Complex Systems, as viewed by an Electrical Engineer
The whole is greater than the sum of its parts.
This is often the quote that is mentioned to encourage teamwork and collaboration between team members. It highlights that through unity, the group can achieve much greater things than when done individually. Interestingly, we can also observe this very same principle across nature and our society.
Notice in nature, how a single cell can seem minute and insignificant, but it can bring life to an organism when combined with other cells. Or even ourselves, as a consumer in our economy, our spending patterns might seem insignificant, but collectively, our actions can define the national or even global economy. In these examples, the collective interactions between the cells or the consumers can organize and exhibit new observations that would have never been seen when they are looked at individually. But who would have thought that there is a whole new field of science dedicated to this?
When I first heard about complexity science, I was amazed how this new field of science can change how we look and analyze things. Through the study of the emergence, self-organization, non-linearity, and adaptation between the individual components, complexity science can generate new insights. It can effectively explain a system’s characteristics and properties by studying its components’ relationships and interactions. I am primarily interested because there is universality that applies across multiple disciplines — physics, biology, economics, and even engineering. This is particularly useful because a good understanding of how these complex systems work and operate can significantly benefit our society. More the fact that the world we live in today is VUCA — that is, volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity.
As an Electrical Engineer, I am personally interested in how this emerging field of science can help establish and understand the electrical network’s complexity. In itself, the physical infrastructure of the electric grid is already complicated. The electrical network can be thought of as the largest piece of machinery that humankind has ever created — it spans thousands of kilometers that traverse forests, mountains, and oceans. It has multiple electrical components like conductors, transformers, circuit breakers, and insulators working together to ensure the entire electrical network’s continuous operation.
However, it is not the physical components that make the electric network complex. Power system engineers design and develop the electric grid with full knowledge of how components work and cooperate — and once this structure is built, it will function as it was intended. Thus, an electrical network’s physical components will not exhibit emergence, self-organization, or adaptation, the way a complex system is defined. Additionally, no non-linearity can be observed in electric networks. The power generated is always equal to the power consumed plus the losses incurred.
What makes the electric grid complex is how humans interact and intervene in the operation of the electrical network. The human-aspect introduces uncertainty and non-linearity that makes the electric network complex. A prime example of how humans can influence how the electric network operates is how the demand profile emerges, self-organizes, and adapts depending on the time of the day, day of the week, or month of a year. As millions of random events happen from the people and industries interacting with each other, trends and patterns quickly arise on the electric network. Another interesting aspect is how the policies and regulations are developed across multiple electrical networks. The best practices, policies, and regulations are shared and interacted with several electric networks from several countries. An example is how the renewable energy movement has become what it is today as people became more self-aware of the consequences of their actions towards the environment. Through these examples, it is apparent that people’s, industries’, and policymakers’ decisions and actions are indeed what makes the electric network complex.
To sum up, the electrical network, by itself, is complicated. However, it is how the people and the policy are integrated into the electrical network, making it truly complex — and getting even more complex. Contributory factors for this added complexity include the continued growth of load demand, the integration of variable renewable energy sources, the need to improve the security of supply, and the need to lower carbon emissions. It is interesting how complexity science can effectively capture how these factors affect the electrical network’s operation.
Indeed, complexity science is a new way of seeing the world, and it adds another layer to the analysis and understanding that power system engineers employ to design and develop electrical networks.
