Vars are even more problematic non-things to understand (if not to make) than are watts. Nevertheless, before the act brought economies of profit to the grid, every utility ran some generating plants that made watts and fewer, far fewer, that made vars, because vars are what keep voltage and current in sync. With the separation of money made by generating electricity and that made by wheeling it everybody who used to make vars was, after 2000, trying to get into the watt market. Var production grew exceedingly slack. This lack of vars on the grid has been called “a key factor in the great
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