Abstraction's Toxic Inverse
This is how you get bad grid ideas. Whiteboard Flatlanders are serial offenders.
In a previous posting, I wrote about Whiteboard Flatlanders in the electric power industry and the bad ideas and bad architectural concepts they produce. But how does this happen? How do people convince themselves that their favorite grid gimmick will operate independently of any grid interaction? How do people end up thinking that electric appliances should bid against each other for electricity? How do regulators end up believing that lack of delivery capacity is ok, just tell the customers not to use electricity so much?
Insufficient architectural rigor is one cause, for sure; that is a sin of omission.
But there is a pernicious sin of commission when it comes to bad power grid ideas, and it starts with the useful concept of abstraction. Abstraction is the process of hiding details or removing characteristics from a model of something real in order to create a focused representation. We use abstraction in science, engineering, system architecture, computing, and a host of other disciplines and endeavors. It can be viewed as a kind of data compression process. It is useful so long as the users understand what details are being hidden by the abstraction.
But in the hands of the Whiteboard Flatlanders, Abstraction’s baneful twin often turns up - namely, Reification.
Reification occurs when someone views abstractions as being concrete realities. This is, in a sense, a fallacious inversion of abstraction - treating the abstraction as if it is actually the thing it represents. The trouble develops when people build a Jenga Tower of specious schemes upon those reified “realities.” Data modelers can really exacerbate the situation and then you end up with “architectures” containing absurd magic boxes.
This is how you get stuff like Transactive Energy, dispatchable emission-free resources, treating SGAM as an actual architectural tool, and a host of other Jenga Tower ideas. These faux realities and often bizarre data models engender misguided notions such as:
demand response (load turndown) is energy storage;
electrons from renewable energy sources can be physically routed through the grid independently of other electrons (because “green” electrons are tagged differently from all other electrons);
ancillary services providers sell frequency to the grid;
distribution service transformers have a set of independent output ports, one for each load.
I have personally encountered each of these misguided statements and much more from various sources, most of whom should know better.1
The negative consequences of reification in the grid transformation domain can be severe:
Misinforming public policy and regulation;
Misleading consumer expectations;
Wasting resources on inappropriate field trials;
Misdirecting both product and grid investment strategies;
Fostering poor system designs;
Detracting from focus on practical grid solutions.
If only there were some methods and tools to help people think critically about the grid. Oh, right.
And knock off the reification!
Watch this short video for a more detailed explanation of reification.
And this is just the mild stuff. By the way, these “concepts” are not coming from rando nutzoids, but electric grid chattering class professionals: consultants, activists, university faculty, regulators, and lab researchers. Well, ok a few of them might actually be nutzoids, too.
Note: JENGA is a Trademark of POKONOBE ASSOCIATES.