The Grid

The Grid: The Fraying Wires Between Americans and Our Energy Future
By Gretchen Bakke, Ph.D.
Main Points:
  • The current state of the U.S. grid is the product of several interesting pieces of legislation passed over the years. The Public Utilities Regulatory Policy Act of 1978 forced competition between the established utilities and smaller electricity suppliers/ plants, thus diversifying the grid sources of energy. This first step in deregulation led to the Energy Policy Act in 1992  which unbundled generation and transmission. Bakke says "It did so for a reason, and that reason was energy trading. The act turned electricity into a commodity."The result of this has been corruption in the form of companies like Enron that manipulated the markets by creating artificial shortages and destabilization of voltage levels the grid- resulting in more surges or brownouts.
  • How does the grid work with so many players? You might have heard ISO/RTO, PUC, IRP, IOU, or POU. You are probably confused. For a brief introduction, read the Columbia Law School's paper on utilities. Basically the electricity industry was once run by vertically integrated monopolies, but deregulation in the 1990's led to many key players. Independent system operators (ISO's) and Regional Transmission operators (RTO's) helped enact E.P.A. in 1992 so that small companies and large utilities got equal access to transmission in the wholesale market. In the retail market, consumers can choose which utility to buy electricity from - investor owned utilities (IOU's) are regulated by the public utilities commission, while public owned utilities (POU's) are regulated by public officials and regulation. Hence FERC controls wholesale cost of electricity and interstate transmission, while public utilities commissions control the retail cost of electricity. In addition, state commissions are required to develop integrated resource plans (IRP's) to determine the most inexpensive way to tie customer needs to resource availability. 


Listen to Dr. Gretchen Bakke on NPR's Fresh Air talk about the under-funded U.S. power grid and its shortcomings in taking us into a new energy future!

For more, read the Wall Street Journal's R. Tyler Priest review the book and talk about many of the key events that led to the formation of the grid we have today.

A strong proponent of the microgrid/ "hybrid" grid system, similar to foam, Gretchen Bakke talks about the "Human Dimension" at the Trottier Institute for Sustainability in Engineering and Design's 2017 Microgrid Workshop.

On Youtube, National Geographic has an excellent Modern Marvels video on the history of the American grid and electricity sector!

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