The span of power markets today is too big. Market participation by net metering applying tariffs across a whole region makes no sense if power from the seller cannot physically get to the would-be buyer. Power markets are intrinsically local. Atop this, one must factor in the line loss transforming up from the local small-scale prosumer
For such local markets, there needs to be some equivalence of market participant scale…
Read MoreA recent conversation about European power markets and some “glitches” in early June shown a light on profound issues in cybersecurity, in system architectures for big infrastructure, and to an extent the scalability problems with many of the hottest applications for the Internet of Things (IOT).
The specific observations was a plea for direct central control, even as it used an example that showed the shortcoming of infrastructure architecture based on assumptions of central control. It then learned the wrong lesson, that spontaneous order is too “risky” at large scale.
Read MoreAs we work to define the cybersecurity of things, power demands its own security models, outside of SCADA security and distributed controls. Power is both a resource and a vector, and each of these offers vulnerabilities to cyberattack. This article describes cybersecurity of the resource.
Read MoreRecently, a friend asked me to explain fog computing. Is it different than cloud computing?
The term Cloud in an architectural diagram, as originally used, meant “it doesn’t matter where the computing is”, i.e., the term Cloud meant vague and undefined. As happens so often, a few big data center operators (you know their names) re-defined it to mean “in our far-away high-up location”. This definition supports their marketing but restricts the original purpose of the term.
Fog is taking back the cloud...
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