The Grid: Electrical Infrastructure for a New Era

by Gretchen Bakke

In 1983, when the Supreme Court confirmed the legality of PURPA and put an end to further legal dillydallying, California was ready. It had a host of small energy entrepreneurs with almost operational projects and it had local legislation in place to support electricity production that was verifiably environmentally friendly—what we would now call “green.” A surprising number of permits for small-power construction were filed almost immediately, 1,800 for dams alone, as well more than 16,000 wind turbines and even some for experimental solar projects. And all this new small-power generation was scattered to the four winds—in the river canyons and old mines of the Sierra Nevadas, in the desert outside L.A., in the passes between San Francisco Bay and the Central Valley, even in downtown Sacramento, and almost all of it was variable. It blew with the wind, fell with the water, and warmed with the sun.