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09.07
Taking a
Wide-Angle View of the U.S. Electric Power Grid
By Debra Schiff
"Our civilization seems
to be suffering a second curse of Babel:
Just as the human race builds a tower of
knowledge that reaches to the heavens, we
are stricken by a malady in which we find
ourselves attempting to communicate with
each other in countless tongues of
scientific specialization... in the last
resort, we must think in terms of systems of
elements in mutual interaction..."
— Ludwig
von Bertalanffy
For most of the summer, our
air-conditioners whir away without fail. It's
that one brutally hot night that the power goes
out, though, that we remember. The U.S. electric
power grid is a magnificently complex set of
systems — unlike any other — that work together
to keep the lights on. When the lights go out,
there are rarely easy answers to why the system
broke down. It would be nice to be able to point the finger
at a nefarious
Montgomery Burns type, whose
self-serving, cost-cutting
measures set off massive, cascading
failures, or at a bumbler like Homer Simpson,
whose incompetence results in outages. But the
vast majority of the time, there are myriad,
far-less-sinister causes behind the blackouts.
As the quote above suggests, identifying the
causes of such failures — and preventing them in
the future — requires studying, engineering and
managing the grid and all of its integrated
systems to be flexible and resilient, so that
they operate in a cohesive and complementary
fashion.
In an effort to drive critical
thinking on the U.S. electric power grid and its
well-publicized reliability issues, Luis Kun, Senior
Research Professor of Homeland Security at
National Defense University in Washington, D.C.,
and Professor Robert Mathews, Distinguished
Senior Research Scholar in National Security
Affairs and U.S. Industrial Preparedness at the
University of Hawaii, are writing a series of
white papers on the depth and breadth of the
problems caused by uninteroperability in many
interconnected systems that affect of our daily lives and important
national security areas. First up:
uninteroperability's adverse effects on the
systems that plague the reliability of the U.S.
electric power grid.
What Is Interoperability?
According to the IEEE
Standard Computer Dictionary: A Compilation of
IEEE Standard Computer Glossaries,
interoperability is defined as "the ability of
two or more systems or components to exchange
information and to use the information that has
been exchanged." Most of us remember too well
the tragic consequences resulting from the
uninteroperability of first responder
communications systems on 9-11. Many of us are
also familiar with interoperability as it
relates to standards, computer systems and
communications.
Kun and Mathews are challenging
these and other conventional definitions of
interoperability (and its complementary antonym,
uninteroperability) and are seeking to raise
awareness of a broad misperception and
misapplication of the term. They are also
seeking to educate how a proper application of
the term interoperability will permit a holistic
"systems approach" toward solving highly
persistent and very costly societal problems. Both men acknowledge that changing preconceived
notions regarding a term currently in use is a challenging
task, one that requires confronting (and
hopefully changing) entrenched mindsets. But Kun and Mathews believe
strongly in their mission, and are even willing
to publish their papers independently if
IEEE-USA doesn't elect to endorse them as
official white papers.
"Of course, support from
industry and professional associations is
desirable. However, educating Americans about
the need for action — smart, big-picture action
— on the electric power grid and other
significant areas, is more important than the
endorsement of one group or another," says Kun,
who chairs IEEE-USA's newly formed Critical
Infrastructure Protection Committee.
A Sea Change...
In June 2006, in Cambridge,
Massachusetts, a seminal IEEE meeting was
organized and chaired by Professor Mathews,
titled “Special Session on Integration and
Interoperability of National Security
Information Systems.” There, a sea change in the
nature and understanding of interoperability
issues took place. A veritable who’s who in the
world in computing, communications, engineering,
genetics, economics, finance, management,
innovations, government, accountability and
policy making converged into Cambridge, where
they provided novel lectures regarding the
effects of uninteroperability in such nationally
important areas as the U.S. military,
intelligence community, homeland
security/defense and critical infrastructures,
including the national electric power grid. The
meeting confirmed that the de facto adoption of
any pre-existing definitions of interoperability
amounted to a violation of intellectual due
process because they are plainly imprecise,
insufficient and ineffective.
Kun and
Mathew’s inaugural paper on the “Function of
Interoperability in U.S. Power Grid Reliability
and Critical Infrastructure Protection” is
intended to raise awareness among U.S. members of
the IEEE and public policy-makers of the costly effects
of uninteroperability on the electric power
grid.
Interoperability and
Reliability
Mathews, a thought leader on
interoperability defines interoperability in layman’s
terms as the tightly coupled capability by which
all aspects of a system are able to operate
synchronously in order to continually achieve
goals in a safe, effective, efficient and
reliable manner. He states that in a critical
infrastructure protection context, there are
great landscapes of complementarity between
investigations into U.S. national electric grid
reliability engineering and uninteroperability. Mathews
contends that any well-meaning scientific
activity to deeply understand a domain such as
the national power grid, to protect such systems
or to make it highly resilient to various
conditions for purposes of national security,
must be geared toward understanding all aspects
of the system and not merely any one part of it. Kun and
Mathews state in their paper that electric grid
reliability is largely a function of how well
the grid has been conceived and engineered to be resilient to
disturbances within it, using a systems
approach. They also describe the national
power grid as a highly distributed complex
system that is understood by only a few.
"... Each variable in any system interacts
with the other variables so thoroughly that
cause and effect cannot be separated. A
simple variable can be both cause and
effect. Reality will not be still. And it
cannot be taken apart! You cannot understand
a cell, a rat, a brain structure, a family,
a culture if you isolate it from its
context. Relationship is everything."
— Marilyn
Ferguson
The Aquarian Conspiracy
Mathews emphasizes that, for
most, a highly distributed complex system such
as the power grid is difficult to represent in terms of
its multi-disciplinary and inter-disciplinary
constitution, its nature of interconnectedness
and interdependence. “Our brain wants to work in
a reductionistic fashion,” says Mathews, “at
times drawn to conveniences, to a subset of all
that is, but the resulting end-product of such
thought is less logical, scientific, rational,
efficient and effective.” He describes interoperability
as the province of
the tight coupling of all constituting aspects
of the national power grid; where the high
integrity in the nature of interconnectedness
and interdependence of constituting aspects
represent the dominion of interoperability.
IEEE Life Fellow and
distinguished electric power utility veteran
Jack Casazza concurs with Mathews that electric
grid reliability is a function of
interoperability among what he describes as six aspects of
the electric power industry. These aspects are
described at length in an IEEE Press book Casazza co-authored with Frank Delea,
entitled
“Understanding Electric Power Systems — An
Overview of the Technology and the Marketplace.” Casazza names these six aspects as:
-
Power generation,
transmission and distribution (all things
that are physical)
-
Command, control and
communications (provides for sensing,
collection, analysis and interpretation of
all source operational data into
information, and the transfer of such
information to facilitate both commerce and
the safe and reliable operation of power
systems; to include such things as
scheduling and dispatching the power and
control of the whole power systems.)
-
Finance (include funding
sources, such as the consumers, taxpayers,
banks, etc.; and the flow of money among
many participants)
-
Fuels (includes all sources
of fuel which are converted and delivered by
various means for various purposes)
-
Management & administrative
(initiating and maintaining operational
practices in respective organizations,
oversight over process and quality controls,
includes ownership of facilities, and
issuing and monitoring of contracts between
the various parties, and such things as
conducting negotiations, etc.)
-
Legislative/regulatory
affairs (the area of government controls
over the electric power industry, which
include the federal government, state
government and municipalities).
Casazza continues: “It is
by understanding the operation of these aspects
and how the operation of one affects the other that one can begin to comprehend the effects
of various policies and plans. Reliability is
affected by these aspects in various and diverse
ways, and they are affected by each other. For
example, a shortage of fuel can cause a
reliability problem, or a lack of money to
maintain equipment or build new facilities can
cause a reliability problem. Communications
between systems may be inadequate so that one
system doesn’t know what the other system is
doing. That can cause a reliability problem.
There are many diverse ways that the interaction
between these networks can cause a reliability
problem.”
To showcase the type of
complexity resident deep within the immense,
highly distributed system that is the national
power grid, from personal analysis of the 13 August
2003 Northeast blackout, Mathews points to a race
condition within Ohio’s FirstEnergy
utility that turned out to be a prime
contributor to the event that affected 50
million people. A race condition is an operational situation
where a set of errand instructions in a program
forces the placement of system resources into a
contentious state. There, multiple variables
(more than the number designed for or allowable)
then act on resources, attempting to force an
output much differently than originally intended
and/or designed. In the case of FirstEnergy,
says Mathews, neither the technical nor
management staff knew about the problem in
advance, “because if they had known, processes and
actions could have been put into place to
prevent the blackout. The race condition caused
the failure of the alarm function in the FirstEnergy’s computerized energy management
system.” Both authors point to that example
as illustrating just one type of complexity and
vulnerability.
Running the Numbers
In their paper, Kun and Mathews provide an
extensive examination of the grid reliability
statistics currently available. They cite a recent study of
large blackout frequency in the United States
between 1984 and 2003, which strongly suggests
that measures taken thus far by industry and
government to ensure the existence of
reliability have failed. In fact, say Kun and
Mathews, “blackout frequency has significantly
increased.” The authors note that the study
concluded that while many proposed solutions
were implemented, “the effect of such changes is
not evident in the data,” and “the electricity
industry is not winning the fight against large
blackouts.” Further, they say, the study
asserted U.S. reliability rules were “neither
uniform, nor enforceable,” and emphasized that
industry-wide operational issues “have not been
systematically addressed.” Finally, Kun and
Mathews call attention to the study finding that
“grid protection schema are ‘frequently causing
cascading failures, rather than controlling
them.’”
To further bolster their point,
Kun and Mathews explain the cost of these
failures. They cite an Electric Power Research
Institute (EPRI) report that says among
commercial customers nationwide, employees were
idle a total of 37.3 million hours in 1991 due
to power-quality problems. They also call
attention to a 1998 U.S. Department of Energy study,
which
estimated that the cost of reliability to the
U.S. economy stood at $150 to $400 billion per
year. More recently, say Kun and Mathews, the EPRI stated the U.S. economy loses between $104
billion and $164 billion a year just in outages,
and another $15 to $24 billion per year in
power-quality-related events. As stunning as
these numbers are, they have not yet translated
into new policies or laws.
On the matter of unknown
variables, Kun
and Mathews say that the National Regulatory
Research Institute’s (NRRI’s) 2001 study states
that only 23 out of the 40 states it surveyed
required any annual reporting of reliability
statistics. Consequently, they say, the prospect of
aggregating usable national reliability data
appears sketchy at best.
Kun and Mathews contend that
state public utility commissions (PUCs) have
little authority on matters systemic in
so far as ensuring the national electric power
grid quality or reliability. Further, they note
that basic scientific research into systemic
interoperability is practically non-existent at
every level. The authors also conclude that U.S.
government agencies, laboratories, advanced
research organizations and American industries
are dangerously deficient both in staff
with the requisite cognitive skills and
analytical prowess to adequately mount the
required challenge to this critical and costly
national problem.
Conclusion
When Kun and Mathews think about
instituting reliability, especially in terms of
the systemic interdependencies and
interconnections of the national power grid,
they lay bare that no black-box solution
can simply be patched into the system. Instead,
they acknowledge that reliability is a
characteristic of comprehensive planning and engineering
excellence. And, because so many elements of the
grid and its greater system are riddled with
unknowns, time and money combined with the
precise knowledge and expertise must be invested
to investigate all aspects of the system to
prevent further failures.
Kun and Mathews believe that to
move forward,
addressing the national power grid
reliability problem in a holistic fashion is a must; for not doing so
would continue to produce failures in any, and
all "piecemealed efforts" as before. Jack Casazza mirrors Kun and Mathews,
saying, "The first step must be to
understand all
aspects of the power grid and how they interrelate; how
one aspect affects another is a whole field of
study that has not been seriously taken on.”
Casazza says that the other spoke in the wheel
that requires significant attention is lack of
government concern, competence and action about
electric grid reliability. For
example, he states that “Energy Policy Act of
2005 did nothing to address the root causes of
the 2003 blackout, and will therefore do nothing
to enhance reliability.”
“Proper policy
decisions constitute an important ingredient in
the recipe for success,” says Kun, who examines
these issues with his students at the National
Defense University. “The picture is grossly
incomplete,” says Kun. “We do not have vital
pieces of the puzzle, which can surface only
through properly structured research. This has
yet to be conducted in the way it should,
necessarily by those who understand these highly
complex issues, and not just do research in any
ole’ way as it has been done for so long.”
Mathews says
that “we do not have quantifiable evidence of
proper organizational and technical analysis of situations that can
legitimately propose and support the inception,
adjustment or augmentation of government
policies or legislation in this regard.” Kun
adds that “this unproductive and very costly
atmosphere must change for the better; the left
hand should know what the right hand is doing,
and mastering the relationship
between all aspects in the power grid is what
interoperability and reliability in
the context of all moving parts within is
about.”
“All in all,” says Casazza, “We
have to ask ourselves what’s good for the
country in the long run, and are we doing all
that is right and possible, and is the
government being accountable to the taxpayer?
The answer is clearly no.”
Debra Schiff is a freelance writer who has
written for EE Times, IEEE Spectrum
and Electronic Design.
Comments may
be submitted to todaysengineer@ieee.org. Opinions expressed are the
author's.
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