Modernizing America's Electricity Infrastructure

by Mason Willrich

Overview

A comprehensive, coherent strategy for modernizing America's electricity infrastructure while ensuring affordable, reliable, secure, and environmentally sustainable electricity services.

America's aging electricity infrastructure is deteriorating rapidly even as the need for highly reliable electric service—driven by the explosion of digital technology—continues to rise. Largely missing from national discussions, however, is a coherent, comprehensive national strategy for modernizing this critical infrastructure. Energy expert Mason Willrich presents just such a strategy in this book, connecting the dots across electric utilities, independent suppliers, government bureaucracies, political jurisdictions, and academic disciplines. He explains the need for a coherent approach, offers a framework for analyzing policy options, and proposes a step-by-step strategy for modernizing electrical infrastructure, end-to-end, in a way that ensures the delivery of affordable, reliable, secure, and environmentally sustainable electricity services.

Willrich argues that an effective electrical infrastructure modernization strategy must incorporate flexibility, adaptability, and the capacity to coordinate policies at local, state, and federal levels. He reviews the history of America's electrification, from Edison's demonstration of the incandescent light bulb through the recent expansion of wind, solar, and energy efficiency as carbon-free energy resources. He describes the current ownership and operation of the electric industry and the complicated web of federal and state policies that govern it.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780262342414
Publisher:	MIT Press
Publication date:	11/10/2017
Series:	The MIT Press
Sold by:	Penguin Random House Publisher Services
Format:	eBook
Pages:	320
Sales rank:	935,863
File size:	2 MB
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Mason Willrich is an independent energy consultant. During a distinguished career of more than five decades, he has worked as a senior executive in the electric utility industry and the independent power industry as well as in academia and the U.S. government. His books include Energy and World Politics and Non-Proliferation Treaty: Framework for Nuclear Arms Control.

Table of Contents

Preface ix

Acknowledgments xiii

Introduction 1

Part I The Past

1 From Start-Up to Disintegration 9

2 Post-World War II Electrification: Recovery, Growth, and Prosperity 17

3 Energy Crisis: Electricity Becomes an Increasing-Cost Industry 25

4 The Public Utility Holding Company Act of 1935 Repealed-Amen 37

5 Publicly Owned Utilities 47

6 Summary 87

Part II The Present

7 Electric Infrastructure: Ownership and Operation 95

8 Electric Industry Policy 101

Part III Developing a Strategy for the Future

9 Why a National Strategy 123

10 Electricity Consumption 135

11 Distribution System and Distributed Energy Resources 145

12 Wholesale Power Markets and Transmission 157

13 Power Generation: Large Scale 175

14 Advanced Coal: IGCC Plus CCS? 191

15 Nuclear Power: Carbon-Free Option? 197

16 Public Power: A Path Forward 207

17 Cross-Cutting Issues 215

18 A Strategy for Modernizing America's Electricity Infrastructure 223

Abbreviations and Acronyms 239

Appendix 245

Bibliography 267

About the Author 281

Index 283

What People are Saying About This

Amory B. Lovins

Even experts will learn much, and nonexperts far more, from this magisterial and admirably clear overview of America's electricity system by one of its most distinguished experts.

Daniel Kammen

The power grid is the most important physical-cyber system on the planet, and what Mason Willrich has done here is no less than to provide us a brillianttheoretical and practical guide to its vitally needed upgrade for the 21st century.

George P. Shultz

Mason Willrich draws on a lifetime of experience and his innate common sense to provide an important strategy for dealing with our electricity infrastructure. Read and learn.

Endorsement

The power grid is the most important physical-cyber system on the planet, and what Mason Willrich has done here is no less than to provide us a brillianttheoretical and practical guide to its vitally needed upgrade for the 21st century.

—Daniel Kammen, Professor, University of California, Berkeley; Science Envoy, U.S. State Department

From the Publisher

Mason Willrich draws on a lifetime of experience and his innate common sense to provide an important strategy for dealing with our electricity infrastructure. Read and learn.

—George P. Shultz, Thomas W. and Susan B. Ford Distinguished Fellow and Chairman, Energy Policy Task Force, Hoover Institution, Stanford University

Even experts will learn much, and nonexperts far more, from this magisterial and admirably clear overview of America's electricity system by one of its most distinguished experts.

—Amory B. Lovins, Cofounder and Chief Scientist, Rocky Mountain Institute; lead author of Small Is Profitable, Brittle Power, and Reinventing Fire

Mason Willrich provides us with a compelling model for modernizing the U.S. electric power infrastructure to take full advantage of no- and low-carbon generation technologies. Firmly grounded in history, industry economics, and technological innovation, this is a book that everyone should read.

—Paul L. Joskow, President, Alfred P. Sloan Foundation; Elizabeth and James Killian Professor of Economics, Emeritus, MIT

Mason Willrich is a leading expert on energy issues, and emphasizes the importance of the electricity sector to the country and everyone's lives. He points out that investments in energy infrastructure and modernizing the energy grid need to be a national priority in order to ensure that we retain reliable, affordable, secure, and increasingly clean energy. Although some of Mason's recommendations are controversial, and I disagree with some of them, the book is a great read.

—Thomas R. Kuhn, President, Edison Electric Institute, association representing all U.S. investor-owned electric companies

The power grid is the most important physical-cyber system on the planet, and what Mason Willrich has done here is no less than to provide us a brilliant theoretical and practical guide to its vitally needed upgrade for the 21st century.

—Daniel Kammen, Professor, University of California, Berkeley; Science Envoy, U.S. State Department

Paul L. Joskow

Mason Willrich provides us with a compelling model for modernizing the U.S. electric power infrastructure to take full advantage of no- and low-carbon generation technologies. Firmly grounded in history, industry economics, and technological innovation, this is a book that everyone should read.

Thomas R. Kuhn

Mason Willrich is a leading expert on energy issues, and emphasizes the importance of the electricity sector to the country and everyone's lives. He points out that investments in energy infrastructure and modernizing the energy grid need to be a national priority in order to ensure that we retain reliable, affordable, secure, and increasingly clean energy. Although some of Mason's recommendations are controversial, and I disagree with some of them, the book is a great read.