The Grid: Electrical Infrastructure for a New Era

by Gretchen Bakke

This is our grid in a nutshell: it is a complex just-in-time system for making, and almost instantaneously delivering, a standardized electrical current everywhere at once.

For fifty years they had been free from competition, they had had the price of their sole product set for them by regulators, and they earned a return on what they spent regardless of how frivolously.

If, as one industry critic pointed out, the electricity business is the only one in which you can make a profit by redecorating your office, what did it matter if some people, or even the president himself, were wearing sweaters and turning down their thermostats?

One result of this is that as the holes PURPA rent in the system have grown larger over the decades, the electrical utilities in their hamstringed attempts to reinvent themselves all too often remain an impediment in the task of reimagining and remaking our grid.

The blackout, which covered 93,000 square miles, accounted for $6 billion of lost business revenue. If ever it was in doubt, the 2003 blackout proved that at its core America’s economy is inexorably, indubitably electric.

If smart meters or even a whole smart grid can’t be proved to benefit customers even by the very utility undertaking the upgrade, whom, then, do they benefit?

To err, at every moment, toward inclusivity and to design for the easy incorporation of as many different interests as possible. This will mean a clear set of obligatory standards that twist the arms of even the most stubborn players toward interoperability. It will probably also require legal and regulatory intervention.

Why not do the same with less? In this we can see the remnants of the Cardigan Path. It is there in part. We can use less.

The Path means less energy consumption without turning down the thermostat, wearing a fleece, or lighting a fire. It means long hot showers, cold beers, and well-lit rooms. There will be no privation in the new world of less. (Not “less-is-more,” mind you, but “the same with less.”)

We could pay them for gadgets perhaps, or a basic line fee per connected meter, or as consultants to newly aggregating towns and newly organizing microgrids, or as innovators in the still turgid waters of our energy future.