The Grid: Electrical Infrastructure for a New Era

by Gretchen Bakke

Said Xcel, “Since the Petersons started the program, they have been able to produce 590.7 fewer pounds of carbon, saving enough to microwave 154 pizzas. Multiply that by fifty thousand customers—the number currently expected to install the system—and it can make quite an impact.” No matter how much carbon the Petersons might have saved with their Prius and panels and battery packs, it will never be enough to microwave a pizza—not even one pizza—because running a microwave oven on carbon is about as feasible as flying an airplane with coal or running a hot water heater on bananas. Carbon is not a power source. I point out such factual troubles because, in general, the places where facts get wobbly help us, as readers of interviews with “satisfied customers,” understand not so much what they have and what it does but what they’d like to have and what they would like it to do. As such, these interviews can be very revealing.