How the British Divided the Middle East

How the British Divided the Middle East

Back ground

Before the discovery of oil, the Middle East was vital to Britain because it was part of trade and imperial communications routes to India the Western powers had long believed that they would eventually become dominant in the area claimed by the weak central government of the Ottoman Empire. Britain anticipated a need to secure the area because of its strategic position on the route to Colonial India, and perceived itself as locked in a struggle with Russia for imperial influence known as The Great Game. These powers disagreed over their contradictory post-war aims and made several dual and triple agreements. Syria and Lebanon became a French protectorate (thinly disguised as a League of Nations Mandate). French control was met immediately with armed resistance, and, in order to combat Arab nationalism, France divided the Mandate area into Lebanon and four sub-states.

The   partitioning of the Middle East ( Ottoman Empire) was planned in several agreements made by the Allied Powers early in the course of World War I, notably the Sykes-Picot Agreement. As world war loomed, the Ottoman Empire sought protection but was rejected by Britain, France, and Russia, and finally formed the Ottoman–German Alliance. The huge conglomeration of territories and peoples that formerly comprised the Ottoman Empire was divided into several new states.  The Ottoman Empire had been the leading Islamic state in geopolitical, cultural and ideological terms. The partitioning of the Ottoman Empire led to the rise in the Middle East of Western powers such as Britain and France and brought the creation of the modern Arab world and the Republic of Turkey. Resistance to the influence of these powers came from the Turkish national movement but did not become widespread in the post-Ottoman states until after World War II.

The League of Nations mandate granted French Mandate for Syria and the Lebanon and British Mandate for Mesopotamia (later Iraq) and British Mandate for Palestine, later divided into Mandatory Palestine and Emirate of Transjordan (1921–1946). The Ottoman Empire's possessions in the Arabian Peninsula became the Kingdom of Hejaz, which was annexed by the Sultanate of Nejd (today Saudi Arabia), and the Mutawakkilite Kingdom of Yemen. The Empire's possessions on the western shores of the Persian Gulf were variously annexed by Saudi Arabia (Alahsa and Qatif), or remained British protectorates (Kuwait, Bahrain, and Qatar) and became the Arab States of the Persian Gulf.

After the Ottoman government collapsed completely it signed the Treaty of Sèvres in 1920. However, the Turkish War of Independence forced the European powers to return to the negotiating table before the treaty could be ratified. The Europeans and the Grand National Assembly of Turkey signed and ratified the new Treaty of Lausanne in 1923, superseding the Treaty of Sèvres and solidifying most of the territorial issues. One unresolved issue, the dispute between the Kingdom of Iraq and the Republic of Turkey over the former province of Mosul was later negotiated under the League of Nations in 1926. The British and French partitioned the eastern part of the Middle East, also called Greater Syria, between them in the Sykes–Picot Agreement. Other secret agreements were concluded with Italy and Russia.^[4] The Balfour Declaration encouraged the international Zionist movement to push for a Jewish homeland in the Palestine region. While a part of the Triple Entente, Russia also had wartime agreements preventing it from participating in the partitioning of the Ottoman Empire after the Russian Revolution. The Treaty of Sèvres formally acknowledged the new League of Nations mandates in the region, the independence of Yemen, and British sovereignty over Cyprus.

Introduction

 More than 100 years ago in the middle of the First World War, a secret agreement was concluded between Britain and France to carve up the Ottoman Empire, which has had a terrible effect on the Arab and Muslim world right up today.  The two junior diplomats, Mark Sykes on behalf of Britain and Francois George-Picot for France, divided the Arab lands into two spheres of influence: Area A for France, including Syria and Lebanon and Area B for Britain including Iraq, Transjordan and Palestine. In those areas, Britain and France were to be allowed to establish whatever such direct or indirect governments or control as they desired.

The 1916 Sykes-Picot agreement had to be secret because it went completely against the promises given to the Hashemite leader Hussain Bin Ali, the Emir of Makkah, that Arabs would eventually receive independence if they supported the Allies against the Ottomans. This came even as Emir Hussain mustered Arab forces to fight alongside the British for the next two years and help achieve the end of Ottoman rule over the Arab Middle East.

The Sykes-Picot agreement became public knowledge when the Bolsheviks seized power in 1917 and found copies of the “treacherous” documents which they revealed to the world, and proved to the Arabs the duplicity of their “allies”. Born of western imperialism and colonialism, the Sykes-Picot agreement became the basis of the UN mandates after the end of the war, and helped define the future boundaries of the Arab nation states that remained under British or French colonial rule, which in turn became a key factor behind the rise of military dictatorships in the 1950s and 1960s.

Throughout the decades, the Sykes-Picot agreement has served as a constant reminder to Arabs of continued western meddling in their affairs. It also set the region on a turbulent course of misery and conflict. The legacy of Sykes-Picot can be felt today in several countries – including Iraq, Syria and most terribly, Palestine. Moreover, as western powers are again involved in Syria, memories of Sykes-Picot and its betrayals shape Arab fears that the West is still not finished with interfering in the region.

How the British Divided Up the Arab World

The development of the modern nation states throughout the Arab world is a fascinating and heartbreaking process. 100 years ago, most Arabs were part of the Ottoman Empire/Caliphate, a large multi-ethnic state based in Istanbul. Today, a political map of the Arab world looks like a very complex jigsaw puzzle. A complex and intricate course of events in the 1910s brought about the end of the Ottomans and the rise of these new nations with borders running across the Middle East, diving Muslims from each other. While there are many different factors leading to this, the role that the British played in this was far greater than any other player in the region. Three separate agreements made conflicting promises that the British had to stand by. The result was a political mess that divided up a large part of the Muslim world.

The Outbreak of World War I

In the summer of 1914, war broke out in Europe. A complex system of alliances, a militaristic arms race, colonial ambitions, and general mismanagement at the highest government levels led to this devastating war that would claim the lives of 12 million people from 1914 to 1918. The “Allied” side comprised of the empires of Britain, France, and Russia. The “Central” powers consisted of Germany and Austria-Hungary.

At first, the Ottoman Empire decided to remain neutral. They were not nearly as strong as any of the other nations fighting in the war, and were wracked by internal and external threats. The Ottoman sultan/caliph was nothing more than a figurehead at this point, with the last powerful sultan, Abdulhamid II, having been overthrown in 1908 and replaced with a military government led by the “Three Pashas”. They were from the secular Westernized group, the Young Turks. Financially, the Ottomans were in a serious bind, owing huge debts to the European powers that they were not able to pay. After trying to join the Allied side and being rejected, the Ottomans sided with the Central Powers in October of 1914.

The British immediately began to conceive of plans to dissolve the Ottoman Empire and expand their Middle Eastern empire. They had already had control of Egypt since 1888 and India since 1857. The Ottoman Middle East lay right in the middle of these two important colonies, and the British were determined to exterminate it as part of the world war.

The Arab Revolt

One of the British strategies was to turn the Ottoman Empire’s Arab subjects against the government. They found a ready and willing helper in the Hejaz, the western region of the Arabian Peninsula. Sharif Hussein bin Ali, the Amir (governor) of Makkah entered into an agreement with the British government to revolt against the Ottomans. His reason for allying with the foreign British against other Muslims remains uncertain. Possible reasons for his revolt were: disapproval with the Turkish nationalist objectives of the Three Pashas, a personal feud with the Ottoman government, or simply a desire for his own kingdom.

Whatever his reasons were, Sharif Hussein decided to revolt against the Ottoman government in alliance with the British. In return, the British promised to provide money and weapons to the rebels to help them fight the much more organized Ottoman army. Also, the British promised him that after the war, he would be given his own Arab kingdom that would cover the entire Arabian Peninsula, including Syria and Iraq. The letters in which the two sides negotiated and discussed revolt were known as the McMahon-Hussein Correspondence, as Sharif Hussein was communicating with the British High Commissioner in Egypt, Sir Henry McMahon.

In June of 1916 Sharif Hussein led his group of armed Bedouin warriors from the Hejaz in an armed campaign against the Ottomans. Within a few months, the Arab rebels managed to capture numerous cities in the Hejaz (including Jeddah and Makkah) with help from the British army and navy. The British provided support in the form of soldiers, weapons, money, advisors (including the “legendary” Lawrence of Arabia), and a flag. The British in Egypt drew up a flag for the Arabs to use in battle, which was known as the “Flag of the Arab Revolt”. This flag would later become the model for other Arab flags of countries such as Jordan, Palestine, Sudan, Syria, and Kuwait.

As World War One progressed through 1917 and 1918, the Arab rebels managed to capture many major cities from the Ottomans. As the British advanced into Palestine and Iraq, capturing cities such as Jerusalem and Baghdad, the Arabs aided them by capturing Amman and Damascus. It is important to note that the Arab Revolt did not have the backing of a large majority of the Arab population. It was a minority movement led by a few leaders who sought to increase their own powers. The vast majority of the Arab people stayed away from the conflict and did not support the rebels or the Ottoman government. Sharif Hussein’s plan to create his own Arab kingdom was succeeding so far, if it were not for other promises the British would make.

The Sykes-Picot Agreement

Before the Arab Revolt could even begin and before Sharif Hussein could create his Arab kingdom, the British and French had other plans. In the winter of 1915-1916, two diplomats, Sir Mark Sykes of Britain and François Georges-Picot of France secretly met to decide the fate of the post-Ottoman Arab world.

According to what would become known as the Sykes-Picot Agreement, the British and French agreed to divide up the Arab world between them. The British were to take control of what is now Iraq, Kuwait, and Jordan. The French were given modern Syria,Lebanon, and southern Turkey. The status of Palestine was to be determined later, with Zionist ambitions to be taken into account. The zones of control that the British and French were given allowed for some amount of Arab self-rule in some areas, albeit with European control over such Arab kingdoms. In other areas, the British and French were promised total control.

Although it was meant to be a secret agreement for a post-WWI Middle East, the agreement became known publicly in 1917 when the Russian Bolshevik government exposed it. The Sykes-Picot Agreement directly contradicted the promises the British made to Sherif Hussein and caused a considerable amount of tension between the British and Arabs. However, this would not be the last of the conflicting agreements the British would make.

The Balfour Declaration

Another group that wanted a say in the political landscape of the Middle East were the Zionists. Zionism is a political movement that calls for the establishment of a Jewish state in the Holy Land of Palestine. It began in the 1800s as a movement that sought to find a homeland away from Europe for Jews (most of which lived in Germany, Poland, and Russia).

Eventually the Zionists decided to pressure the British government during WWI into allowing them to settle in Palestine after the war was over. Within the British government, there were many who were sympathetic to this political movement. One of those was Arthur Balfour, the Foreign Secretary for Britain. On November 2nd, 1917, he sent a letter to Baron Rothschild, a leader in the Zionist community. The letter declared the British government’s official support for the Zionist movement’s goals to establish a Jewish state in Palestine:

“His Majesty’s government view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, and will use their best endeavours to facilitate the achievement of this object, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine, or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country.”

Three Conflicting Agreements

By 1917, the British had made three different agreements with three different groups promising three different political futures for the Arab world. The Arabs insisted they still get their Arab kingdom that was promised to them through Sharif Hussein. The French (and British themselves) expected to divide up that same land among themselves. And the Zionists expected to be given Palestine as promised by Balfour.

In 1918 the war ended with the victory of the Allies and the complete destruction of the Ottoman Empire. Although the Ottomans existed in name until 1922 (and the caliphate existed in name until 1924), all the former Ottoman land was now under European occupation. The war was over, but the Middle East’s future was still in dispute between three different sides.

The mandates that the League of Nations created after WWI

Which side won? None fully got what they wanted. In the aftermath of WWI, the League of Nations (a forerunner to the United Nations) was established. One of its jobs was to divide up the conquered Ottoman lands. It drew up “mandates” for the Arab world. Each mandate was supposed to be ruled by the British or French “until such time as they are able to stand alone.” The League was the one to draw up the borders we see on modern political maps of the Middle East. The borders were drawn without regard for the wishes of the people living there, or along ethnic, geographic, or religious boundaries – they were truly arbitrary. It is important to note that even today, political borders in the Middle East do not indicate different groups of people. The differences between Iraqis, Syrians, Jordanians, etc. were entirely created by the European colonizers as a method of dividing the Arabs against each other. 

Through the mandate system, the British and the French were able to get the control they wanted over the Middle East. For Sharif Hussein, his sons were allowed to rule over these mandates under British “protection”. Prince Faisal was made king of Iraq and Syria and Prince Abdullah was made king of Jordan. In practice, however, the British and French had real authority over these areas.

For the Zionists, they were allowed by the British government to settle in Palestine, although with limitations. The British did not want to anger the Arabs already living in Palestine, so they tried to limit the number of Jews allowed to migrate to Palestine. This angered the Zionists, who looked for illegal ways to immigrate throughout the 1920s-1940s, as well as the Arabs, who saw the immigration as encroachment on land that had been theirs since Salah al-Din liberated it in 1187.  

A century after Sykes-Picot, the dual crises have stripped away the veneer of statehood imposed by the Europeans and have exposed the emptiness underneath. Iraq was managed by Britain and Syria by France, with limited nation-nurturing, before both were granted independence. They flew new flags, built opulent palaces for their leaders, encouraged commercial élites, and trained plenty of men in uniform. But both had weak public institutions, teeny civil societies, shady and iniquitous economies, and meaningless laws. Both countries were wracked by coups and instability. Syria went through twenty coups, some failed but many successful, between 1949 and 1970, an average of one a year, until the Assad dynasty assumed power—in another coup. Increasingly, the glue that held both countries together was repressive rule and fear. 

In Syria, the death toll is many times higher in Iraq, the sectarian and ethnic divide at least as deep as in Iraq. The test in both countries is not just finding a way to re-create states more viable than the various formulations attempted since the Sykes-Picot process was launched. It’s also rallying public will in the current environment.

Some of the political alternatives may be just as problematic. The reconfiguration of either Iraq or Syria into new entities could be as complicated, and potentially as bloody, as the current wars. The breakups of India, Yugoslavia, and Sudan spawned huge migrations, cycles of ethnic cleansing, and rival claims to resources and territory, which in turn sparked whole new conflicts, some still unresolved years later.

 Concluding remarks

The political mess, that Britain created in the aftermath of WWI remains today. The competing agreements and the subsequent countries that were created to disunite Muslims from each other led to political instability throughout the Middle East. The rise of Zionism coupled with the disunity of the Muslims in that region has led to corrupt governments and economic decline for the Middle East as a whole. The divisions that the British instituted in the Muslim world remain strong today, despite being wholly created within the past 100 years. Muslims have been unable to deal with: nationalism, democracy; and sectarianism. The agreements to divide the Middle East were flawed and created issues right from the outset but these were perhaps symptoms and the issue of grappling with nationalism in the Islamic World is perhaps the more important issues in context of the forces that fosters the present turmoil in the Islamic World.

The nation-state, which involves wedding a specific people to a sovereign territorial entity, is a modern phenomenon.  Nationalism, the sentiment inspiring a people to establish an autonomous state, is also strictly modern. It can be seen as a political offspring of Romanticism, part of a nineteenth century European reaction to the universalizing and anti-authoritarian tendencies of the earlier Enlightenment. There are, however, elements of nationalist thinking, along with the political arrangements they birth, that are ancient. Examples would be the civic pride exuded by Pericles in his famous speech on the eve of the Peloponnesian War and the Greek city states themselves. Islam contains teachings that clearly argue against the most important elements of nationalism. Foremost among these elements are the chauvinism and exclusiveness engendered by the nationalist project. It is worth contemplating whether Islam can play a role in shaping an effort to move beyond nationalism. 

Islam is neither Nationalism nor Imperialism but a League of Nations which recognizes artificial boundaries and racial distinctions for facility of reference only, and not for restricting the social horizon of its members. One of the greatest keys to the emergence of that realm was the social psychology fostered by Islam. Perhaps the most important fruit of that social psychology was the creation of a political culture that discouraged the development of nationalist thinking. Such a political culture is desperately needed today as many people begin to struggle with new forms of transnational organization. If Islam is allowed, by both its enemies and advocates, to contribute to a new global sociopolitical consensus by helping to resolve the myriad problems associated with nationalism, both the Muslims and humanity will be well served.

Experience of some countries related to Variable Renewable Energy (VRE) and Lessons to be learned

Experience of some countries related to Variable Renewable Energy (VRE) and Lessons to be learned

Transmission and Interconnection requirements

Indifferent and faulty planning has resulted in waste of VRE in many countries. India is facing a curious problem: too much solar and wind power in some parts of the country. In July, 2016 for the first time, the southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu was unable to use all the solar power it generated.  Tamil Nadu,   urging  to speed up the construction of an inter-state green energy corridor that would allow renewable power to be transmitted and used in other states instead of being wasted. From India to China to Chile, a significant portion of future renewable energy could go to waste without careful planning.

Solar and wind only accounted for 3.5 percent of the power generated in India in 2015. But if the government achieves its ambitious targets for renewable energy deployment, the amount of solar and wind power on the grid could quadruple by 2022. Yet there are already signs that the grid’s ability to absorb these new power sources could be a major bottleneck for renewable energy growth in India, jeopardizing the country’s energy and climate goals.  .The problem is, in part, a technical one. Solar and wind power are not as easy to control as traditional fossil fuel plants, so power grids need to become flexible enough to handle last-minute changes in power generation.

Distance is also an issue. In India, six states in the western and southern regions account for 80 percent of all of the country’s currently installed solar capacity, but only 38 percent of power demand. For grid operators used to being able to turn fossil fuel plants on and off at will, these changes can take some getting used to. If new measures are not put into place to accommodate variable renewable energy sources, a situation can arise when the physical grid or the grid operator is unable to use solar and wind power when it becomes available.

Other countries have already dealt with this problem with varying degrees of success. Germany and the U.S. have relatively high levels of solar and wind penetration and low curtailment rates, while China has had major issues with curtailment as the share of wind and solar in the energy mix increases.

Indeed, China currently has more wind and solar power capacity than any other country in the world after scaling up very quickly. In the five years between 2010 and 2015, the share of solar and wind power generated in China quadrupled. Yet in 2015, the U.S. still produced more electricity from wind than China, despite having only 58 percent of China’s installed wind capacity. A large reason for this discrepancy is that much of China’s solar and wind power is wasted: 21 percent of wind power was curtailed in the first half of 2016 (with Gansu province reaching a 47 percent curtailment rate), and solar curtailment reached 11 percent in the first three quarters of 2015.

Although China has been able to build out renewable energy capacity quickly over the past decade, it has taken much longer to develop the transmission infrastructure and make the institutional changes required to utilize all of this new power.

India has undertaken to build the green energy corridor, a series of transmission lines that will connect states with excess renewable energy to areas where there is unmet demand. And similar to China, solar and wind already have “must run” status, meaning that any power they generate should always be accepted by the grid.

Yet even these steps may not be enough. A recent survey found that 31 percent of senior corporate leaders in Indian solar companies think that grid integration will be the biggest challenge for expanding solar in India going forward.  

The first priority for India, when addressing this issue, is to finish the green energy corridor and other new transmission lines so that renewable power can be transmitted where it is needed. There are significant power surpluses in some states and power deficits in others.

For instance, Uttar Pradesh has a peak power deficit of 9.7 percent (meaning 9.7 percent of demand at peak times cannot be met with the power available in the state), whereas the bordering state of Madhya Pradesh has a peak power surplus of 8.3 percent. Yet the power connection between the two states was at full capacity 73 percent of the time in May 2016, meaning some surplus power in Madhya Pradesh may not have made it to Uttar Pradesh. Nationally, 10 percent of the power supply available on the short-term markets last year could not be used because of transmission constraints.

New investment in inter-state power lines will help balance out such disparities. It is particularly important for India to attract private investment in these projects. The green energy corridor will cost an astounding USD $3.4 billion, and is funded in part by government funds and partially by a $1 billion loan from the Asian Development Bank and €1 billion loan from GiZ. But the public sector can only fund so many multibillion-dollar projects, and many state utilities are already in poor financial conditions.

Private capital is projected to be required for 47 percent of infrastructure investment in India between 2012 and 2017. India’s planning commission has created a framework for public-private partnerships for transmission investment, but land acquisition and permitting are still major roadblocks for private developers hoping to complete a project on schedule. Reducing the time and cost of land acquisition will be essential to making infrastructure projects attractive to developers and unlocking the private capital needed to finance transmission lines.

Second, focusing on deploying distributed energy technologies like rooftop solar can help increase the amount of renewable energy in use where new transmission lines are infeasible or too expensive.

India hopes to get 40 percent of its solar capacity from rooftop solar by 2022, but the market has been slow to take off despite a 30 percent capital subsidy from the government. The barriers to rooftop solar deployment are often more institutional than technical. In China, slow subsidy disbursement and a lack of financing have caused rooftop solar deployment to fall short of government targets. In India, a recent survey found that 93 percent of senior corporate leaders in the Indian solar sector did not think the country would even reach half of its rooftop solar target by 2022, citing ineffective net metering policy, unavailable and expensive financing, and consumer awareness as top issues.

Solutions

There are a number of potential solutions: Training for distribution utilities unaccustomed to having customers generate their own electricity; streamlining the application and approval process; creating certifications to ensure installer quality; and even allowing rooftop solar systems to serve as backup power when the grid goes down. Quickly implementing such solutions can allow renewable to grow without worsening curtailment.

Energy storage can also play an important role in reducing curtailment. The cost of storage is still a major barrier to mass adoption, but prices are dropping quickly.

Moreover, Germany and Texas have achieved low curtailment rates with minimal energy storage and high renewable energy penetrations through improved grid planning and changes to the power market structure. Still, India is planning on installing 10 gigawatts of pumped hydro energy storage across the country to accommodate increased renewable energy penetration (China is taking similar measures to reduce curtailment). As the price of energy storage drops, it will become an increasingly compelling complement to variable renewable energy.

Finally, India can look to other countries to find grid planning and operational solutions to help manage curtailment as renewable power scales up. One such change, highlighted in a recent Paulson Institute report on curtailment, is to create financial incentives against curtailing renewable energy.

Currently, Indian solar and wind generators are not compensated for curtailment, and compensation should not be necessary because renewable have “must run” status. However, financial incentives can help reinforce such regulations when mandates alone are insufficient. China has had a similar experience with “must run” mandates: multiple policies have stated that solar and wind should always receive priority on the grid, but curtailment continues to be an issue because there are few penalties for ignoring this regulation.

A recent regulation released by China’s National Development and Reform Commission requires that coal plant owners pay wind or solar plant owners whose energy is curtailed, creating a stronger incentive for grid operators to fully utilize renewable. An even simpler solution would be to compensate solar and wind projects for any curtailed energy at a fixed rate. This not only penalizes grid operators that choose to curtail renewable, but also provides more certainty for power producers when trying to forecast revenue.  

Even smaller changes to how the grid is operated can make a difference. In Texas, grid operator ERCOT shifted from 15-minute dispatch intervals on the intra-day market to 5-minute intervals, allowing for more granular planning around variable wind and solar power plants. (India currently uses 15-minute dispatch intervals.) ERCOT also shifted from targeting 0 percent curtailment to a maximum acceptable curtailment rate of 3 percent of annual renewable energy production -- a more cost-effective solution than trying to utilize every unit of electricity generated at peak times.

Such institutional changes can provide flexibility to the grid without the high risk and cost of major new transmission and storage projects. Yet a successful energy transition will require a broader change in the infrastructure and institutions that support renewable -- not just targets themselves.

INDIA SMART GRID PROJECT

GE Power’s Grid Solutions business has commissioned the first leg of a huge grid-stabilization project in India. The company says the project for Power Grid Corporation of India Ltd (PGCIL) is the world’s largest Wide Area Monitoring System (WAMS) solution. Sunil Wadhwa, Leader of GE Power’s Grid Solutions business in South Asia said, “The commissioning of the Wide Area Monitoring System technology of this scale and size is unparalleled in the history of power transmission in India. This will prove to be an important milestone in ensuring supply of uninterrupted, 24/7 high-quality power supply and integration of renewable energy with the country’s electrical grid.”

The project is part of the Unified Real Time Dynamic State Measurement (URTDSM) initiative that entails monitoring and controlling of the electricity supply across the country and has been executed by GE T&D India, part of GE Power's Grid Solutions business in India. The commissioned first stage will enable PGCIL to monitor power flow across 110 substations in the Northern Grid and respond to fluctuations within a fraction of a second. The northern grid covers nine control centers: Punjab, Haryana, Rajasthan, Delhi, Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Himachal Pradesh, Jammu & Kashmir and Chandigarh.

GE says “this will be critical in addressing power demand-supply imbalances and ensuring grid stability benefitting from the integration of renewable energy with the grid” When fully commissioned, this new WAMS solution will be the world’s largest comprised of 1,184 Phasor Measurement Units (PMUs) and 34 control centers across India, 350 substations in the national grid.

GE said the solution obtains input data 25 times per second from all the PMUs installed, whereas conventional SCADA sampling occurs once in nearly five seconds.It also offers real time views on geographic displays, analytical applications and the capacity to store 500 TB of data.

Moreover, it will also fully secure the grid from any cyber security threat, incorporating the latest firewall policies. The development and testing of the new software and substation devices was undertaken by GE teams from India, the UK and USA supported by PGCIL teams for duration of two years. 

GE Power Chief Digital Officer Steven Martin added: “The digital transformation of the energy sector is one of the globe’s greatest imperatives today. It’s exciting to see PGCIL harnessing the benefits of real-time data monitoring, improved decision making, and stronger cyber protection in order to ensure a steady, resilient power supply.”  

 Scaling Up Together

In 2015, India joined with France to launch the International Solar Alliance (ISA), a cooperative endeavor to facilitate the spread and adoption of solar energy. The ISA, the first international organization headquartered India, is open to 121 countries lying in the sunshine-rich area between the Tropic of Cancer and the Tropic of Capricorn. Together, these countries — of which 68 have joined the ISA so far — account for nearly three-quarters of the world's population but only 23 percent of global solar capacity, and most are poor or middle-income states. The organization, which held its first summit in March of this year, will afford India an opportunity not only to demonstrate its knowledge of scaling up solar power, but also to assert its leadership in the developing world.  

The ISA doesn't require binding commitments of its members, nor does it aim to disburse large volumes of funding. Instead, it recognizes the challenges countries, particularly poorer countries, still face in adopting renewable energy. Financing the construction of solar infrastructure, for example, remains a major obstacle for developing countries, accounting for up to 75 percent of total project costs in some cases. The costs of some of the technology required generating and use solar power, such as storage technology, also is prohibitive for up-and-coming states, despite a steady decline in prices. On top of that, the market for solar energy in smaller states may be too limited to attract investors, and governments may struggle to differentiate among the array of technologies and policies to find the best fit for their domestic energy needs. Designs and certification standards for solar appliances relevant to rural living — like water pumps and street lights — have significant room for improvement as well.

To overcome these obstacles, the ISA proposes to pool resources such as technical expertise and policy know-how, along with demand for solar power itself, among its members. The organization hopes that the resulting integrated market will draw $1 trillion in investment and additional solar capacity of 1,000 gigawatts across member states by 2030. In answer to the financing problem, the ISA is launching a new initiative called the Common Risk Reduction Mechanism, expected to come online in December. The mechanism will, as its name suggests, reduce investor risk — from fluctuating local currency exchange rates, political change or nonpayment from a new solar utility's customers — by pooling and securing finance across multiple projects in multiple countries. Banks, private investors and the Green Climate Fund are pledging $1 billion to the initiative, and the ISA expects the investments to leverage an additional $15 billion of private sector funding. All told, the organization estimates that the Common Risk Reduction Mechanism will lower costs for solar projects in its poorer member’s states by about half. Other initiatives include training 10,000 solar technicians and setting up centers in member countries to focus on innovation, research and development, testing, quality control, and certification.

 Negative Prices

Negative prices are a price signal on the power wholesale market that occurs when a high inflexible power generation meets low demand. Inflexible power sources can’t be shut down and restarted in a quick and cost-efficient manner. Renewable do count in, as they are dependent from external factors (wind, sun). On wholesale markets, electricity prices are driven by supply and demand which in turn is determined by several factors such as climate conditions, seasonal factors or consumption behavior. This helps to maintain the required balance. Prices fall with low demand, signaling generators to reduce output to avoid overloading the grid. On the French and German/Austrian Day-Ahead market and all Intra-day markets of EPEX SPOT, they can thus fall below zero. In some circumstances, one may rely on these negative prices to deal with a sudden oversupply of energy and to send appropriate market signals to reduce production. In this case, producers have to compare their costs of stopping and restarting their plants with the costs of selling their energy at a negative price (which means paying instead of receiving money). If their production means are flexible enough, they will stop producing for this period of time which will prevent or buffer the negative price on the wholesale market and ease the tension on the grid. Negative prices are a signal, an indicator for market participants. If producers decide to keep their production up, they have calculated that this is the best, most cost-efficient way for them considering the costs of shutting down and restarting their plants. In addition, negative prices are an incentive for producers to invest in the development of more flexible means of production that can react more efficiently to fluctuating energy supply in order to increase security of supply and prevent

the integration of large amounts of wind and solar power is a big challenge for RTOs and electric utilities, since they must keep the power grid stable (balancing supply and demand) even as highly variable power sources like wind and solar connect themselves to the grid . Large-scale wind and solar also pose challenges for electricity markets. Because wind and solar have basically zero marginal cost (remember that once the plants are built, fuel from the wind and sun are free at the margin), enough wind and solar power can drive down prices in the day-ahead and real-time energy markets. The frequency of LMPs that are at zero or even at negative levels has been increasing in markets with high levels of market participation by wind and solar energy producers. The figure below shows the frequency of negative prices in the California ISO during different hours of the day over the past few years (remember that a negative price means that a power plant is paying to produce electricity, and consumers are paid to use electricity). Note that during the daytime (hours 8 through 18 in the figure, which is 8:00 am to 6:00 pm) the price in the California market was negative more than 10 percent of the time in 2016, compared to a few percent of the time in 2012 and 2014.

  Negative prices in electricity markets can arise for two different reasons. The first is operational inflexibility, as a signal that supply is greater than demand. Suppose that a base-load gas plant with a very slow ramp rate was running at full capacity to meet electricity demand. At some point, wind energy production increases rapidly, so that there is more supply on the grid than there is demand to absorb that supply. The grid operator has two options – production from the wind can be curtailed (which has happened, as discussed in the Vermont article) or production from the base-load power plant could be curtailed, which comes at the risk of damaging the power plant. If the grid operator chooses neither action, then the price becomes negative. In this case while a negative price seems strange, there are perfectly good economic reasons for the price to become negative.

The second reason that negative prices arise is because of subsidies to wind and solar technologies. Many wind power plants, for example, receive a subsidy known as a Production Tax Credit for every MWh that they produce. This subsidy, currently equal to $23 per MWh, gives wind projects an economic incentive to produce as much electricity as possible. It is even possible that a wind project would accept a negative price in order to get the $23 subsidy for each MWh generated. If the plant gets paid $23/MWh and the price is -$5/MWh, the net revenue for the plant is still $18/MWh. Thus, some renewable energy market participants submit supply offers into the day-ahead or real-time market at negative prices, all but ensuring that their offers will be the cheapest.

RTOs whose territories cover areas with a lot of wind and solar production (most notably the California ISO, the Midcontinent ISO and ERCOT in Texas) have had to adjust their market protocols to handle large quantities of wind and solar power.

The Midcontinent ISO (MISO) began a program called Dispatchable Intermittent Resources (DIR) to avoid having to manually shut down large quantities of wind energy. The DIR program allows wind energy resources to participate like every other generator in the MISO real-time energy market as long as a binding production forecast is provided to MISO. 

The California ISO faced a very different problem, as their footprint has seen more rapid growth in solar energy than in wind energy. High levels of solar PV (without accompanying energy storage) pose a peculiar problem for grid operators in that it inverts the traditional daily demand pattern. Grid operators are used to seeing high demand for electricity in the middle of the day and lower demand at night, with the shift between high demand periods and low demand periods being rather gradual. With high levels of solar PV (which produce a lot of electricity during the day), the needs of the grid flip – fewer other power plants are needed during the day and more are needed at night. Moreover, the shift between the daytime and night-time load pattern becomes very sudden.

This is captured in a graphic known as the “duck curve,” shown above. The duck curve shows the demand for electricity (net of solar PV production) on California’s grid during each hour of the day as more solar PV comes on-line. Not only is the electricity demand in the middle of the day (again, net of solar production) pushed very very low, but the increase in electricity demand between 6 pm and 8 pm is rapid and very large in magnitude. The three-hour increase in demand of 10 GW shown in the figure above is roughly like powering up the entire state of Wisconsin in three hours.

California’s needs in integrating solar power into its markets are thus different from MISO’s needs. MISO needed a way to reduce the frequency with which it had to manually turn off wind energy production. California needed a way to pay for power plants with short start times and very high ramp rates, to handle the afternoon increase in non-solar electricity demand. California’s response was to develop a kind of real-time market that clears every five minutes, not every hour. This market, known as the Energy Imbalance Market was designed primarily to attract fast-ramping power plants, energy storage installations or any other resource that could response quickly enough to the five-minute market signal.

Conclusions

Induction of VRE energy into a power grid requires detailed planning. The central issue is the capacity of the transmission system to transfer large blocks of powers and to be able to retain integrity with sudden loss of power or sudden availability of power. Wind and solar do present a challenge to the intergraded grid systems and this needs to be expensively modeled and  plans needs to be prepared and implemented in time to fully unitize the benefits of VRE .