GULF OF MEXICO – APRIL 21: Fire boats battle a fire on the offshore oil rig Deepwater Horizon on April 21, 2010 in the Gulf of Mexico off the coast of Louisiana. Multiple Coast Guard helicopters, planes and cutters responded to rescue the 126-person crew of the Deepwater Horizons after an explosion and fire forced the crew to be evacuated. (Photo by U.S. Coast Guard via Getty Images)
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The stock of concerns of energy managers is quite full these days. It includes the increasing frequency of severe and extreme weather events, the continued threat of cyber intrusions, the shift in government policy from renewable energy sources to fossil fuel generation, and the need to find more power to power data centers.
Add to these concerns the threat of emerging complex systems to the electric grid. It is an existential threat and was responsible for the 2003 Northeast blackout, which affected more than 50 million people in eight states and the Canadian province of Ontario.
The outage began on August 14, when a power line in Ohio sagged and struck an overgrown tree due to high heat and demand. This caused the line to go out of service.
A software error in FirstEnergy Corporation’s alarm system failed to notify operators of the line problem, triggering a cascading event. Some customers had power restored within a few hours, while others were without for a few days.
Frequently cited examples
For computer scientists, physicists, biologists, and even social scientists, this was a classic example of the emergent failure of complex systems. Other frequently cited examples include the collapse of Lehman Brothers Inc. in September 2008 and the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico in April 2010.
John Savage, the retired head of computer science at Brown University, describes emergent complex systems this way: “An emergent system is one in which complex organized behavior or properties emerge from interactions among simpler components, even though none of the individual components exhibit those complex properties on their own.”
In other words, Savage told me, “Emergence occurs when the whole is greater than the sum of its parts—the collective behavior cannot be fully predicted or explained by merely analyzing the individual elements in isolation.”
Robert Gardner, a leading researcher and instructor on the behavior of emerging complex systems at the National Security Agency, the National Institute of Standards and Technology, and leading universities, told me that any enterprise that depends on complex systems is likely to face an emerging failure, but electric utilities and the financial system are the most vulnerable to this threat.
For example, Gardner said the 2008 Lehman Brothers crash was caused by bad actors but was exacerbated by the complexity of the counterparty networks that turned it into a massive crisis.
“These so-called Complex Adaptive Systems had no nefarious, hostile actors to defend against; the complex, heterogeneous nature of the systems themselves led to emergent behavior – behavior that cannot be predicted by examining individual components, but rather is produced by the system as a whole, facilitating perfect storms that conspire to enable these catastrophes,” he said.
Other major catastrophes that start with a disruption deep in the system but have widespread consequences include the problems with the Boeing 737 Max 8 autopilot system and the Titanic disaster.
Science of chaos
Some compare the development of a complex emergent failure to the science of chaos, where a small action on one continent can influence the weather on another.
Software is always a concern as it has often evolved and the component codes are not necessarily known today. They can be a mystery to those who depend on them.
Axiomatically, the larger the system, the greater the vulnerability and the more astonishing the consequences. For utilities, the major vulnerability is the electricity grid – in whole or in part.
The solutions lead to increasing awareness, building resilience and having a system that can shut down defensively in parts, and immediately when an unexplained disruption to normal business operations occurs.
As the electricity supply becomes more complex and diversified, the risk of emerging disasters increases. No villains, just cranky complexity.
EPRIthe electricity industry research organization, has studied emerging complex systems and leans toward thoroughness and robustness in design with deep resilience.
Proponents of microgrids see their relative simplicity and the ability to isolate them from the grid as a major advantage. In the meantime, things happen.
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