The Grid: Electrical Infrastructure for a New Era

by Gretchen Bakke

is the fact that for the most part, America does not run on gas, oil, or coal any more than we may one day run on wind, solar, or tidal power. America runs on electricity.

Transformers, once a world-altering technology, have also been rendered utterly unspectacular, secreted inside gray canisters that cluster like coconuts at the tops of urban utility poles.

The grid is not just something we built, but something that grew with America, changed as our values changed, and gained its form as we developed as a nation. It is a machine, an infrastructure, a cultural artifact, a set of business practices, and an ecology. Its tendrils touch us all.

According to the industry expert Peter Asmus, we rely on twice as many power plants as we actually need because of “the massive inefficiencies built into this system.”

According to Massoud Amin, a power systems engineer, on “any given day in the U.S. about half a million people are without power for two or more hours.”