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NETWORK / 17 / MAY 2016 W e have spent the past four decades developing approaches to policy, economics, the environment, technology, society and our energy networks which consign each to exist as a silo. In truth, they should be elements of a single, whole system view, and today a revolution is underway to realise this vision. The old paradigm of political top-down control imposed by legislation, regulation and enforcement is giving way across the globe to a social revolution. Be it Uber, Airbnb, E-bay, crowd funding, community energy or any other social app that has rede• ned how govern- ments plan their resource management, the landscape is very di• erent to just • ve years ago. Smart grids have taken longer to be planned and deployed than smart communi- ties, who are now self-organising in innova- tive con• gurations. Our policy, legislation and regulation processes are struggling to keep up with the pace of change. The utility infrastructures developed for centralised mass delivery of power and gas are being challenged by new, disruptive business models and local as well as virtual networks of control systems. Combined with the increase of variable uncontrolled generation and the reduction of synchronous big ther- mal plants providing vast reservoirs of inertia on the power system, these developments at the network edges are providing novel and constantly evolving challenges. The old certainty of considering the power system in isolation is giving way to a realisation of interconnec- tion and, consequently, uncertainty – for investment, operations and common bene• ts. In the energy world, industry has developed models that can predict with an excellent degree of certainty, S M A R T E N E R G Y D Y N A M I C S : A N I N T R O D U C T I O N The old paradigm of political top- down control is giving way across the globe to a social revolution GET TO Utility Week Live 2016, 17-18 May, Birmingham Duncan Botting will speak on 17 May on supply chain challenges during energy system transformation. Find out more www.utility weeklive.co.uk Next month, Duncan Botting explores the options for developing a framework of certainty that allows the market to deliver innovation and cost savings. or at least within a known degree of error. But due to the fast pace of change and the lack of available data for non-visible parts of the system and societal modal shi„ s, these models are now challenged with how to adapt to the new dynamics. Taking the • rst tentative steps to understanding this challenge and its impact on power networks out to 2030, the Department of Energy and Climate Change (Decc) commissioned a report from the Institution of Engineering and Technology (IET) and the newly formed Energy Systems Catapult (ESC). The Future Power System Architecture project will set out what new and substantially enhanced functions will be needed to manage the power system in 2030 – subsequently this project needs to become an element within a wider look at the entire energy system. In order to understand the complexities and the interrelationships of an evolving power system architec- ture, the IET Energy Sector Panel has started to develop an extension to the European Commission's standards analysis for a smart grid architecture. The smart grid architecture model – or SGAM –helps visualise the de- pendencies between business, functional and physical aspects of the electricity grid. This approach builds on a recognised standard and will also lend itself to re-pur- posing for an entire energy system exploration, and in due course the ESC hopes to publish a series of white pa- pers to explain the landscape, challenges and no-regrets actions that could be taken towards an uncertain future. While the results of the project and its future iterations are awaited, Ofgem has already reorganised internally to re' ect the need for whole system thinking. Decc has also started Smart Energy, a project seeking to understand the bigger energy picture. What will the impact of these developments be on whole energy system analysis? Historically, when faced with complex system problems our approach has been to break them down into… er, silos! This makes sense because by deconstructing complex problems you can unpack them until you reach a problem you can bound and understand. Then you can establish assumptions about the boundary conditions and get to work on de• ning the detail of the problem you are le„ with. The problem is that o„ en the assump- tions and boundary conditions we apply are themselves simpli• cations of the real world dynamics. We are then surprised that the functionality designed does not quite do what we expect when placed into service, or worse, has perverse outcomes. We then design another intervention that uses the same process and the cycle continues. Can we break out of this and develop new ways of thinking that establish a certain framework while allow- ing the market to deliver innovation and cost savings? How would energy networks feature in this framework and would it allow government to step back from micro- management of the energy system? In my next column these questions will be explored in more depth to see if there are options that will allow whole system thinking to deliver transformational out- comes with incremental changes. DUNCAN BOTTING DIRECTOR GLOBAL SMART TRANSFORMATION