Renewables and their scattershot siting are not what make America’s electricity difficult to manage in the second decade of the twenty-first century. They just bring to light a problem that has been characteristic of our grid for more than half a century: it was made to be managed according to a command and control structure. There was to be total monopolistic control on the supply side of great electric loop—which included generation, transmission, and distribution networks—and ever-increasing yet always-predictable consumption on the customer side of things. Electricity would move from one
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