The grid
"The grid is an accident of history and of culture, in no way intrinsic to how we produce, deliver and consume electrical power. Yet this is the system the United States ended up with, a jerry-built structure now so rickety and near collapse that a strong wind or a hot day can bring it to a grinding halt. The grid is now under threat from a new source: renewable and variable energy, which puts stress on its logics as much as its components. In entertaining, perceptive, and deeply researched fashion, cultural anthropologist Gretchen Bakke uses the history of an increasingly outdated infrastructure to show how the United States has gone from seemingly infinite technological prowess to a land of structural instability. She brings humor and a bright eye to contemporary solutions and to the often surprising ways in which these succeed or fail. And the consequences of failure are significant. Our national electrical grid grew during an era when monopoly, centralization and standardization meant strength. Yet as we've increasingly become a nation that caters to local needs, and as a plethora of new, renewable energy sources comes on line, our massive system is dangerously out of step. Charting the history of our electrical grid, Bakke helps us see what we all take for granted, shows it as central to our culture and identity as a people, and reveals it to be the linchpin in our aspirations for a clean energy future"
Stats for nerds
6recommend
7mentions
6people
2016–2023years
100% recommend
Mentions per year
What Hacker News says
- The Grid[1] by Gretchen Bakke. May not get as low-level as you like (physics of electricity) but great for learning about how the grid came to be, the operation of it, and the regulatory environment surrounding it.
[1]The Grid: The Fraying Wires Between Americans and Our Energy Future https://a.co/d/g78jGlx
- The book The Grid by Gretchen Bakke is a great primer on why this is such an important problem. Energy is strange, in the sense that everything produced needs to be consumed more or less immediately — it's not like other resources that can be easily stockpiled (even with batteries). Our infrastructure, at least the antiquated American power grid infrastructure, is built with the assumption that production and consumption is balanced.
Maintaining the energy grid is a careful balancing act between preventing surges and blackouts. There are a lot of grid-related engineering problems that come from increasing decentralization (e.g. wind, solar, hydro) because, as you mentioned, it increases unpredictability in supply.
- A good read on the topic of electricity production and distribution in the age of renewable, distributed sources: https://www.amazon.com/Grid-Fraying-Between-Americans-Energy...
- I'd recommend the book The Grid as a primer on how stuff like this can happen. Energy is strange, in the sense that everything produced needs to be used more or less immediately. Maintaining the energy grid is a careful balancing act between preventing surges and blackouts.
There are a lot of grid-related engineering problems that come from increasing decentralization (e.g. wind, solar, hydro) because it increases unpredictability in supply.
https://www.amazon.com/Grid-Fraying-Between-Americans-Energy...
- I fully recommend The Grid by Gretchen Bakke. It goes over this subject in great detail.
Link: https://smile.amazon.com/Grid-Fraying-Between-Americans-Ener...
- Have a look at the grid The Grid by Gretchen Bakke.
It describes how transmission has stagnated. Particularly the tactics used by large utilities and how they lead to a degraded and unreliable grid.
