The Grid: The Fraying Wires Between Americans and Our Energy Future
Author:
Genres: Business & Money, Science & Math, Engineering & Transportation, Politics & Social Sciences
Book Type: Hardcover
Author:
Genres: Business & Money, Science & Math, Engineering & Transportation, Politics & Social Sciences
Book Type: Hardcover
Leo T. reviewed on + 1775 more book reviews
Econ. Electrical Grid shortcomings Notes
Gretchen Bakke. The Grid: The Fraying Wires Between Americans and Our Energy Future. NY: Bloomsbury, 2016.
After waiting two years on the wish list, the copy sent to me was chewed up by the USPS so I got one from an interbranch loan of the LA County Library. It arrived on the day when our building and the one next door lacked power from 4AM to 8:30 PM--very appropriate while considering this subject.
I found it well worth reading and well-written. The author begins with the 1880s grid of Edison (and many others entrepreneurs) in order to explain how it developed as a regulated public utility and offers considerable discussion of different ways the business might go in the 21st C. The author really delved into the subject. Some of it is too technical to be of general interest but there are chapters that would serve well as collateral reading for high school students as this is an important subject.
Endnotes, good index.
My notes for using this material in a classroom that includes collateral reading:
Introduction. pp. xi-xxx + 295-299.
Dr. Bakke's degree is in cultural anthropology and she has worked in several nations that have intermittent electrical service.
Given global warming, sustainable energy is a much discussed issue today (2016) and electricity is vital in the Information Age. But such discussions ignore "the fact that for the most part, America does not run on gas, oil or coal any more than we may one day run on wind, solar, or tidal power. America runs on electricity (xi)." Thus computers are important but electricity runs the computers. She notes that electricity is needed in our homes, factories, ports, police, etc. "Electricity has become so essential that using the word 'blackout' to refer to a power outage is something of a misnomer. Losing light is the least of our problems when our electricity system now crashes to ground, which it's doing with increasing frequency (xii)."
The controversy over the sources of electric power (coal, gas, water, etc.) is less important than being able to distribute the electricity generated on the grid, Dr. Bakke argues.
But we seldom think of the grid. "The grid is not just something we built, but something that grew with America, changed as our values changed, and gained its form as we developed as a nation. It is a machine, an infrastructure, a cultural artifact, a set of business practices, and an ecology. Its tendrils touch us all (xiii)."
Dr. Bakke identifies some of the elements that constitute the grid, starting with your computer: the battery, its port, the charger, its plug, the outlet in the wall, the wiring of the building, the transformer on the poles outside, low voltage lines to the substation (with its own transformers, syncrophasers, relays, switches, fuses), high voltage lines on pylons that originate in a spinning electromagnetic generator. The latter could be powered by steam, wind, water, or gas fired turbines.
There are three grids in the USA: one serves the West and a bit of Mexico, one serves the East, and one serves Texas. Canada is part of the USA grids of the East and of the West, except for Quebec, that has its own grid, its own infrastructure.
Dr. Bakke lists several famous blackouts, such as the East Coast in 1965, and NYC in 1977, after comparing the number of power outages in a few nations to the USA, with the latter having more minutes down because of aging equipment and the way the grid was pieced together originally. "The average U.S. power outage is 120 minutes and growing, while in the rest of the industrialized world it's less than ten minutes and shrinking (xiv)." However, outages of five minutes and less are actually more damaging to the US economy because many of the time it takes to bring machines back on line, including at power stations.
The new challenge is in the way we are changing the power sources on the grid, such as homeowners selling some of the power they generate back to the grid as represented by the power company. The generation and consumption of power is no longer done with one producer delivering electricity to various customers. And electricity is no longer made from natural resources such as coal, plutonium, gas, oil, etc. ('stock resources'); "these steady fires are what our twentieth-century grid was built for (xvi)."
The 'vagaries of nature' are problematic in electric generation, i.e. the wind does not always blow, the sun doesn't always shine, etc. whereas the machines that employ electrical power are designed for a steady supply of power. Another problem is that the green sources of power are often in distant places where the wind blows, the sun shines, and so forth, but are far from the customer that uses the power. "The grid was never built to be robust in the midst of wastelands (xvii)."
Small solar systems are problematic not only because of cloudy days but because they change the traditional grid on its head by sending small amounts of electricity into the system. "In America we have long made electricity in huge quantities in big, centralized power plants. Our grid was built with these factories at its heart. Everything about the way it is structured, from the merest wire to the biggest sub-station, was designed for the effective transit of power from a few massive producers to a wide scatter of users (xviii)."
The author notes that natural gas is better than coal unless there are methane leaks from the well or from the transport. It and nuclear power are termed 'transition fuels' as the world moves toward clean production of electricity. She also emphasize that there are powerful business interests defending the present use of the grid who value their profits and will change only slowly. Hawaii has had to sometimes refuse to accept solar electricity from households lest the excess supply overwhelm and shut down the grid. Because at other times the supply is low, it will not be easy to go to an all green generation system. "Something infrastructural, in some cases, and fiscal in others must be done to deal with all the electricity pumped into the grid during daytime hours on sunny days (xxi)." She then points out that the grid is very large but it also is local and offers the example of the 'balancing authority' in Texas having to sell power once at minus sixty-four cents per megawatt hour to get rid of it. [storage problems--batteries are being improved and pumping water upstairs in order to use it like a waterfall to generate electricity at night]
Dr. Bakke explains that unlike normal products, electricity must be used as soon as it is produced.
"The grid's current shape has a lot to do with the specifics of its technological and business history (xxv)." Electrical service was offered where a profit could be made until the Rural Electrification Act of 1938 and the regulated utilities need to earn dividends for their shareholders and thus are not very innovative. Demand [apparently] began to slow during the 1970s and investment in the grid faltered. "The parts that can be leveraged to make money get a lot of attention while the rest silently molder (xxvi)."
A few big blackouts at the start of the 21st C. finally led to some acknowledgement that the grid needed to be improved. Dr. Bakke sharply criticizes the improvements that have been laid on as they only repair the existing grid and do not consider the new uses of the grid. She feels that microgrids [as used in some villages in Africa--batteries save the solar power and electricity is sold locally to locales beyond the end of the grid] is the coming thing, harking back to the pre-1920s days of factories building their own small generating plants. The US military is taking steps as it sees the state of the grid as a huge risk to defense.
Dr. Bakke concludes that we need the grid and she wants not only to point out the its shortcomings today but to consider "variable and flexible ways of doing things gain favor over rigid ones, mobility and portability are more appealing than the static and the fixed, and wirelessness is championed whenever and wherever possible (xxx)."
Chapter One. The Way of the Wind. pp. 1-24 + 299-302
This is an introductory chapter to lay the groundwork for what follows which we did not read, instead carefully reading the Introduction.
Chapter Two. How the Grid Got Its Wires. pp. 25-56 + 302-309
The nature of electricity was not at first understood. It can be lethal, especially as lightening.
[I disagree with Dr. Bakke's endnote statement that the experiments with the electric chair "effectively ended Edison's career"--he, Henry Ford, and Harvey Firestone were very popular in the 1920s.] The beauty of electricity in the late 19th C. was that it could supply power to both near and far places. Dr. Bakke notes earlier somewhat similar technologies that were replaced, such as telegraph by telephone, by E-mail and water power by steam power by electric power. Thus the present electric grid will be altered or replaced by some other technology.
Between 1879 (first grid built, San Francisco, two dynamos at Fourth and Market powered by coal fired steam, yielding twenty arc lights) and 1896 (Niagara Falls power plant sends power 22 miles to Buffalo) "the remarkable capacity of electricity to produce good light gave way to the more awe inspiring possibility of electric power (27)." The author notes that inventors sought to identify and fill (profitable) needs, there were things that quickly became obsolete. The very bright arc lights are discussed. Early adopters (1879) included in the Comstock Lode mines, with later adaption to move their elevators, etc. and newspapers (5 arc lights SF Chronicle 1879, a string of 52 incandescent bulbs in parallel NY Times 1882). Dr. Bakke denies that Edison invented the incandescent lightbulb, but praises his invention of the parallel circuit (31). [Have an interested student explain this.]
Arc lighting was a series of bright (2000-watt) bulbs powered by one generator and in a series circuit, so that all the lights have to be turned on or off. Also the 'power frequency' of these lights could be heard by humans as a buzzing (as did early or malfunctioning fluorescent lights). But this nice, clean, bright light was much better than flickering lanterns or candles.
"Parallel circuits, in contrast, allow the electricity flowing through a system to take many possible paths. If all the paths have the same resistance, say a 15-watt bulb wired into them, the electricity in the system will take all the available routes simultaneously and without bias. If one of these bulbs burns out, the rest will continue to work as before; one path is blocked, but all other paths remain open (33)."
Edison opened his Pearl Street Station (lower Manhattan) in 1882, using his parallel circuits idea to counter Charles Brush's arc lights, and serving a grid of 1/6 of a square mile. In 1884 it had grown to a square mile. This rudimentary grid used six 100 kilowatt generators, each weighing 27 tons (AKA Jumbo Mary-Anns), fired by coal delivered in horse drawn wagons, illuminating 8,000 bulbs, and with the wires in conduits beneath the streets. Direct current could not be sent for more than a mile, so to wire the city there would have to be a great many generating stations.
Arc lights were quite popular in factories, parks, etc. where bright lighting was needed and were popular into the 1920s, but in the 21st C. are used only to illuminate IMAX film projectors (35).
Private plants were used for generating electricity for factories, mansions, and streetcar lines. The central station grids were used for sections of the town. There being a great many firms that had jumped into the market for generators, etc., Edison made sure his equipment down to the light bulb was designed so parts supplied by competitors could not be employed. Dr. Bakke calls it a 'kit' of sorts.
The author digresses into a system manufactured in Appleton, Wisconsin, that employed water power to generate the power. However, because water flows vary, customers had to keep their kerosene lanterns nearby and there were many one dollar bulbs burnt out by excessive spurts of electricity.
The author further digresses into an explanation of voltage. "What an electric grid does is first forcibly divorce happy electrons which hold a negative charge from their atoms which hold a positive charge (generation) and then provide an easy route (the wires) for them to reunite again. As the electrons travel along these wires they pass through all the things we put in their way--things like incandescent lightbulbs. And as they pass they encounter resistance. A filament in a bulb is less conductive than the lines into and out of the device. Some of the electrons' potential--the push it has to reunite--is thus expended in getting through this resistive material (38)." Edison's light bulb thus heats up and some of the heat (5%) will be seen as light. "In an electric motor, like those in refrigerators or washing machines, this electrical stream is used to produce a rotation within a magnetic field, which in turn produces a mechanical force (39)." Note that the electrons move through the machine or bulb, not stopping there, and that their voltage (drive) remains constant. "The measure of this drive is a volt; or a unit of electrical tension (39)."
The strength of the voltage indicates what work it can accomplish, such as 100 volts for a light bulb, 500 volts for a streetcar, 100,000 volts for a stun gun (39). Lightening amounts to hundreds of millions of volts. Thus the voltage of the grid must be under control as we have designed devices to employ a certain voltage. "An electric grid's most significant point of appeal is its ability to make and reliably transmit standardized power (40)."
Direct current was often in use through the 1920s and it provided only one voltage, thus different generators and wiring to the customer had to be provided for lightbulbs and for machinery (invented and patented by many different firms) calling for higher and different voltage. "By 1890 one could hardly see the sky in downtown Manhattan, so thickly strung were the wires for each of these separate, parallel electrical systems loping between buildings and along streets (41)." Edison was selling ten times as many private plants as he was central station systems, although he considered the latter to be more efficient.
Dr. Bakke mentions cooling systems and hot water in explaining the attraction of having a private grid at the turn of the 20th C. and they were the strongest competitors for central station electrical companies. "We think of electricity as a public good only because it became one with time, not because it worked that way from the beginning (43)." She has included the early days of electricity production in this book to show how the polyphase alternating current system that has been popular since 1915 came into widespread use. George Westinghouse's alternating current system was marketed starting in 1887.
The central station grid seemed to be a settled way of supplying electricity for most of the 20th C. "Today, the tension between individual power production (private plants) and utility-supplied electricity (central stations) is once again becoming the battleground upon which the future of our grid--the form and shape of its infrastructure--is being waged (46)."
However, if we return to a system of private plants, electrical service may not be universal any longer. Dr. Bakke cites the case of Germany (46), without details, her point being that access to 'quality affordable electrical power' was compromised. On the other hand, at the turn of the 20th C. having electrical power was something of a luxury in many places. "GE (originally Edison General Electric) started out as a power company; it was only with time that it became an appliance company renting, and then later selling, people stuff thzt needed to be plugged in to work (47)." There was money to be made in selling the appliance and then the power for its use.
Chapter Three. The Consolidation of Power. pp. 57-84 + 309-312.
This chapter deals with how the grid came to be built out of all the power generators in small towns, etc.
Sam Insull paid for a lot of PR. "Sam Insull didn't just build an infrastructure, he didn't just make a monopoly enterprise out of the most unlikely of candidates, he didn't just figure out how to fold government regulation into the very heart of a utility's finances, he also conceived of and pushed a dedicated propaganda machine, funded by customer rates, to ensure that investor-owned (for-profit) utilities remained the way the America made, distributed, and ran the business of electricity (80)."
Large utilities always stymied efforts to establish municipal utilities (PG&E vs. Marin Clean Energy, 2010). However, even if there was arural cooperative generating electricity, it was a monopoly everywhere.
Chapter Four. The Cardigan Path. pp. 85-114 + 312-316.
This chapter deals with President Carter's efforts to get the USA to reduce energy use in the face of oil embargoes (1973 & 1978). "Cardigans, fireplaces, thermostats, and later, solar panels--these were to become watchwords for us all (85)."
After the boom econonomy post-WWII, the USA was dealing with such things as environmental problems. The utilities were more regulated and now had to deal with rascals cogenerating. The contracts are discussed in detail. "The National Energy Act of 1978 was a regulatory intervention in the culture of the industry, and it was pushed into efficacy by federal, state, and utility regulators' enthusiasm for the law. Likewise, the next big piece of federal 'deregulatory' legislation, the Energy Policy Act of 1992, essentially ushered in a new set of regulatory norms rather than deregulating older ones (111)."
Chapter Five. Things Fall Apart. pp. 115-148 + 316-319.
At the start of the 21st C. there were numerous examples of insufficiently maintained nuclear plants. An offline plant, for whatever reason, leaves a hole in the grid.
While discussing fires caused by trees touching transmission lines, Dr. Bakke does praise the technology. "Up there the lines that are strung between these poles are a complex assortment of alloys and weaves and nested arrangements of metals, each designed to carry its assigned current safely from the point of production to the point of use (124)." Analog technology shuts down lines when the flow of power becomes unstable. Operators seeing a problem developing in a distant part of the grid may 'island' themselves, i.e. shut off the lines that come from that direction. The blackout of 14 August 2003 affected the eastern part of the USA and began with First Energy of Ohio; Dr. Bakke also explains the workings of the equipment.
"The problem is the grid. And not just because the technology is old, not just because it's insanely complicated, and confusingly managed, and not just because when something goes wrong our number one most effective communication tool is still a telephone (138)." Although utilities have much more information since 2000 from improving databases, they no longer share it with other utilities. "Today's utilities make money by transpoting power and by trading it as a commodity (143)." They have shareholders and spend little on maintaining the grid. Moreover, we have been more thrifty in consuming power for many years now.
Chapter Six. Two Birds, One Stone. pp. 149-183 + 319-325.
Digital meters are replacing analog meters and "the new meters are in fact information collectors that, once in place, can be used for communication about and control of customers (154)," perhaps by toning down your air conditioner in a time of high electricity demand, the utilities always being troubled with demand peaks. Dr. Bakke relates several popular demonstrations against snooping meters but assures us that the utilities are interested only in adjusting demand for power.
Utilities did not foresee 'grid defection' and are battling for their continued existence today.
[Regarding the problem of solar peak (when the rooftop generation by homes and other buildings is excessive, "The grid cannot handle the excess level of distributed electricity generated." See Cole Latimer, 10/15/2018, Australia Headed For a battle Royale On Solar Power, The Age (Melbourne))
Chapter Seven. A Tale of Two Storms. pp. 185-218 + 325-330.
Two great storms (1 December 2007 in the Pacific Northwest) and Sandy (east coast, much weaker but hit a highly populated area) led to more effort to achieve resiliency. "Resiliency means accepting that something things do break and then imagining and engineering ways not so much to make them unbreakable, as to consider how they might be less thoroughly broken in the first place and thus also easier to fix (193)." Much of this chapter is about 21st C. use of microgrids.
After large outages, the Lovinses said, "reconceptualizing and then rebuilding our systems-in-common as smaller, more flexible, more self-contained, less polluting, and closer to home was the wisest way to proceed (196)."
Chapter Eight. In Search of the Holy Grail. pp. 219-253 + 330-337.
The author discusses nuclear fusion briefly and storing electricity for future use at length. The latter includes a 1,300 ton nickel-cadmium battery in Fairbanks (2003, stores enough energy so that the backup diesel generators can be fired up, 15 minutes), pumped hydro (a dry lake near the dam used to store extra water for later use, this amounts to 95% of stored energy in the USA), compressed air stored in salt domes when there is plenty of electricity, and concentrated solar towers (the medium is liquified salt). Thus there is little storage capacity for a grid.
Hawaii is adopting rooftop solar because the existing grids are fired by imported oil. [My friend Charlie Malone bought land with hot lava underneath when they were thinking of using that heat source to generate electricity.] National statistics do not show the problems of excessive generation from homes, factories, etc. at certain times of the day. Dr. Bakke reminds readers that even those who don't care much about the environment like to save money and the firms who now 'rent' solar panels (the price of which has fallen as the PRC dumps them in the USA) increase the electricity supply).
The author cites evidence that the utilities have stepped up on the maintenance of the grid's high voltage transmission lines [after the 2017-2018 California fires they are going to cover the lines so trees will not be set afire and in 2018 they are shutting off the power supply as a wind storm ramps up] but there is decreasing maintenance on the low voltage lines in neighborhoods and that is where the blackouts (which are increasing) happen. The decreasing revenue earned by the utilities as competitors chip at their business of generating electricity, while they are left with the maintenance of the wires is a serious problem--utilities went broke in Germany as large users built private plants, leaving the grid. Our utilities are threatened with being left holding stranded assets and there are no 'easy fixes' in sight.
Dr. Bakke discusses various possible innovation but it comes back to battery storage. How they work is explained (they have a relatively long shelf life in the package because the ions are not moving to create electricity); electric cars may provide peak demand electricity in the future.
"Electricity powers this world, but it is also the means by which information constitutes it. The infrastructure we need to hold our present in place and allow for its increase is not the same grid that provided the twentieth century's national uplift and union (252)."
Bakke Chapter Nine. American Zeitgeist. pp. 255-289 + 337-342.
The author opens by reminding us about how people tend to seek an electrical outlet when in public places--we seek to use the equipment we carry with us. This is what we want from the grid--a reliable supply of electricity even though we do not often think of it. This book is about the electric grid of today that is invisible most of the time to us, such as technology, business models, etc. "In this, the last chapter, I'd like to turn toward our more intimate and personal interactions with the grid and our desires for these. These interactions, and wants, have a pattern, and this pattern, I suspect, exerts more global view, give credence to. What we would like ultimately is that our infrastructure move us less and have a less obvious presence in our world--not just visually, not just when it breaks down and emerges forcefully into consciousness, but all the time, and in both little and big ways (258)." We like electricity to be always present ('ambient'), without us thinking about it, and we will need it more in the 21st C. as technology moves forward, including autos. In this chapter, Dr. Bakke considers how a system that includes all of our needs may be implemented, "especially since our everyday desires for the future of electricity have relatively little to do with what the vested interests pursue in their attempts to maintain the technoglogical and fiscal viability of the current system (259)." The author says the interest groups with a seat at the table should include John Q. Public as well as "investors, visionaries, legislators, utilities, regulators (259)." Unfortunately, most of these groups look only at their own interest, not at the big picture.
Dr. Bakke urges us to design something that will serve all interests rather than returning to the 'Wild West' of the late 19th C. "There are thus three problems of different kinds that meet at the grid and get struck there: How to deal with the combined interests of many differnt players--which does, and should include global warming. How to deal with the legacy technology, which is to say the grid we've got. And how to deal with the fact that it's made and run by humans, who are by their nature rather squirrelly and shortsighted (260)."
Dr. Bakke considers two solutions for reengineering the grid, the first being creating additional storage for electricity and the second being a new 'platform' where all the various ideas could be discussed.
"A platform is an interesting tool to think with in part because it moves us into a domain where computing, or 'digital' systems, becomes the means for solving mechanical or 'analog' problems. Platforms literally use computers to make messes operable (261)." She uses Uber as an example of smoothing traffic by organizing drivers, vehicles, and passengers.
The Greens are used as an example of the people today who would like to change the grid to an "aggregated nothing, for no fuel, no wires and no measurable effects (262)." However, there are many neighborhoods where people expect electricity but want no pylons and overhead wires built. Some of us are willing to pay a bit more for electricity garnered from renewable sources. Of course, all the sources of power for the utility company are put in the one grid but they pony up the additional funding to purchase more renewable electricity. Another example is the purchase of energy efficient appliances and not buying incandescent light bulbs--decisions that cost more but use electricity more efficiently.
However, "while teams of career bureaucrats struggle to devise standards that will make a heavily networked grid functional, other folks in other places take steps to ensure that these won't every be needed. The wise grid, as this option is known, has a thousand opponents, each arming itself in whatever ways it can. Effective systems change can be derailed by any of these. If everyone with a stake in the game chooses to limit, rather than work with, the chaos of the present, we will end up with a balkanized system built of roadblocks and blind alleys. Any action, no matter how small, against interoperability creates new hurdles for anyone hoping for a future grid grounded in flexibility and reliability via diversity (268)."
California is offered an example of what not to do. The 2015 law about renewable energy dictates that the state's energy supply in 2030 be 50% from renewable sources but only counts that generated by central stations. Rooftop solar production is ignored, although in 2015 it produced three times as much solar energy as did central stations. Dr. Bakke sees the influence here of the big energy firms who don't want to bother with numerous small producers. "Turning an institutional blind eye to dispersed renewables--by refusing to let their power count--in favor of big wind farms and sunpower factories is a first step in a process of marginalizing the means of making electricity that many regular people obviously prefer (269)." This will not encourage diverse solutions to improving the grid.
Dr. Bakke reminds us of Amory and Hunter Loven's work in the 1970s; they wanted diverse solutions to the problems of the grid so as to reduce the burden of a few central stations and lines (272).
We also need to find a way to credit new factories and stores that are designed to use less electricity, thus reducing the need to build a new generating plant.
On a tour led by San Diego Gas & Electric, the author saw an Albertson's grocery store that was wonderfully energy equipped inside and even had a fuel cell generator so the store is independent of the grid. However, existing businesses cannot do such a thing (retrofit) as the investment would be too high to pan out. Negawatt: "A theoretical, rather than a real, unit of non-power, it serves the purpose of allowing us to measure and quantify avoided consumption (274)." Electricity use peaked in 2007 in the US and now is flat, that expecting to last until 2040.
The Albertson store is an example of providing all the bells and whistles while using less power. Those entering the store do not even know of the power savings.
The other part of the solution is to see that the grid accommodates different generation, different distribution, and also celebrates 'countable nothings.'
Modern meters [beloved by economists like Tom Larson at CSLA] can calculate the needed supply of electricity to mainstain the grid and, if a little short, draw some Negawatts from buildings that conserve so much energy that they can contribute to the needed supply (or it could be factories, residences, even autos some day).
"Network enough of these power-savers into a flexible, smart piece of software, and you have your platform (277)." This is DR, demand response technology. The future virtual power plant will be a platform made up of various machines that save power or generate power linked to the grid with computers. "Most of these are paid for by a mix of interested parties including investors, utility companies (which is to say rate payers), and state and federal subsidies (277)." Thus we can still think of the city being served by a power plant even though the central plant is gone. It will be digital smart meters and clever computer programs. This won't happen overnight but the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission can make it happen. They aided the integration of the grid by stating "that a commitment to reduce demand should be compensated the same amount as an equivalent commitment by generators to increase supply (279)."
Dr. Bakke believes the central power stations would disappear but the utility companies would hopefully remain part of the grid in order to balance the flow, etc. and "sharing, when it comes to electricity, is simpler and more cost effective, than doing it for oneself (281)."
Dr. Bakke discusses electricity delivered within the building without outlets and cords. Ikea in 2015 began selling side tables that would act as wireless charging pads for objects (lamps, phones, etc.) placed upon them. Nikola Tesla's (inventor of alternating current) experiments with ambient electromagnetic radiation are described and Martin Soljacic (MIT professor) is working on wireless transmission of electricity using magnetic resonance, which would be much more targeted than transmission via electric fields (Tesla).
The last five pages are a paean to what the future might bring.
Gretchen Bakke. The Grid: The Fraying Wires Between Americans and Our Energy Future. NY: Bloomsbury, 2016.
After waiting two years on the wish list, the copy sent to me was chewed up by the USPS so I got one from an interbranch loan of the LA County Library. It arrived on the day when our building and the one next door lacked power from 4AM to 8:30 PM--very appropriate while considering this subject.
I found it well worth reading and well-written. The author begins with the 1880s grid of Edison (and many others entrepreneurs) in order to explain how it developed as a regulated public utility and offers considerable discussion of different ways the business might go in the 21st C. The author really delved into the subject. Some of it is too technical to be of general interest but there are chapters that would serve well as collateral reading for high school students as this is an important subject.
Endnotes, good index.
My notes for using this material in a classroom that includes collateral reading:
Introduction. pp. xi-xxx + 295-299.
Dr. Bakke's degree is in cultural anthropology and she has worked in several nations that have intermittent electrical service.
Given global warming, sustainable energy is a much discussed issue today (2016) and electricity is vital in the Information Age. But such discussions ignore "the fact that for the most part, America does not run on gas, oil or coal any more than we may one day run on wind, solar, or tidal power. America runs on electricity (xi)." Thus computers are important but electricity runs the computers. She notes that electricity is needed in our homes, factories, ports, police, etc. "Electricity has become so essential that using the word 'blackout' to refer to a power outage is something of a misnomer. Losing light is the least of our problems when our electricity system now crashes to ground, which it's doing with increasing frequency (xii)."
The controversy over the sources of electric power (coal, gas, water, etc.) is less important than being able to distribute the electricity generated on the grid, Dr. Bakke argues.
But we seldom think of the grid. "The grid is not just something we built, but something that grew with America, changed as our values changed, and gained its form as we developed as a nation. It is a machine, an infrastructure, a cultural artifact, a set of business practices, and an ecology. Its tendrils touch us all (xiii)."
Dr. Bakke identifies some of the elements that constitute the grid, starting with your computer: the battery, its port, the charger, its plug, the outlet in the wall, the wiring of the building, the transformer on the poles outside, low voltage lines to the substation (with its own transformers, syncrophasers, relays, switches, fuses), high voltage lines on pylons that originate in a spinning electromagnetic generator. The latter could be powered by steam, wind, water, or gas fired turbines.
There are three grids in the USA: one serves the West and a bit of Mexico, one serves the East, and one serves Texas. Canada is part of the USA grids of the East and of the West, except for Quebec, that has its own grid, its own infrastructure.
Dr. Bakke lists several famous blackouts, such as the East Coast in 1965, and NYC in 1977, after comparing the number of power outages in a few nations to the USA, with the latter having more minutes down because of aging equipment and the way the grid was pieced together originally. "The average U.S. power outage is 120 minutes and growing, while in the rest of the industrialized world it's less than ten minutes and shrinking (xiv)." However, outages of five minutes and less are actually more damaging to the US economy because many of the time it takes to bring machines back on line, including at power stations.
The new challenge is in the way we are changing the power sources on the grid, such as homeowners selling some of the power they generate back to the grid as represented by the power company. The generation and consumption of power is no longer done with one producer delivering electricity to various customers. And electricity is no longer made from natural resources such as coal, plutonium, gas, oil, etc. ('stock resources'); "these steady fires are what our twentieth-century grid was built for (xvi)."
The 'vagaries of nature' are problematic in electric generation, i.e. the wind does not always blow, the sun doesn't always shine, etc. whereas the machines that employ electrical power are designed for a steady supply of power. Another problem is that the green sources of power are often in distant places where the wind blows, the sun shines, and so forth, but are far from the customer that uses the power. "The grid was never built to be robust in the midst of wastelands (xvii)."
Small solar systems are problematic not only because of cloudy days but because they change the traditional grid on its head by sending small amounts of electricity into the system. "In America we have long made electricity in huge quantities in big, centralized power plants. Our grid was built with these factories at its heart. Everything about the way it is structured, from the merest wire to the biggest sub-station, was designed for the effective transit of power from a few massive producers to a wide scatter of users (xviii)."
The author notes that natural gas is better than coal unless there are methane leaks from the well or from the transport. It and nuclear power are termed 'transition fuels' as the world moves toward clean production of electricity. She also emphasize that there are powerful business interests defending the present use of the grid who value their profits and will change only slowly. Hawaii has had to sometimes refuse to accept solar electricity from households lest the excess supply overwhelm and shut down the grid. Because at other times the supply is low, it will not be easy to go to an all green generation system. "Something infrastructural, in some cases, and fiscal in others must be done to deal with all the electricity pumped into the grid during daytime hours on sunny days (xxi)." She then points out that the grid is very large but it also is local and offers the example of the 'balancing authority' in Texas having to sell power once at minus sixty-four cents per megawatt hour to get rid of it. [storage problems--batteries are being improved and pumping water upstairs in order to use it like a waterfall to generate electricity at night]
Dr. Bakke explains that unlike normal products, electricity must be used as soon as it is produced.
"The grid's current shape has a lot to do with the specifics of its technological and business history (xxv)." Electrical service was offered where a profit could be made until the Rural Electrification Act of 1938 and the regulated utilities need to earn dividends for their shareholders and thus are not very innovative. Demand [apparently] began to slow during the 1970s and investment in the grid faltered. "The parts that can be leveraged to make money get a lot of attention while the rest silently molder (xxvi)."
A few big blackouts at the start of the 21st C. finally led to some acknowledgement that the grid needed to be improved. Dr. Bakke sharply criticizes the improvements that have been laid on as they only repair the existing grid and do not consider the new uses of the grid. She feels that microgrids [as used in some villages in Africa--batteries save the solar power and electricity is sold locally to locales beyond the end of the grid] is the coming thing, harking back to the pre-1920s days of factories building their own small generating plants. The US military is taking steps as it sees the state of the grid as a huge risk to defense.
Dr. Bakke concludes that we need the grid and she wants not only to point out the its shortcomings today but to consider "variable and flexible ways of doing things gain favor over rigid ones, mobility and portability are more appealing than the static and the fixed, and wirelessness is championed whenever and wherever possible (xxx)."
Chapter One. The Way of the Wind. pp. 1-24 + 299-302
This is an introductory chapter to lay the groundwork for what follows which we did not read, instead carefully reading the Introduction.
Chapter Two. How the Grid Got Its Wires. pp. 25-56 + 302-309
The nature of electricity was not at first understood. It can be lethal, especially as lightening.
[I disagree with Dr. Bakke's endnote statement that the experiments with the electric chair "effectively ended Edison's career"--he, Henry Ford, and Harvey Firestone were very popular in the 1920s.] The beauty of electricity in the late 19th C. was that it could supply power to both near and far places. Dr. Bakke notes earlier somewhat similar technologies that were replaced, such as telegraph by telephone, by E-mail and water power by steam power by electric power. Thus the present electric grid will be altered or replaced by some other technology.
Between 1879 (first grid built, San Francisco, two dynamos at Fourth and Market powered by coal fired steam, yielding twenty arc lights) and 1896 (Niagara Falls power plant sends power 22 miles to Buffalo) "the remarkable capacity of electricity to produce good light gave way to the more awe inspiring possibility of electric power (27)." The author notes that inventors sought to identify and fill (profitable) needs, there were things that quickly became obsolete. The very bright arc lights are discussed. Early adopters (1879) included in the Comstock Lode mines, with later adaption to move their elevators, etc. and newspapers (5 arc lights SF Chronicle 1879, a string of 52 incandescent bulbs in parallel NY Times 1882). Dr. Bakke denies that Edison invented the incandescent lightbulb, but praises his invention of the parallel circuit (31). [Have an interested student explain this.]
Arc lighting was a series of bright (2000-watt) bulbs powered by one generator and in a series circuit, so that all the lights have to be turned on or off. Also the 'power frequency' of these lights could be heard by humans as a buzzing (as did early or malfunctioning fluorescent lights). But this nice, clean, bright light was much better than flickering lanterns or candles.
"Parallel circuits, in contrast, allow the electricity flowing through a system to take many possible paths. If all the paths have the same resistance, say a 15-watt bulb wired into them, the electricity in the system will take all the available routes simultaneously and without bias. If one of these bulbs burns out, the rest will continue to work as before; one path is blocked, but all other paths remain open (33)."
Edison opened his Pearl Street Station (lower Manhattan) in 1882, using his parallel circuits idea to counter Charles Brush's arc lights, and serving a grid of 1/6 of a square mile. In 1884 it had grown to a square mile. This rudimentary grid used six 100 kilowatt generators, each weighing 27 tons (AKA Jumbo Mary-Anns), fired by coal delivered in horse drawn wagons, illuminating 8,000 bulbs, and with the wires in conduits beneath the streets. Direct current could not be sent for more than a mile, so to wire the city there would have to be a great many generating stations.
Arc lights were quite popular in factories, parks, etc. where bright lighting was needed and were popular into the 1920s, but in the 21st C. are used only to illuminate IMAX film projectors (35).
Private plants were used for generating electricity for factories, mansions, and streetcar lines. The central station grids were used for sections of the town. There being a great many firms that had jumped into the market for generators, etc., Edison made sure his equipment down to the light bulb was designed so parts supplied by competitors could not be employed. Dr. Bakke calls it a 'kit' of sorts.
The author digresses into a system manufactured in Appleton, Wisconsin, that employed water power to generate the power. However, because water flows vary, customers had to keep their kerosene lanterns nearby and there were many one dollar bulbs burnt out by excessive spurts of electricity.
The author further digresses into an explanation of voltage. "What an electric grid does is first forcibly divorce happy electrons which hold a negative charge from their atoms which hold a positive charge (generation) and then provide an easy route (the wires) for them to reunite again. As the electrons travel along these wires they pass through all the things we put in their way--things like incandescent lightbulbs. And as they pass they encounter resistance. A filament in a bulb is less conductive than the lines into and out of the device. Some of the electrons' potential--the push it has to reunite--is thus expended in getting through this resistive material (38)." Edison's light bulb thus heats up and some of the heat (5%) will be seen as light. "In an electric motor, like those in refrigerators or washing machines, this electrical stream is used to produce a rotation within a magnetic field, which in turn produces a mechanical force (39)." Note that the electrons move through the machine or bulb, not stopping there, and that their voltage (drive) remains constant. "The measure of this drive is a volt; or a unit of electrical tension (39)."
The strength of the voltage indicates what work it can accomplish, such as 100 volts for a light bulb, 500 volts for a streetcar, 100,000 volts for a stun gun (39). Lightening amounts to hundreds of millions of volts. Thus the voltage of the grid must be under control as we have designed devices to employ a certain voltage. "An electric grid's most significant point of appeal is its ability to make and reliably transmit standardized power (40)."
Direct current was often in use through the 1920s and it provided only one voltage, thus different generators and wiring to the customer had to be provided for lightbulbs and for machinery (invented and patented by many different firms) calling for higher and different voltage. "By 1890 one could hardly see the sky in downtown Manhattan, so thickly strung were the wires for each of these separate, parallel electrical systems loping between buildings and along streets (41)." Edison was selling ten times as many private plants as he was central station systems, although he considered the latter to be more efficient.
Dr. Bakke mentions cooling systems and hot water in explaining the attraction of having a private grid at the turn of the 20th C. and they were the strongest competitors for central station electrical companies. "We think of electricity as a public good only because it became one with time, not because it worked that way from the beginning (43)." She has included the early days of electricity production in this book to show how the polyphase alternating current system that has been popular since 1915 came into widespread use. George Westinghouse's alternating current system was marketed starting in 1887.
The central station grid seemed to be a settled way of supplying electricity for most of the 20th C. "Today, the tension between individual power production (private plants) and utility-supplied electricity (central stations) is once again becoming the battleground upon which the future of our grid--the form and shape of its infrastructure--is being waged (46)."
However, if we return to a system of private plants, electrical service may not be universal any longer. Dr. Bakke cites the case of Germany (46), without details, her point being that access to 'quality affordable electrical power' was compromised. On the other hand, at the turn of the 20th C. having electrical power was something of a luxury in many places. "GE (originally Edison General Electric) started out as a power company; it was only with time that it became an appliance company renting, and then later selling, people stuff thzt needed to be plugged in to work (47)." There was money to be made in selling the appliance and then the power for its use.
Chapter Three. The Consolidation of Power. pp. 57-84 + 309-312.
This chapter deals with how the grid came to be built out of all the power generators in small towns, etc.
Sam Insull paid for a lot of PR. "Sam Insull didn't just build an infrastructure, he didn't just make a monopoly enterprise out of the most unlikely of candidates, he didn't just figure out how to fold government regulation into the very heart of a utility's finances, he also conceived of and pushed a dedicated propaganda machine, funded by customer rates, to ensure that investor-owned (for-profit) utilities remained the way the America made, distributed, and ran the business of electricity (80)."
Large utilities always stymied efforts to establish municipal utilities (PG&E vs. Marin Clean Energy, 2010). However, even if there was arural cooperative generating electricity, it was a monopoly everywhere.
Chapter Four. The Cardigan Path. pp. 85-114 + 312-316.
This chapter deals with President Carter's efforts to get the USA to reduce energy use in the face of oil embargoes (1973 & 1978). "Cardigans, fireplaces, thermostats, and later, solar panels--these were to become watchwords for us all (85)."
After the boom econonomy post-WWII, the USA was dealing with such things as environmental problems. The utilities were more regulated and now had to deal with rascals cogenerating. The contracts are discussed in detail. "The National Energy Act of 1978 was a regulatory intervention in the culture of the industry, and it was pushed into efficacy by federal, state, and utility regulators' enthusiasm for the law. Likewise, the next big piece of federal 'deregulatory' legislation, the Energy Policy Act of 1992, essentially ushered in a new set of regulatory norms rather than deregulating older ones (111)."
Chapter Five. Things Fall Apart. pp. 115-148 + 316-319.
At the start of the 21st C. there were numerous examples of insufficiently maintained nuclear plants. An offline plant, for whatever reason, leaves a hole in the grid.
While discussing fires caused by trees touching transmission lines, Dr. Bakke does praise the technology. "Up there the lines that are strung between these poles are a complex assortment of alloys and weaves and nested arrangements of metals, each designed to carry its assigned current safely from the point of production to the point of use (124)." Analog technology shuts down lines when the flow of power becomes unstable. Operators seeing a problem developing in a distant part of the grid may 'island' themselves, i.e. shut off the lines that come from that direction. The blackout of 14 August 2003 affected the eastern part of the USA and began with First Energy of Ohio; Dr. Bakke also explains the workings of the equipment.
"The problem is the grid. And not just because the technology is old, not just because it's insanely complicated, and confusingly managed, and not just because when something goes wrong our number one most effective communication tool is still a telephone (138)." Although utilities have much more information since 2000 from improving databases, they no longer share it with other utilities. "Today's utilities make money by transpoting power and by trading it as a commodity (143)." They have shareholders and spend little on maintaining the grid. Moreover, we have been more thrifty in consuming power for many years now.
Chapter Six. Two Birds, One Stone. pp. 149-183 + 319-325.
Digital meters are replacing analog meters and "the new meters are in fact information collectors that, once in place, can be used for communication about and control of customers (154)," perhaps by toning down your air conditioner in a time of high electricity demand, the utilities always being troubled with demand peaks. Dr. Bakke relates several popular demonstrations against snooping meters but assures us that the utilities are interested only in adjusting demand for power.
Utilities did not foresee 'grid defection' and are battling for their continued existence today.
[Regarding the problem of solar peak (when the rooftop generation by homes and other buildings is excessive, "The grid cannot handle the excess level of distributed electricity generated." See Cole Latimer, 10/15/2018, Australia Headed For a battle Royale On Solar Power, The Age (Melbourne))
Chapter Seven. A Tale of Two Storms. pp. 185-218 + 325-330.
Two great storms (1 December 2007 in the Pacific Northwest) and Sandy (east coast, much weaker but hit a highly populated area) led to more effort to achieve resiliency. "Resiliency means accepting that something things do break and then imagining and engineering ways not so much to make them unbreakable, as to consider how they might be less thoroughly broken in the first place and thus also easier to fix (193)." Much of this chapter is about 21st C. use of microgrids.
After large outages, the Lovinses said, "reconceptualizing and then rebuilding our systems-in-common as smaller, more flexible, more self-contained, less polluting, and closer to home was the wisest way to proceed (196)."
Chapter Eight. In Search of the Holy Grail. pp. 219-253 + 330-337.
The author discusses nuclear fusion briefly and storing electricity for future use at length. The latter includes a 1,300 ton nickel-cadmium battery in Fairbanks (2003, stores enough energy so that the backup diesel generators can be fired up, 15 minutes), pumped hydro (a dry lake near the dam used to store extra water for later use, this amounts to 95% of stored energy in the USA), compressed air stored in salt domes when there is plenty of electricity, and concentrated solar towers (the medium is liquified salt). Thus there is little storage capacity for a grid.
Hawaii is adopting rooftop solar because the existing grids are fired by imported oil. [My friend Charlie Malone bought land with hot lava underneath when they were thinking of using that heat source to generate electricity.] National statistics do not show the problems of excessive generation from homes, factories, etc. at certain times of the day. Dr. Bakke reminds readers that even those who don't care much about the environment like to save money and the firms who now 'rent' solar panels (the price of which has fallen as the PRC dumps them in the USA) increase the electricity supply).
The author cites evidence that the utilities have stepped up on the maintenance of the grid's high voltage transmission lines [after the 2017-2018 California fires they are going to cover the lines so trees will not be set afire and in 2018 they are shutting off the power supply as a wind storm ramps up] but there is decreasing maintenance on the low voltage lines in neighborhoods and that is where the blackouts (which are increasing) happen. The decreasing revenue earned by the utilities as competitors chip at their business of generating electricity, while they are left with the maintenance of the wires is a serious problem--utilities went broke in Germany as large users built private plants, leaving the grid. Our utilities are threatened with being left holding stranded assets and there are no 'easy fixes' in sight.
Dr. Bakke discusses various possible innovation but it comes back to battery storage. How they work is explained (they have a relatively long shelf life in the package because the ions are not moving to create electricity); electric cars may provide peak demand electricity in the future.
"Electricity powers this world, but it is also the means by which information constitutes it. The infrastructure we need to hold our present in place and allow for its increase is not the same grid that provided the twentieth century's national uplift and union (252)."
Bakke Chapter Nine. American Zeitgeist. pp. 255-289 + 337-342.
The author opens by reminding us about how people tend to seek an electrical outlet when in public places--we seek to use the equipment we carry with us. This is what we want from the grid--a reliable supply of electricity even though we do not often think of it. This book is about the electric grid of today that is invisible most of the time to us, such as technology, business models, etc. "In this, the last chapter, I'd like to turn toward our more intimate and personal interactions with the grid and our desires for these. These interactions, and wants, have a pattern, and this pattern, I suspect, exerts more global view, give credence to. What we would like ultimately is that our infrastructure move us less and have a less obvious presence in our world--not just visually, not just when it breaks down and emerges forcefully into consciousness, but all the time, and in both little and big ways (258)." We like electricity to be always present ('ambient'), without us thinking about it, and we will need it more in the 21st C. as technology moves forward, including autos. In this chapter, Dr. Bakke considers how a system that includes all of our needs may be implemented, "especially since our everyday desires for the future of electricity have relatively little to do with what the vested interests pursue in their attempts to maintain the technoglogical and fiscal viability of the current system (259)." The author says the interest groups with a seat at the table should include John Q. Public as well as "investors, visionaries, legislators, utilities, regulators (259)." Unfortunately, most of these groups look only at their own interest, not at the big picture.
Dr. Bakke urges us to design something that will serve all interests rather than returning to the 'Wild West' of the late 19th C. "There are thus three problems of different kinds that meet at the grid and get struck there: How to deal with the combined interests of many differnt players--which does, and should include global warming. How to deal with the legacy technology, which is to say the grid we've got. And how to deal with the fact that it's made and run by humans, who are by their nature rather squirrelly and shortsighted (260)."
Dr. Bakke considers two solutions for reengineering the grid, the first being creating additional storage for electricity and the second being a new 'platform' where all the various ideas could be discussed.
"A platform is an interesting tool to think with in part because it moves us into a domain where computing, or 'digital' systems, becomes the means for solving mechanical or 'analog' problems. Platforms literally use computers to make messes operable (261)." She uses Uber as an example of smoothing traffic by organizing drivers, vehicles, and passengers.
The Greens are used as an example of the people today who would like to change the grid to an "aggregated nothing, for no fuel, no wires and no measurable effects (262)." However, there are many neighborhoods where people expect electricity but want no pylons and overhead wires built. Some of us are willing to pay a bit more for electricity garnered from renewable sources. Of course, all the sources of power for the utility company are put in the one grid but they pony up the additional funding to purchase more renewable electricity. Another example is the purchase of energy efficient appliances and not buying incandescent light bulbs--decisions that cost more but use electricity more efficiently.
However, "while teams of career bureaucrats struggle to devise standards that will make a heavily networked grid functional, other folks in other places take steps to ensure that these won't every be needed. The wise grid, as this option is known, has a thousand opponents, each arming itself in whatever ways it can. Effective systems change can be derailed by any of these. If everyone with a stake in the game chooses to limit, rather than work with, the chaos of the present, we will end up with a balkanized system built of roadblocks and blind alleys. Any action, no matter how small, against interoperability creates new hurdles for anyone hoping for a future grid grounded in flexibility and reliability via diversity (268)."
California is offered an example of what not to do. The 2015 law about renewable energy dictates that the state's energy supply in 2030 be 50% from renewable sources but only counts that generated by central stations. Rooftop solar production is ignored, although in 2015 it produced three times as much solar energy as did central stations. Dr. Bakke sees the influence here of the big energy firms who don't want to bother with numerous small producers. "Turning an institutional blind eye to dispersed renewables--by refusing to let their power count--in favor of big wind farms and sunpower factories is a first step in a process of marginalizing the means of making electricity that many regular people obviously prefer (269)." This will not encourage diverse solutions to improving the grid.
Dr. Bakke reminds us of Amory and Hunter Loven's work in the 1970s; they wanted diverse solutions to the problems of the grid so as to reduce the burden of a few central stations and lines (272).
We also need to find a way to credit new factories and stores that are designed to use less electricity, thus reducing the need to build a new generating plant.
On a tour led by San Diego Gas & Electric, the author saw an Albertson's grocery store that was wonderfully energy equipped inside and even had a fuel cell generator so the store is independent of the grid. However, existing businesses cannot do such a thing (retrofit) as the investment would be too high to pan out. Negawatt: "A theoretical, rather than a real, unit of non-power, it serves the purpose of allowing us to measure and quantify avoided consumption (274)." Electricity use peaked in 2007 in the US and now is flat, that expecting to last until 2040.
The Albertson store is an example of providing all the bells and whistles while using less power. Those entering the store do not even know of the power savings.
The other part of the solution is to see that the grid accommodates different generation, different distribution, and also celebrates 'countable nothings.'
Modern meters [beloved by economists like Tom Larson at CSLA] can calculate the needed supply of electricity to mainstain the grid and, if a little short, draw some Negawatts from buildings that conserve so much energy that they can contribute to the needed supply (or it could be factories, residences, even autos some day).
"Network enough of these power-savers into a flexible, smart piece of software, and you have your platform (277)." This is DR, demand response technology. The future virtual power plant will be a platform made up of various machines that save power or generate power linked to the grid with computers. "Most of these are paid for by a mix of interested parties including investors, utility companies (which is to say rate payers), and state and federal subsidies (277)." Thus we can still think of the city being served by a power plant even though the central plant is gone. It will be digital smart meters and clever computer programs. This won't happen overnight but the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission can make it happen. They aided the integration of the grid by stating "that a commitment to reduce demand should be compensated the same amount as an equivalent commitment by generators to increase supply (279)."
Dr. Bakke believes the central power stations would disappear but the utility companies would hopefully remain part of the grid in order to balance the flow, etc. and "sharing, when it comes to electricity, is simpler and more cost effective, than doing it for oneself (281)."
Dr. Bakke discusses electricity delivered within the building without outlets and cords. Ikea in 2015 began selling side tables that would act as wireless charging pads for objects (lamps, phones, etc.) placed upon them. Nikola Tesla's (inventor of alternating current) experiments with ambient electromagnetic radiation are described and Martin Soljacic (MIT professor) is working on wireless transmission of electricity using magnetic resonance, which would be much more targeted than transmission via electric fields (Tesla).
The last five pages are a paean to what the future might bring.
