 2% solution – the developed world as we know it will be the endangered species. Only by electrifying the world – bringing electricity to at least 100 million people more every year for at least the next 50 years – can we hope to achieve this needed global productivity growth. Progress on this front begins at home, and this is where I would like to focus my remarks today. Unless we harness the full potential of electricity to transform our own productivity, the world will lack the essential U.S. engine of innovation and capital formation needed to electrify the world. It’s useful to note a couple of statistics:
The bottom line is that we need to go back to growing the economy the old-fashioned way – by increasing productivity through innovation. Fortunately, the means to do so are at hand. That is, to accelerate the so-called Digital Revolution. It is producing dramatic productivity improvements in every business it touches. The productive power of this revolution is its ability to transform the industrial economy, where value grows incrementally, into a network economy where value can grow exponentially as its inclusiveness expands. Electricity and real-time information are the life-blood of this new economy. Every network has two basic ingredients – nodes and connections. Today, digital microchips are becoming cheap and tiny enough to slip into every object and activity we create. Each chip represents a sliver of intelligence able to communicate with others. As a result, the size of the network nodes is collapsing while the quantity and quality of the connections is exploding. These billions – ultimately trillions – of silicon chips linked into high-bandwidth channels are literally becoming the neurons of society. For example, when dumb PC nodes are linked into a neural network they create the intelligence called the world-wide web. So what does all this mean for electric power reliability? First, given the productivity enhancing potential of the emerging network economy and the urgent need to meet the escalating costs of our aging population, any infrastructure or institution seen as sustaining "digital-divides" in our society is likely to be under considerable political pressure to change or risk being bypassed. Technology challenges the concept of the natural monopoly, and power delivery is no exception. Second, the power delivery infrastructure is already a complex, interactive network. But if it is to keep pace with the Digital Revolution, it too must become much more interactive and complex. Today’s infrastructure, composed of relatively few large power plant nodes and limited real-time connectivity, must expand to provide the same precision and efficiency as the boundaryless microchip networks it serves. This suggests for example:
Ultimately, we can envision this electricity/natural gas network merging with communications and transportation into one mega infrastructure integrated around electricity that reaches, and interconnects, all ultimate customers – the microchips themselves. The implications for the electricity business as we know it are likely to be equally profound. The historic, supplier-controlled commodity business of selling bulk kWhs is being superceded by a customized mass-service enterprise, bringing together electrons and information to activate unlimited numbers of "smart" chips, while being controlled by those same chips. In this networked economy, where real-time market information is freely accessible, market power is shifting from supplier to customer and transaction costs are relentlessly being driven down. Power grid owners and operators must meet the challenge of assimilating new technology and organizational flexibility to keep pace. If not, they risk being relegated by that same technology into suppliers of last resort. The electricity delivery reliability initiative, launched last year by EPRI together with over 40 utilities, and with the strong support of the IEEE, NERC and CERTS, provides the first step in meeting this challenge. But risk assessment and the application of the best-practices needed to keep the lights on are just the "table stakes" for the commitment that is ultimately needed. In addition, the tools to create this robust, adaptive infrastructure for the digital society will require the accelerated development and deployment of an array of new enabling technology platforms and protocols. These include, to name just a few examples:
An effective commitment to build this tool kit will require renewed public/private collaboration that recognizes infrastructure excellence as a prerequisite for productivity growth, economic prosperity, and environmental well-being. The first step is a commitment of an additional one billion dollars per year over at least the next five years to develop these technology platforms to the level of confidence needed to keep pace with the opportunities presented by the Digital Revolution. The age-old biblical proverb: "Where there is no vision, people perish" has never been more literally true than in the business of electricity for the new century. If we are to electrify the world, we must first transform our own electricity infrastructure into the arsenal of innovation for the Digital Society. The productivity stakes for the nation are extremely high and the costs of failure intolerable. You are the natural leaders of this revolution, please join actively with EPRI to make it happen. Thank you [ IEEE-USA ] Last Updated: May 26, 2000 |
