Grand challenges: opportunities and perils in ubiquitous data availability for the open access power systems environment

Summary form only given. One of the key tenets underlying FERC orders 888 and 889, and more generally underlying the move toward competitive markets, has been the presumption that open access requires widespread availability of data on the transmission network. In particular, Order No. 889 required utilities to establish electronic systems to share information about available transmission capacity, coining the acronym OASIS, for "Open Access Same-time Information System." In the eyes of many critics, the deployment of OASIS systems has not been as effective as envisioned when order 889 was issued. Some might argue that this failure reflects the inherent challenge of summarizing available transmission capability in a simple, easy to understand, concise data set in near real time. Others might argue that there have remained significant restrictions on the raw data that reflect the state of the transmission system, and that these restrictions themselves have been impediments to effective "open access." In light of the above, this paper is intended to raise some of the issues that might be encapsulated by the following question: "what if a maximally feasible amount of transmission and distribution system operational data were made universally available?" Would this open beneficial new commercial and technical opportunities, or would this be an unacceptable peril to privacy of consumers and the security of a critical national infrastructure?.